HUNTERS spend their summer at grass and by their nature are good converters. Therefore they will come back to work, in the middle of August, having built-up layers of fat.

I start-off their fitness programme by keeping them in paddocks with very little grass and exercising them on the walker starting with half an hour a day. I build them up slowly to an hour a day with little or no hard-feed to get the excess fat off them.

In mid-September I bring them in, stable them and have them shod. At this stage, in addition to an hour on the horse walker, they get half an hour building up to an hour of roadwork each day. I find this hardens up their legs and tendons. When they begin to do some roadwork I start building up their hard-feed untill the beginning of the hunting season.

I leave clipping them for as long as possible. Usually the first clip is done three weeks before the hunting season begins as their coat tends to grow back very quickly after the first clip. Once clipped they are well rugged-up in their stables to maintain a fine coat as long as possible while the nights and days are getting colder.

Once the hunting season begins the horses are exercised for an hour daily on the walker and get half an hour to an hour’s roadwork in between hunting days. I also try and get them out to a paddock with a turnout rug, weather permitting, as many days as possible and increase their feed depending on the amount of hunting they are getting.

Paul Ronan is joint-master of the Tipperary Foxhounds

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Full Horse Sense feature on the 2015 hunting season