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5 Things You Can Do to Help Your Horse Get Through a Snowy Winter

5 Things You Can Do to Help Your Horse Get Through a Snowy Winter

As winter piles on the snow, it’s not just us who need to bundle up; our equine friends also face the chilly allure of the season. Living in harsher conditions, horses need a little extra care to ensure they remain comfortable and healthy. Here’s how you can help your horse navigate through winter’s challenges, while ensuring they stay fit and happy.

Ensure Adequate Nutrition and Hydration

Without the lush pastures of summer, horses rely heavily on what you provide during winter. Adequate nutrition is the bedrock of a horse’s well-being, especially during the colder months.

  • Provide Quality Hay

Hay is crucial in winter as it not only provides essential calories but also helps maintain body heat. As the temperature drops, increase the quantity of hay to ensure your horse stays warm. Remember, forage generates heat as it digests, acting as a natural heater for your horse.

  • Access to Fresh, Warm Water

Dehydration is a stealthy winter foe. Horses, like humans, might not feel as thirsty in cold weather but still need plenty of water. Ensure they have access to unfrozen water, ideally between 45°F to 65°F. Heated buckets or water troughs help in maintaining the right temperature, preventing your horse from shivering while they hydrate.

Maintain a Clean and Safe Environment

A clean environment is more than just tidiness; it’s about safety and comfort. In winter, this becomes doubly important due to the additional hazards brought about by ice and snow.

  • Manage Ice and Snow Accumulation

Regularly removing snow and ice from walkways and, if possible, paddocks is vital. Not only does it prevent slipping, but it also ensures that your horse can move around freely without the risk of injury. Sand, wood shavings, or even used bedding can offer additional traction in slippery areas.

  • Provide Proper Shelter Against the Elements

A sturdy shelter is a haven for horses during winter’s brunt. It shields them from winds, snow, and freezing rain, keeping them cozy and healthy.

Providing a windbreak helps your horse maintain body heat. This can be a well-made barn, an open shed, or even natural coverings like dense trees. Ensure these areas are insulated but well-ventilated to prevent respiratory issues.

The bedding within stalls plays a big part in providing warmth. Opt for materials that stay dry and provide insulation, such as straw or shavings. A snug and dry bed helps horses conserve energy better.

  • Exercise and Physical Activity

Horses, just like people, benefit from regular exercise all year round. It’s essential for their physical and mental health.When it’s too treacherous outside, consider indulging your horse in indoor exercises. Basic groundwork or walking around an indoor arena can keep them fit without risking accidents.

If the weather allows, and the ground isn’t icy, outdoor activities can continue. However, always ensure your horse is properly geared for the cold, and that they avoid icy patches.

Special Care for Older Horses

Older horses, with their decreased ability to regulate body temperature, require a bit more attention during winter.

  • Blanketing

Older horses may need a blanket to keep them dry when it snows. depending on how thick their coat grows, it may not be enough to adequately protect them from melting snow. It’s up to you to decide what’s best for your horse, but if you are in doubt, check out what other experienced horse owners in your area are doing, and don’t hesitate to ask your vet for advice.

  • Adjusted Feeding and Monitoring

Older horses may need a diet richer in calories due to their diminishing ability to keep warm. Regular health checks can help in identifying any winter-related issues early on. There are many feeds on the market which are specially formulated for older horses. Remember that forage is a great heat provider, but if your horse’s teeth are worn and chewing hay is difficult for them, consider a forage extender. remember that changes in diet should be made gradually, so as not to court colic.

  • Joint Care in Cold Weather

Cold can aggravate joint issues, so incorporating joint supplements or consulting a vet for arthritis management might be necessary. Always consult your vet before adding a supplement to your horse’s diet.

Conclusion

Surviving winter isn’t just about layering blankets and hunkering down. By ensuring your horse has the right nutrition, hydration, and environment, you’re setting them up for a healthy season. Whether it’s managing icy paths or tweaking their diet, every little bit of care contributes to your horse’s winter wellness. Keep these tips in mind, and you’ll have a happier and healthier equine partner ready to take on the snow.

It’s always changing

It’s always changing

Life at the stables is always changing. Some changes are small, some are big, but when they are made to benefit the horses it’s hard to find anything to complain about.

Well, I managed to create a situation for my sled that has me inwardly complaining, even though the change (a big one!) is ultimately for the benefit of the horses.

You see, I recently joined a Garden Club, located in a suburb quite far from the stables (or any stables, for that matter!) In my eagerness to be of help to the club, I offered to provide some well-aged horse manure for a nominal sum, which would go to the owner of the stables.

Imagine my distress when I arrived at the manure pile to find everything dug up! There was a huge culvert running the length of the fence bordering the paddock beside the pile, to allow for other installation of french drains.
It was an improvement, to be sure, which will pay off greatly in the Spring, when the paddock will be less muddy and the runoff from the manure pile will be directed away from the horses. But the work made it impossible for me to get to the agreed manure. The entire access are was a muddy quagmire with deep ruts from the heavy equipment.

I had to get in touch with the club and try to explain what had happened and apologize for offering something I could no longer deliver.

I know that this change is for the ultimate benefit of both horses and owners, but I wish it hadn’t come as such a surprise to me!

Lesson learned – next time check before you promise!

 

 

Trailers well, good for vet, farrier..

Trailers well, good for vet, farrier..

That’s something I see in almost every single advert for horses for sale.

And it’s great, as far as it goes.

But what about when the professional, whoever it may be,  is gone and now you’re left to perform whatever ongoing procedure or treatment is required?

This was brought home to me recently by a coincidental pair of events at the stables where I board. My horse got an abscess on his off front foot. And another horse threw a shoe and managed to puncture her sole in the process. Both require soaking twice a day as part of their treatment.

Everyone knows that it is a good idea to train your horse to pick up his feet – seems like a no-brainer.

But how many have thought ahead to the possibility of having to have your horse put his foot down in a specific place? Or even in a bucket or tub of something to soak? I was lucky enough to have a horse who tolerates this pretty well without any previous experience that I know of. However, the other horse was a very different story, refusing to put her foot down, jumping around, and finally rearing and striking out – she was one unhappy customer.

Luckily, a very clever person at the barn (not me, I was already thinking “tranq her”) figured out a solution. He cut a piece of heavy plastic and after thoroughly washing down the wash stall floor,  blocked the drain with it. We led the horse in, and started hosing her legs as if it was a normal after-ride hose-down. As the water rose I walked around her very casually and put the Epsom salts into the water; once the water was high enough to be a good soaking depth, we turned off the hose and just had her stand there for her fifteen minute soak (patting, stroking, and “good girl-ing” all the while).

But what if the wash stall had not had sufficient slope to make it practical to do what we did? What if there had been no plastic to hand. Even more important, what if that very clever man had not been there to think out of the box enough to come up with an alternative? How would we have solved the problem of her fear of the soaking tub?

And there are other procedures that seem to us humans to be ordinary and not worrisome, but to a horse can be terrifying, for no reason we can understand.

Hoses- I know many horses like a bath; I’m willing to bet that the ones who do were introduced gradually to the hose as part of their stable-manners training.  But for those horses who have not had the benefit of this kind of introduction, it becomes an ordeal with the dreaded horse-eating hose. We were so very lucky that mare with the puncture was not one of those!

Clippers – how many people have acclimatized their horse to the clippers? Even if you never plan to clip your horse for the winter, or for showing, sometimes an area needs to be clipped for veterinary purposes and it is not always necessary to tranquilize the horse to carry out whatever procedure he needs to be clipped for. Clipping around a small wound or skin condition to allow direct applicatoin of ointment or other medication – really, would you want to have to tranq him for what should be at most a 5-minute clip job?

Anyone have a horse that shies away from the fly-spray bottle? Oh, I see some hands going up. What a pain, no? And in the area where I keep my horse, fly-spray is a given; the bugs fly around in squadrons and will torment any poor animal who has not been protected. The way I got my horse to accept it was this:
t took the fly spray bottle in my grooming kit with me for an ordinary grooming session(this was in March, before the bugs got bad – remember – think ahead!) and when I was finished grooming him, I picked up the spray bottle and didn’t spray anything. I just moved it around his body the way I would if I were actually spraying him. He got a bit anxious but I spoke reassuringly to him and he settled down. I repeated this for the next 3 or 4 grooming sessions. Then I ramped it up a bit. As I moved the bottle around his body I started making spraying noises with my mouth – “wisht wisht wisht“.  After another 3 or 4 sessions, I kept making the noises but actually sprayed his legs a couple of times. I eventually worked my way up his body, and soon I was also able to stop “widht-ing” at him. Now I can approach him in the paddock and he will stand while I spray him.

And trailer loading can take a whole article of its own – suffice it to say that it helps a lot to load every once in a while when you’re not going anywhere special.

Try to think ahead to situations that may occur, and train your horse gradually to accept them before it becomes a necessity. Do it gradually, over time, and don’t over-stress them – it doesn’t have to happen in a day. But if you do this, when the day comes that you have a situation on your hands that needs immediate cooperation from the horse, you won’t have to struggle and stress him even further.

5 Things You Can Do to Help Your Horse Get Through a Snowy Winter

Winter Vacation Viewpoints

First of all, you have to know that I hate winter.

Not a normal, “Jeez, it’s cold and I don’t really want to go out” kind of hate, but a deep down, dismal, depressing, demoralizing, dark and doleful, all-consuming hatred that leads me every year to wish I had married that nice young man from Kentucky instead. (Sorry, Steve.)

Knowing this and given the winter we’ve been having (February being the coldest month we’ve experienced in 115 years, according to the weather gurus), I decided to take a break. I asked a lovely young lady at the barn to groom Chips three days a week for me while I was gone, and I left.

I have done this before, while boarding at other barns, and had noticed a fundamental difference in the responses to my re-appearance, compared to the return of someone who had actually gone South. The vacationers were unfailingly met with delight and happy queries; “You look great, all tanned!” “Where did you go?” “How hot was it?”

I, on the other hand, who had stayed in this frozen hell we call a Canadian winter, was met with reproach; “Why did you stay away so long?” and “Your poor horse missed you!” I went to the barn again for the first time yesterday, expecting the same kind of censure,  and was amazed and delighted by the response I got. “Good to see you!” “Hi! We missed you!” “Glad you’re back!” I’ve said it many times, but sometimes it bears repeating – I love this place! (especially in warmer weather!)

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