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So welcome to week four, of the horse course.
And here I am standing in the middle of
the UF campus, University of Florida, in Turlington Plaza.
We're kind of near the bell tower and this beautiful oak tree.
So,I'm just trying to find some cool places to show you, and
show people around the world where we're at and what we're doing.
So as you know in these videos I like to always talk about the previous week
and week three was actually one of the
more fun weeks I had putting together because
I just love behavior as you know, and being able to show off some of those
videos that White Oak let us take and use for this class so thank you to them.
You know, the Somali wild ass and then some of
the other videos we, we shot of the gates and stuff.
So I really hope you enjoyed that.
Now, heading into week four you know, we're going to jump into nutrition,
and we'll talk a little bit more about that here in a second.
Just a couple shout outs on the, on the
discussion boards, the discussions this week have just been fantastic.
Just today, we were talking about.
You know, stallion behavior and stallions being by themselves, stuff like that.
So I jumped into that discussion.
I found that pretty interesting, and Helen Hornsby, from Australia.
So, hey Helen, down under.
You know, you had a really great question this week.
And that was what gaits are horses in when they're swimming?
So that generated quite a bit of discussion.
And if you want to know the answer, you can
go to the discussion board and look that up.
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We also had discussions.
Joann Keselowski from Massachusetts, she had a, a thread saying, help, help.
You know, my six year old thoroughbred yesterday did this, this and this.
And people, you know, had some training issues.
So, people were jumping in, helping her.
I mean, just to see the community come
together, that makes me excited about this class.
That is really, you know, one of the major reasons I wanted to put this together.
Was, to have people interact from around the world and share their experiences.
And I'm learning a lot, myself, you know,
from people, from different parts of the world and.
And what they're concerned with and what issues they're facing.
So you know as we develop this course
further you know, I'm keeping that in mind.
Especially for round two and round three of the horse courses as we go forward.
And then finally we had a really good discussion from Jun Lang.
She's from Toronto,Canada and she was talking about Monty Roberts.
And, he's the original horse whisperer.
And, really well known, really, has some really exciting stuff with horse training.
And she was asking about, you know, how people felt
about, his training, and, and getting some feedback, on that.
So, that was really great for week three.
And I hope that continues in week four, five, and six.
Now, with equine nutrition going into this week, I'll preface this week with.
If you really want to know more about equine nutrition,
because it's probably one of the most important topics.
My experience when I was the state equine specialist in South Carolina here in the
United States for a few years, was nutrition
was the number one concern of horse owners.
So I really feel like this week's probably the most important of the six weeks.
So really you know pay particular attention because it, it tends to
be the number one sources of, of abuse or neglect of animals.
Because people just don't understand how to feed them.
So, so going into this week.
You know, we're going to talk about anatomy.
We're going to talk about you know, how horses have evolved,
why they, they we feed them the way we do.
And we're going to talk about what we feed them we're going to jump
into a little bit of pasture management and then finish out the week
with, not a fun topic but one that I felt was really
important and that's colic so, colic is actually a major killer of horses.
It's a, talking about digestive upset and why they get colic
and what you can do if your animal does suffer from colic.
So it and then after the week if your really interested in learning more about
nutrition I cannot encourage you enough to take
Dr. Joanne Murray corsea course titled equine nutrition.
I know some of you have already taken it.
Have jumped in and said you really ,really enjoyed the course.
I took the course it was really well done.
And she should be offering that course I, I, I would assume later in the fall.
[NOISE] I looked today and didn't see a start
date, but she should be offering that again relatively soon.
So keep the comments coming.
You know, as we we enter week four, just a couple general housekeeping notes.
On the peer evaluations there were, was some confusion.
Some students were concerned.
I tend to think you were over thinking it.
Just keep it simple.
Look at the grading rubric.
We kept the grading rubric simple.
So you know look at that, if they meet the
expectations or exceed expectations you know, just assign that score.
But you know, don't put too much thought into it.
This, this first round in the horse course we
intended to keep it kind of simple and brief.
And based on your feedback, you know, we look like maybe round two,
round three we may turn up the rigor a little bit on that.
Couple things about the games.
People still enjoying the, the Quia links that you can play
games on, and SmashFact app that you can play games on,
for the Quia links again, you do not need a log
in or register for the website, just click on that link.
And begin playing the game, okay.
And then for the SmashFact app, a question came up
this week as far as the images and them getting
cut off just with the app you can actually just
press on that image and then it will go full screen.
You can see the image as it pauses.
Press it again and then answer your question.
So, so that's it for, you know, entering week four.
I look forward to hearing your comments, and I'll see you again next week.
Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
