Facilities
Woodford Stud maintain a range of purpose-built first class facilities on 30 acres of flat land in Carterton, Wairarapa. These facilities provide an excellent environment in which the Stud's stallions and mares can thrive.
We built stables and tack room by the arena. The floors are concreted and sloped slightly for ease of washing out. We don't need to stable the horses often as they all have shelters in their paddocks but it was a great place to train the youngsters that we sold to Australia. They learnt to be in a confined space and eat hard feed and hay and come out for a small stretch before going back in to the stable. Im sure it made their travel less stressful getting used to confinement.
The pasture is a mix, we have had to top dress to get it up to scratch but also to be careful we aren't cultivating too much clover, these horses have a tendency to do very well and can get too fat very quickly. In the future Im hoping to set up a track round the property so that we can get the horses off the pasture and control their intake a little easier.
The paddocks are nice and big so that the horses can self exercise and play. The are set up that we can easily strip graze too which this year (2014) we are having to do as we have had a great summer which enough rain to keep the grass growing.
All the paddocks have outriggers and a top-line of Equirope® which is easy to use and the horses can see it. Fencing in this area was very expensive as each hole had to be spiked before a post put in so keeping the horses off the fences is about safety and saving money.
We have a purpose built arena and round yard all in easy access to the stables and round yard. All our young horses are handled and trained to tie up and lead etc. Horses are sent off site for backing.
We are just in the middle of building a "dummy" so that we can collect semen and we are already on the way to having our lab facilities ready too. So far we have had little interest in fresh or frozen semen as hand serving is available at the farm.