How to Keep Your Horse Warm During Cold Weather
By: Mila Bon, Jan. 2014
It is not so much what you put ON it as well as what you put IN it!
Horses can deal better with cold than with heat. The large intestines of the horse is where fermentation takes place of otherwise indigestible plant fibers. Fermentation produces heat and that is why a horse will not have any problem staying warm, provided your horse is HEALTHY, has a healthy WINTER COAT, has access to a SHELTER from precipitation and wind, access to free choice of HAY and most important: plenty of fresh, clean WATER no colder than approx. 7ºC (45 F). Yes, horses will drink icy cold water, but the problem is that they won’t drink enough of it and winter colic is predominantly caused by insufficient intake of water! (Rule of thumb is 5 liters of water for every 100 kg of body weight (1.32 gallons US, per 220 lb.) at maintenance, so more than that when they have to eat more hay to stay warm. Horses will eat snow if they have to, but a 500kg / 1100lb horse would have to eat 500 liters / 132 gallons US of fresh snow in order to melt it down to the 25 liters / 6.6 gallons US of water it requires at maintenance!
Grain based feeds will NOT keep your horse warm as they are mainly digested in the small intestines, so feeding a grain based warm mash at night is tasty for the horse, but does nothing to help it to stay warm. When it is really cold (below -12 º C / ± 10 F) your horse will start to eat more hay, depending on the temperature, up to 50% more hay than usual to keep that internal oven burning. (Under normal circumstances a horse at maintenance eats up to 2% of its body weight in dry matter and the maximum that the digestive system is able to handle is about 3%). You can imagine that digestion of all this extra hay would be difficult if the water intake of the horse would stay the same, so yes, providing palatable water during cold temperatures is just as important as feeding extra hay.
If you’re worried about the sugar content of your hay or if your hay is too mature and you don’t want to feed any more of it than you already do, then beet pulp is a good alternative (especially beet pulp without the added molasses) as it is almost as high in fiber as forage and will help to keep your horse warm. Digestible energy of beet pulp is a lot higher than hay though, so keep that in mind if your horse is already overweight.
Older horses, even though healthy, may have difficulty maintaining internal temperature. Just something that comes with age.
Horses can deal better with cold than with heat. The large intestines of the horse is where fermentation takes place of otherwise indigestible plant fibers. Fermentation produces heat and that is why a horse will not have any problem staying warm, provided your horse is HEALTHY, has a healthy WINTER COAT, has access to a SHELTER from precipitation and wind, access to free choice of HAY and most important: plenty of fresh, clean WATER no colder than approx. 7ºC (45 F). Yes, horses will drink icy cold water, but the problem is that they won’t drink enough of it and winter colic is predominantly caused by insufficient intake of water! (Rule of thumb is 5 liters of water for every 100 kg of body weight (1.32 gallons US, per 220 lb.) at maintenance, so more than that when they have to eat more hay to stay warm. Horses will eat snow if they have to, but a 500kg / 1100lb horse would have to eat 500 liters / 132 gallons US of fresh snow in order to melt it down to the 25 liters / 6.6 gallons US of water it requires at maintenance!
Grain based feeds will NOT keep your horse warm as they are mainly digested in the small intestines, so feeding a grain based warm mash at night is tasty for the horse, but does nothing to help it to stay warm. When it is really cold (below -12 º C / ± 10 F) your horse will start to eat more hay, depending on the temperature, up to 50% more hay than usual to keep that internal oven burning. (Under normal circumstances a horse at maintenance eats up to 2% of its body weight in dry matter and the maximum that the digestive system is able to handle is about 3%). You can imagine that digestion of all this extra hay would be difficult if the water intake of the horse would stay the same, so yes, providing palatable water during cold temperatures is just as important as feeding extra hay.
If you’re worried about the sugar content of your hay or if your hay is too mature and you don’t want to feed any more of it than you already do, then beet pulp is a good alternative (especially beet pulp without the added molasses) as it is almost as high in fiber as forage and will help to keep your horse warm. Digestible energy of beet pulp is a lot higher than hay though, so keep that in mind if your horse is already overweight.
Older horses, even though healthy, may have difficulty maintaining internal temperature. Just something that comes with age.