This “very wet winter” is raising eyebrows in the Normandy stables.
While the rain has drenched the region in record proportions in places, many meadows are drinking the cup.
Sometimes visibly, this results in flooding.
Sometimes less, with extremely muddy soils.
“Plots of land are impassable, if we had done nothing, the horses would have had to live with mud up to their knees,” says Stéphane Antoine, boss of the Bas-Marquets stables in Villons-les-Buissons, near Caen (Calvados).
He had to put the horses in the boxes in November.
An unprecedented precocity but one that has become inevitable.
“When these conditions persist over time, there is a risk of complications.
For example, hooves soften.
This increases the risk of injury,” explains Nelly Manby, director of the Moulin-Neuf stud farm, near Vire.
“Pastures that don’t drain are deep.
It's like spending our lives running in dry sand at the beach.
Friends' horses have damaged their tendons,” says a rider who is looking for a drier boarding house in Calvados.
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In her research, she heard of a possibility in a stable not spared by flooding.
“They put all the horses in the stalls and it’s not conceivable to me.
» In this meteorological context, the horse pension finds itself at a crossroads.
“Between owners who want the outdoors for their horses and those who opt for boxing, it’s 50-50,” notes Stéphane Antoine.
Outdoor enthusiasts put forward reasons of animal welfare, like this owner: “locked up until April, it would be a disaster for my horse's mind and its respiratory tract”.
It is also a question of price.
The boss of the Bas-Marquets stables mentions “a difference in price from single to a little more than double for a board in the boxes.
We take the horse out every day, we feed it three times a day and we clean the boxes.”
When horses kept outside are brought in due to the state of the fields, some stables pass on the increased costs to prices.
This can quickly weigh heavily on the finances of owners.
Finding a pension during this delicate period is proving more difficult.
But after the incessant showers and even the snow episodes of mid-January, the climate is finally drying out.
At the Moulin-Neuf stud farm, Nelly Manby is however wary of “mild and humid weather which can cause horses to catch colds”.
On site, it will take time for its summer plots to return to a suitable condition.
The director plans to create new stabling spaces, larger boxes to house several horses “so that they can move around a little and maintain interactions with each other”.
Developments for which it is difficult to plan since this season is exceptional.
And to recommend the maintenance of a bocage landscape and a rotation of plots, in the hope that in the future, they will better resist such waterfalls.