Dear friends, we try to uplift your days with photos and videos of our horses and foals shared on social media daily with you but today I have to share some not so positive news with you and will also ask for your help. The unexpected and most horrific fires we were facing 3 months ago destroyed all our grazing.
I need to share the reality of the efforts and immense costs that go into keeping our herd in condition with the veld looking like a desert since... Since the fires there is zero (!) grass left in the veld and we are feeding our entire herd 24h hours through with baled grass we have to buy in to keep them in condition. If we don't feed through the horses try and find anything else in the burned velds and suffer from sand colic and poison risk.
So it boils down to the reality of a truck worth roughly 4000 Euro of grass needed to be bought in every three weeks now compared to our usual need of one in three months... Our additional feed and lucerne bill to provide enough nutrition with the baled grass for lactating mares and youngsters went up to another almost 5000 Euro per month. At this stage our emergency savings are used up and we unfortunately have reached the stage where we will have to sell some beloved horses, we weren't planning on selling, to see the herd through to proper rainfall and the times of green grass growing again (which in this country only God knows when its going to happen).
We started alternative plans of income over the past weeks to avoid having to sell and assist us going through these times so if you want to help us and in return get some really lovely insides into our family and stud please join our family subscription page and support us with 4.95 US per month through these difficult times and help us feed our and your babies through!
Alternatively you can support us with purchasing high quality art prints of our horses from our smugmug photo gallery worldwide:
If you don't want to subscribe or purchase anything and still do a once-off support there is a temporay PayPal Fire-Support Donation Button on the front page of our website until the real rain will come and the grass is growing back:
Please if you are able to assist with any of these three or not, help with prayers that God has mercy on us and all the neighbouring farms and wild animals and send us good rain to turn the land into pasture again!
Thank you, for your support! We really appreciate it!