Wednesday 24 June 2020
Hello! My name is Bronwyn, and I have just finished my first year of a Level 3 Academy Extended Diploma at Moulton College. I’m going to talk you through a typical day in the life of an Equine student. Enjoy!
7.15am - 8.30am The start of our commercial experience
All equine students have to take part in commercial experience at the centre and help take care of the College horses. Each student is allocated two horses that they have responsibility for throughout the week. During the morning shift, students are required to bring the horses in from the paddocks and then once they are all in we pick out the horses’ feet to remove any stones and mud and then we feed them their breakfast. They’re always pretty hungry by this point!
We are then split into pairs and sent to allocated fields to ‘poo pick’ - whilst this might sound disgusting, it’s so important to do as it helps to keep the worm and fly numbers down, and allows the grass to grow. The students who don’t go to the field, are required to stay on the yard and sweep, to make sure it remains presentable. Just before the end of the session, all of us meet back at the yard.
9.00am - 10.00am It’s now time for my gym session!
This is with my riding group, and lasts an hour, which is taught by a fitness instructor. The purpose of our weekly gym session is to help us maintain our fitness in order to ride the horses. Staying fit is important to any Equestrian. It is so much more beneficial to the horse if both the rider and horse are training at the same fitness level.
Our gym sessions don’t just involve cardio work though, sometimes our instructor will help us with exercises that improve our balance and position on the horse. These exercises are really beneficial. We’re encouraged to feedback to the gym instructor if we require specific help in a certain area of our fitness. This ultimately helps to improve our riding.
10.30-11.30am We have our riding session scheduled at this time.
Once we arrive at the yard we are required to tack up and skip out our allocated horses. When we are all tacked up we walk into the arena and begin our jumping lesson! During these lessons we’re keen to improve ourselves as well as the horses, and complete different exercises that work on different areas of our jumping.
11.30am - 11.45am General maintenance
After our riding session, we head back to the yard where we untack, hose down the sweat, and put rugs back on the horses if necessary.
1.00pm - 2.30pm Time for some biology!
It’s time for us to have our biology lesson where we don’t only learn about horses, but other animals and their biology too. This is one of my favourite parts of the day, because I get to find out more about how the horses, and other animals function.
4.45pm Commercial experience session
Some of us head back onto the yard for our evening commercial experience session, where there are a number of tasks for us to get involved with. Firstly, we begin by rugging the horses (if needed) and taking our allocated horse out to their paddock for the night so that they can graze and move around. We are required to muck out their stables and organise fresh new beds of straw for when the horses return to the yard in the morning. When done with the stables we sweep the yard, fill water buckets, and clean tack. After we have completed our tasks, we all meet back in the feed room, and give each other a hi-five, the end of another fantastic day!
Glossary
Rugging – Depending on the weather horses will wear rugs (blankets) to keep them warm and also dry if they are out in the rain
Tack – This is the equipment that a horse wears for riding and includes a saddle and a bridle
Commercial – This should be commercial experience whereby a number of hours completed at the centre form part of the Work Experience Module on the Equine Course
Interested in our Equine Courses? Find out more here.
Or find out more about The Equestrian Centre here.
