• Have your horse shod or trimmed to ensure any hoof injury is healed before travel.
• Decrease high protein diets and increase roughage.
• Decrease heavy work load, but continue with light work to help prevent horse being overexcited during travel.
• Make sure your horse is an ideal weight.
  • Overweight puts strain on tendons and joints
  • Underweight and the horse will lose too much condition.
• If your horse is young or unused to transportation, try to get him used to being led up a ramp and standing in a stall.

• Horses transport better without bandages and boots. Southern Cross Horse Transport bays have rubber paneling to prevent injury.
• Our drivers take breaks every 3-4 hours to check horses also surveillance cameras quickly allow the driver to be aware of any problems.
• If it is cool our drivers will rug the horses during rest stops.
• Horses have access to feed and water during all stabled rest stops.

• Mares and Foals travel together in a double bay. Foals are allowed to suckle regularly
• Mares heavy with foal are given a larger bay.
• Where possible, stallions are separated from other horses.

• Allow your horse paddock exercise to loosen stiff muscles
• Give access to plenty of water as horses often dehydrate during travel due to stress.
• Give access to plenty of feed as they may have only snatched at their fee during travel
• Watch appetite closely
• Introduce work slowly to allow stiff muscles to relax.

Taking these sensible precautions will ensure your horse is transported with as little stress as possible, and having a positive experience, will be happy for transportation in the future.

Why Your Horse will be Fed Steamed Hay

Hay varies enormously in it's quality due to our varied environmental conditions.
Hay that is baled with a high moisture content is prone to contamination from fungal spores and bacteria, while hay that is very dry is often dusty.

Steaming hay reduces these problems by:

• Destroying contaminating allergens (bacteria, fungal spores and dust mites)
• Reduce respiratory problems by moistening dry, dusty hay

Steamed hay maintains it's nutritional value (just like steamed vegies do).

To help protect your horse while in transit we routinly feed steamed hay.