Help the working and rescue ponies on Gili T

A peaceful and slow life continues at Stud.  We continue to provide a happy forever home for the horses who live on the property while trying to find the best ways to provide care to the working ponies on the island.

We recently took on another horse who was living in Gili Meno.  Her owner was not able to afford her feed, and she was in very poor condition.  Despite her young age, she was also working on a cart.  Her body shows the scars of an old working horse, but her teeth indicate that she is just a baby.

Despite our significantly reduced income due to low season, we bought her from the owner and moved her to Stud where she will enjoy the company of other horses, her freedom and a lot of food. 

Sadly our stud space is very limited and we cannot buy every horse that looks thin. We continue to work to find ways to improve the lives of all of the working ponies, through patience, education, free training and healthcare when needed.

However, we have had some positive meetings with the local horse cart Korperasi and are happy to work together with us for our farrier project.  We will be training more local horse owners and providing them with tools to be able to give a correct trim.  We also want to provide a long-term solution to the horseshoe supplies, which are not readily available.

Tools and nails will be purchased in Australia and brought over to the island. Fortunately, we believe that we have found a reasonable shoe supplier in Indonesia.

We continue to work together with International vets and The University of Undikma in Lombok to help improve the training and education of local vets.  There will be another clinic this month.

We find ourselves in a tough situation with 22 horses living onsite needing to eat, while only 7 are working.  It has also been a quiet few months.  We will need to order more pellet feed soon but do not yet have the funds to pay for it.  We hope that there will be more tourists coming so that we can put aside the money for the feed order.

As we wrap up, we extend heartfelt thanks to you, our generous donors whose support has transformed the lives of horses in need. Your contributions have enabled us to rescue and rehabilitate animals like the recent addition from Gili Meno and to initiate vital projects like the farrier training program in collaboration with local organizations.

We encourage you to share this report and spread awareness of our tiny but great cause, while also kindly thanking you for your ongoing support to sustain our efforts in providing care, feed, and medical supplies for these animals.

Together, we're making a meaningful difference, one hoofbeat at a time.

We continue to care for the ponies living on-site at Stud.

Our daily routine involves giving them all a morning groom, dealing with any cuts or scrapes, leaky eyes or runny noses, or giving regular hoof care. There are currently 21 ponies living onsite. 7 of the larger horses are in regular work to earn the income to cover the running costs.

However, since our running costs are high (due to the general lack of horse supplies being readily available to us), and we have 3 times as many horses to sustain than the number of horses in regular work, it is always a struggle.

The working hours of our horses are strictly limited. Every horse gets one day off per week, and we have a strict weight limit policy in order to protect our animals. This sadly is not respected across the island with less-legitimate pony riding operators. Therefore our earning potential is limited, yet our expenses continue to ramp up.

We also aim to provide assistance or care to anyone who asks us for it. There are several horse cart owners that drop in on a regular basis to receive medical attention for their horses, vitamin injections, or to see if we have any equipment that they could use. Of course, if we are able to provide them with whatever we need, we are only too happy to do so, since one of our main goals is to support and improve relations with the local community.

Most of our medication, wormers and riding equipment has to be imported. That means friends and family who are visiting the islands are asked to bring over whatever they can.. this includes wormers, saddle soap and even saddles!! This creates an extra level of stress for us, as when things break (in our tough environment, this is often), it cannot always easily be replaced.

A great success this year is that we are still working together to help improve the education for vets in Lombok. Together with International vets, we help to provide students with a higher level of learning by offering field training not available to them through the veterinary university. In July, we hosted another clinic which included a gelding, horse gastroscopy, drawing of blood and giving the horses tetanus vaccines and any other required medication. We have always believed that we can help more horses or animals in the long term if we can improve education and empower the future of Lombok equine vets.

We would love to see a big drive towards providing more tetanus vaccines for the working ponies. We have seen several cases recently, and despite having dealt with one horse that survived, it is more often fatal. We have found a supply of tetanus vaccines, but the cost is US$25 per horse. There are over 300 horses living in Gili Trawangan alone!

What are our goals moving forward? To continue to build strong relations with the locals. Work together with Lombok Universities to educate local vets, and push the farrier education so that more horses can get good quality hoof trims and shoes.

And none of this could have happened without YOU. Our loyal supporters have not only kept our heads above water in the most challenging of times, but it also helps to spur us on, with energy, passion and motivation to look after not just our own ponies, but to offer help, advice and support to all of the ponies residing and working hard on Gili. 

THANK YOU!

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