Winter blankets/rugs

From: Gini Hi Jessica,

By now you know how much I love horse-sense. I sometimes feel that you know exactly what question is on the tip of my tongue because half the time when I open up the newsletter mail a question that I've been thinking about has been asked by someone else and deftly answered by you. Thank you for being my psychic horse advisor! Anyway, please straighten me out about sheets and blankets for my 14 year old QH. He's out on small turnout during the day except in poor weather, and he's stallbound by night. Although of course I used to know everything

Okay, here's the quick version of the sheets/blankets lecture.

Sheets are not useful for keeping horses warm, although terry-cloth sheets can help to dry a horse after a bath, and polarfleece sheets or coolers can help to keep a damp horse from cooling down too quickly after working. Sheets are very helpful if you are trying to keep a horse clean, say between the bath on one day and the show the next morning. ;-)

The reason sheets aren't useful for warmth is that horses grow coats for that purpose, and the way a horse's hair coat keeps in warmth is by standing up ("fluffing up" like a bird's feathers) and holding warm air next to the horse's body. If you lay a horse's coat flat, by lots of brushing or by covering it with a sheet, you take away that insulating "air space", so if you're going to reduce the horse's natural protection, you'd better use a blanket instead of a sheet. Otherwise, the horse may be colder than he would have been if you'd left him alone to fluff up his own winter coat!

Blankets present disadvantages along with the advantages. For one thing, it's difficult to get a good fit without doing some at-home customizing (many blankets need to have darts added to their too-large necks, for instance). For another, blankets can restrict a horse's free movement -- and blankets and their fasteners provide all sorts of places that a horse can catch on fences, gates, and even his own feet. Blankets can cause rubs -- and blankets can make it difficult for you to tell whether your horse has gained or lost weight, so you really do need to inspect what's under that blanket, every day.

Horses are cold-weather animals -- they suffer much more from excessive heat and humidity than they do from cold. Your horse likes temperatures that you don't -- and enjoys the comfort of a 40-degree or 50-degree day just as you enjoy the comfort of a 65-degree day. Blanketing the horse because YOU are cold isn't really fair to the horse. Let the horse tell you when HE is cold, and then blanket accordingly. As long as he is cheerful, warm to the touch, and maintaining a good weight, don't bother with the blanket.

His real warmth needs to come from the INSIDE, and he'll get that by digesting the extra hay that you give him. If you think he might get cold overnight, toss him an extra flake or two -- they'll keep him much warmer than anything else you could feed him, or anything you could put on him. As long as he is dry and well-fed, with plenty of roughage to digest around the clock, he'll stay warm even in the most disgustingly cold (in human terms!) weather.

If you find him shivering, with cold ears, then he may need some extra help from a wool- or polarfleece-lined canvas blanket. If your area is very windy or very wet in winter, and if the horse doesn't have full-time access to a shelter where he can escape the wind and wet, then he'll definitely need something extra: a waterproof, windproof lined blanket that covers as much of him as possible (deep in the body, high in the neck, and perferably with a tail flap as well). If he has a protective shed, but your weather forecast tells you that the wind is about to change direction and carry snow or icy rain INTO the shed, you'll need to blanket the horse or bring him in.

It really does come down to common sense -- just remember that the horse would be miserable in a barn heated to the 72 degrees that is comfortable in your home, and that a normal horse, given a choice between standing in his stall wearing a blanket and standing outside in the snow, will choose the snow ten times out of ten. Then he'll roll in it. Then he'll eat some. And he'll enjoy it very much indeed. Whereas the extra blanket and the cocoa that make you (and me) happy wouldn't please him at all. ;-)

Jessica

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