Winter is the time of year where our horses will potentially need us the most. Love this rug? Shop the Graphite Check Detach-A-Neck via Goodwoods Saddlery. Image by Equisoul Photography/Goodwoods Saddlery.
With the chill in the air and daylight hours shrinking, winter is on its way — and so too are the seasonal care changes needed to keep our equine partners healthy and comfortable.
While horses are a part of our lives 365 days of the year, winter is often the season when we don’t spend as much time with our equine friends — yet it’s potentially the time that they need our input the most. Not only can our horses have different needs and challenges to overcome in the winter, but our circumstances and priorities often change when the days shorten and the temperature drops, spending less time outside to monitor our animals, and more time inside looking after ourselves.
WARMTH TAKES ENERGY
One of the major factors to be aware of during winter is the increased demand on the horse to maintain a suitable body temperate. The horse, like every warm-blooded animal, needs to maintain its core body temperature within a very small window for vital functions to occur. In Summertime the converse applies, with horses needing to cool their bodies when external temperatures are high, but it is much less demanding on the body to cool than it is to keep warm. Warmth takes energy, and the colder the external environment, the more energy a horse must expend to survive. Without taking additional management steps to provide more food, reduce the heat loss or improve the environmental temperatures, a horse will lose weight and/or succumb to illness or injury if this is not provided.
Good quality hay, when available, is a great source of heat during winter.
Increasing your horse’s ration is a simple option, although not always the best or most economical way of dealing with cold weather, especially in our current climate where horse feed and hay are becoming more expensive. Good quality hay, when available, is a great source of heat during winter, as energy is used when digesting hay and this generates heat within the body that helps the animal keep warm. It is important that when feeding horses in and around a shelter or a gateway, that the hay is fed from mangers, feed bins, hay racks or hay bags as loose hay left on the ground will often get trodden into the mud, rendering it unpalatable and therefore useless to the horse. Grain and pellets will increase the energy intake that can then be used in other processes to keep the horse warm, but these products are more readily digested and absorbed so don’t create as much internal body heat as good quality hay.
Another important thing to keep an eye on is your horse’s winter water supply. Even though the buildup of slime in plastic water troughs is slower than what occurs in the warmer months, troughs still require regular cleaning, so your horse has access to fresh drinking water. It is also important to check that the surface of the water has not iced over on frosty cold mornings, restricting access to the water below, or pipes haven’t cracked in the frost, stopping the water supply all together.
The best way to help your horse get through the winter is to properly prepare your horse for the cold season, so you can minimise the increased demand in feed and increase the comfort and quality of living.
It is important to check that the surface of your horse’s water has not iced over on frosty cold mornings.
DENTAL HEALTH IS ESSENTIAL
Whilst good dental health is essential at any time of the year, ensuring your horse’s teeth are in good condition coming into winter is fundamental to maximising the benefits of feeding hay. Poor dental health leads to a lack of efficiency in getting the most nutritional value from the feed. In more extreme cases, hay or grain spills from the mouth (quidding) onto the muddy ground, rendering it close to useless. Most of the grain that is swallowed in these cases, is not ground sufficiently by the teeth, to allow digestion or absorption to occur further along the digestive track. The presence of full grains detected in the horse’s manure is a good indicator that the teeth are in poor condition. Furthermore, when the teeth are sharp or there are dental issues restricting the horse from chewing the hay or hard feed fully, the risk of “choke” increases, especially when horses are cold and hungry and ready to dive into their ration to help feel warm.
SHELTER IS A MUST
Providing some form of shelter is always a must, and in winter, appropriate shelter such as sheds and stables can provide warmth to decrease the reliance on feed to keep warm. Care should be taken to ensure there are enough shelters for all horses in the same paddock as it is important that the dominant horses in the paddock don’t stop the weaker horses from having some shelter when the climate is bad.
When trees are used as the main source of shelter or protection from the weather, the paddocks should be checked for fallen branches regularly and these hazards removed where practical to reduce the risk of injury. It is particularly important in winter that the horse’s limbs are checked frequently, as the long hairy coats can make puncture wounds and small lacerations more difficult to see, becoming apparent only after the horse is lame from a secondary infection days after the original injury.
RUGGING: DON’T SET AND FORGET
Wearing a rug is a simple and very effective way of conserving body heat, but it is not just a case of putting a rug on and leaving it on for 3-4 months before removing it when the temperatures warm up. Rugs should be removed at regular intervals, ideally weekly, to ensure there is nothing untoward going on under them. I am guilty of doing this in my very early days as a horse enthusiast, when I bought a new rug and placed it on a broodmare for the winter, thinking I was being responsible, only to find out a few months later when I removed the rug, that this rug had been of inferior quality and the horse was completely bald underneath, not a scrap of hair. Whether this was from excessive friction between the skin and the rug or an increased sensitivity in the skin, I will never know but fortunately, she grew a beautiful coat when the rug was changed, and an appropriate rug was used. It was a good lesson for me to learn.
THE SEASON FOR SKIN CONDITIONS
There are many other issues that can occur when rugs are left unchecked that don’t have the same positive outcome if allowed to fester unobserved for several months. Rugs can rub on certain pressure points, causing skin wounds varying from those requiring some topical medication to those that are nonhealing and require months of intense therapy to resolve. The two most at-risk areas are the top of the withers and the point of the hips. These pressure sores can develop into more serious injuries when secondary bacterial infections occur due to bacteria invading the body through the damaged skin, causing cellulitis and, in some cases, systemic illness requiring prompt veterinary intervention. Leg straps can also cause problems if not fitted correctly, with deep sores developing if left too tight or allowed to slip up between the thighs. Making these leg strap problems worse are the serous discharges (serum oozing from the wound) and debris that can build up on the rug or the straps where the skin has been damaged, causing irritation and insult to the skin, which then causes further oozing and irritation, leading to perpetual cycle of inflammation.
Wither boils can become a persistent problem, especially in horses that wear multiple heavy rugs that sit right on the wither. These boils are typically very painful, with the horse becoming quite aggressive when we try to examine them, clean and treat them appropriately. Bad wither boils will sometimes necessitate the removal of all rugs until the boil has fully resolved, meaning the horse will likely need stabling in the interim to provide a warmer environment. There are rugs designed to wear if boils are a problem. They have a large square section removed around the wither so that the rug can be used to keep the body of the horse warm, but the wither remains naked. Sometimes, large pieces of firm foam rubber, cut like a doughnut can be used, with the doughnut hole placed so the wither can protrude through, and the rug is essentially lifted above the wither. I have not had a great deal of success using this option as the foam tends to move about and either rub the boil or make the horse uncomfortable. Others have sewn thick foam into a bib, using the same principle of cutting an area for the withers but attaching elasticised straps to minimise movement before the rug is fitted.
We need to be careful that the rugs don’t make the horse sweat too much, and that we don’t put rugs back on when their coat underneath is wet. When wet skin is covered with a rug, the risk of bacterial and fungal infections in the skin increases, especially as temperatures start to increase. Fungal infections such as ringworm thrive in wet moist conditions, and as it is not a painful condition, it can continue to spread and contaminate if left unchecked.
Dermatophilosis, or “rain scald” as it is commonly referred to, can also thrive if rugs are not removed and the horse checked regularly. As with ringworm, when the skin is wet and kept warm this bacterial infection is in an ideal environment to thrive, but unlike the fungal ringworm infection, dermatophilosis infections are painful and can cause a lot of discomfort to the horse. Rain scald can also occur in horses that are not rugged in wet conditions, where the skin and hair are allowed to remain wet for extended time, causing the skin cells to be compromised and susceptible to infection from the bacteria. This tends to occur more in horses that are in poorer condition or housed in less-than-ideal environmental conditions, as the horse’s “normal” healthy immune responses are overwhelmed or not functioning as well as a typical well fed, well housed horse.
Pastern dermatitis (mud fever, greasy heel) is a common winter ailment.
“What starts with small
skin irritations can progress
to large areas…”
Another condition that occurs with increasing frequency during winter is pastern dermatitis, commonly referred to as “mud fever” or “greasy heel”. Standing or walking about in water and/or mud for prolonged periods increases the risk of bacteria and fungi entering the skin because the skin is compromised when wet. Typically, on our horse’s skin is a population of bacteria and fungi that live in harmony with one another, in a similar way to how bacteria coexist in the intestines. Everything progresses well if a healthy balance in the skin bacterial flora exists, but once this balance is upset, other bacteria and fungi can gain a foothold in the environment and cause disease. What starts with small skin irritations can progress to large areas involving the lower limbs, especially the back of the pasterns causing swelling, discharging skin wounds and lameness. Pastern dermatitis is often very difficult to resolve once established, even if the horse is removed from the wet environment, as the imbalance of bacteria and fungi must be treated with medications without destroying all the bacteria that would normally reside on the skin.
HIGH INCIDENCE OF HOOF ABSCESS
It is important that horses’ feet are well trimmed and assessed before winter, as the incidence of foot abscesses dramatically increases during this season. This is because the wet and muddy conditions underfoot cause the feet to absorb water and allow bacteria to gain access into the foot through the white line or any defect or crack in the hoof wall — much like the pastern dermatitis scenario. The bacteria then multiply within the foot and form an abscess.
If possible, minimise the time your horse spends standing in mud.
Foot abscesses are immensely painful and often cause a non-weight bearing lameness that doesn’t resolve until the abscess is treated appropriately or the infection is left to track up the foot wall and burst out at the coronary band. While horses with the best kept feet can still succumb to an abscess, the highest risk horses are those with large hoof cracks that readily allow the bacteria to gain access. If feet are trimmed before the season and checked periodically during winter, there is less chance of the hoof walls cracking and chipping, as often occurs when the hoof walls are too long and overgrown.
It is especially important to keep the feet well maintained in horses that have had a previous bout of laminitis as the white line at the toe of previously affected feet can be wider and allow easier penetration of bacteria, leading to seedy toe occurring. This is a chronic condition where the horse is lame because the hoof wall and sole separate, allowing bacteria to survive and thrive within the foot. It requires frequent intervention by a farrier to keep the cavity from expanding and becoming actively infected.
STIFF JOINTS
Winter is a time when horses that have arthritic joints often appear stiffer and may find getting up and down harder. They may also be slower to warm up or less enthusiastic when ridden due to their joints. If you notice these changes happening, it can be a good time to discuss the different types of joint supplements available with your vet and whether your horse might require some form of pain relief medication to make life more comfortable.
Keep a close eye on your horses over winter.
CHECK YOUR HORSES
As with all animals, susceptibility to disease increases when the body is under stressful conditions and therefore regular assessments of your horse should be performed so anything untoward can be identified before it is allowed to smolder away and take a decent hold on the horse’s health before it is identified.
When the weather is cold and wind blowing hard, it is easy to dismiss the sight of your horse standing quietly in the corner as “normal”, especially when we are cuddled up by the warm fire inside. Horses spend most of their time walking about and grazing, even when the weather is wintery. In times of driving rain and gale force winds, yes, they might stand around with their back ends to the forces of the weather, but this should not persist for days, and it should set off an alarm if it’s the only horse on the property displaying this behaviour.
If a horse is behaving unusually, it should be brought up to a more controlled environment where the temperature, eating habits and demeanor can be closely monitored. Sometimes it may only require a little more attention to the horse, that bit of extra feed or those few days out of the weather for the horse to bounce back to normal. Other times, however, a serious illness is in play, and veterinary intervention is required. In such instances, time is important and the sooner an ailment is recognised and treated, typically the better the outcome.
Horses, like us, like to be comfortable in their environment, so take the time this year to prepare your horses for the cold wet weather that will soon be upon us. By taking the time now to ensure there is adequate feed, water, shelter and management for your horse, you will increase the chance that when the spring blossoms appear, your horse will be fit and ready to bloom at the same time. EQ
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