Getting Ready for Winter

Winter Horse Care

Winter brings special concerns and considerations:

• keeping your horse warm
• dry
• healthy
• fit
• safe

Keeping your horse warm involves a healthy coat, shelter, blanketing, and proper amount of hay and feed to metabolize calories into body heat from the inside. Keeping the horse dry coincides with the previous list, which again is shelter and appropriate blanketing (Weatherbeeta®); so does keeping your horse healthy. Keeping your horse fit involves proper turnout and exercise. It is okay to ride in the snow as long as the weather allows it and the horse is properly cooled down and dried afterward. Keeping your horse safe in winter may involve winter shoes and snow pads and staying off the ice (frozen creeks and ponds) or out of crusted over deep snow as this could cut the coronary band or the fetlock area.

Water: Preventing Winter Dehydration

Winter is though on horses and keeping water buckets from freezing solid and icy tubs. Just like in summer, it is important to keep your horse well hydrated during the winter to prevent dehydration which can lead to serious issues, including colic.

Water is essential for food digestion and turning those calories into internal heat (to maintain body temperature via the internal furnace). Dehydration is your horse's worst enemy. Here are more useful tips from Horse Link Magazine, Betsy Lynch, on keeping your horse well hydrated during the winter months.

Trail Riding in Winter

As an experienced rider I have to say that there is a difference between riding in the snow on a sunny winter day around 32-36 F degrees (Fahrenheit), and a freezing day below 29 degrees and lower and NO snow on the ground. The rock hard ground can potentially bruise a horse's soles (hoof) and it can take a very long time to properly cool of and dry with a winter coat in a freezing barn. Also, an old coach used to say that if you exercise a horse below 14 F, you are running a high chance doing damage to its lungs.

Here is a tip: keep a blow dryer in the barn so in a pinch you can blow dry their coat after a ride.