Getting Through Winter and Still Loving Your Horse

Ideally, your barn in the winter is a place of refuge for you and your horse while you're grooming, feeding, etc. The fact is, your horse, unless he's ill or has been clipped, doesn't need the barn 90 percent of the time. He's healthier out in the open, provided it's not blowing cold rain, and he'll prove it by spending most of his time outside, given the chance.

Plenty of hay and water will give most horses the fuel they need to keep the big powerful engine in their guts running warmly all winter. YOU are the one who's going to enjoy a weather-tight shelter, preferably with hot and cold water that's not frozen, when winter's in gear.

• A dry, raised, slip-proof grooming surface, such as gravel, a rubber mat, roughened concrete or asphalt. Then your hoofpick won't disappear into the ooze when you drop it.

 
• Cross ties or a solid tie ring, set at the height of the horse's withers, no less. Be sure these have a break-away safety snap, velcro releases, or at least a loop of baling twine between the post and the rope so a panicked horse can be released safely, unless you are of the school of thought that no horse should ever find out he CAN get loose. Then you need to look into really, really heavy duty attachments, something like a 100-year-old oak tree with deep roots, and with any luck you have a vet handy. Consider the breakaway option, please!

 
• Lights, and we're talking more than a ceiling-height 60-watt bulb here. Try fluorescent panels (with cold-weather ballasts) or spotlights set to both sides so you can see to groom, shoe or doctor an injury without an awkward overhead shadow.

 
• A windbreak of some sort -- a line of bushes, the wall of a shed, anything so that you can handle your horse without a cold breeze over you both. This is especially useful if your horse gets wet or sweaty, to prevent a chill.

 
• A roof is nice, if it's raining or snowing, but it's handy, not critical. If you're thinking of setting up a little aluminum car-port type arrangement, just be sure the ceiling is at LEAST 8 feet high, preferably 10, as during grooming or clipping, it's easy for a horse to get much taller than he seemed to be in the field. And if you do the lightweight cover option, don't even think of tying your horse to those little metal posts! You'll need to set a proper tie post into the ground, preferably in concrete, so your horse pulls on the post instead of towing your shed around the field in a state of terror.

 
• An outdoor electrical outlet for running clippers, heating water in a coffee urn, plugging in your vet's portable X-ray or ultrasound machines, even just running a radio.

What he really needs is a good, clear water source that's not so cold as to be unpalatable. In fact, recent research has shown a 40 percent increase in water intake when horses are offered warm water on wintery days.

 Heated water buckets, powered by insulated electric cables, are very popular in the more frosty areas, as are insulated automatic waterers both indoors and out. But even these miracles of modern horsekeeping can break down, and if you're not ready to handle it, with either a fast repair or an alternative water source, you have a critical problem.

Your horse needs 5 to 15 gallons of water a day, and especially in the winter, when the only food around is dry hay, a reduction in water can bring about colic, fast. Many vets say they can even predict when the boom of impaction colic emergencies will come, right after a change in the weather when water is either unpalatably cold, or frozen up.

 The low-tech version of water management is a handy hammer or axe, applied vigorously to the center of the water source. But if your weather gives you a frozen bucket AGAIN in a couple of hours, and your horse doesn't like drinking icy water with clumps floating in it, you're courting colic.

 You can continue twice-daily applications of brute force with the hammer, adding hot water a jug at a time to make things more attractive to your animals, or you can add insulation and/or heating devices to the bucket. The equine magazines usually have a whole series of these items advertised, and they work very well. Do be sure you remember that horses fiddle with things though, so even a temporary electrical extension cord MUST be protected by PVC pipe or a fence wherever it's near horses or in a rodent-accessible place.

 Do-it-yourselfers can also lay hands on some fiber or spray-foam insulation, a circle of plastic to form a floating "top" for the bucket, and a larger bucket, wooden box, or a plastic barrel cut in two to serve as the outer container for your cozy bucket. If you're particularly enterprising, you can even add plumber's heating tape to the inner bucket before adding its jacket of insulation, and run a heavy insulated electric cord out of your horse's reach back to the outlet, if one is handy. A caveat here, be sure that none of the components can be removed by your horse, who may find this an electrifying toy if he can take it apart. And check the type of heating tape you are buying, so that it does not melt your inner water bucket and electrocute anyone.

 For the evil day that your best efforts are defeated though, you'll want to have something else on hand: Items such as a blowtorch for thawing ice chunks out of the supply pipe, a household blow-dryer for similar tasks if it's not TOO frozen, a garage-type utility light to set over vulnerable pipe sections (safe, cheap warmth) and a source of water if things go really bad and you have either no water flow, or broken pipes.

Think about it, really -- if you have NO WATER tonight at your barn, are you set up to get some? Have you got two or three garbage cans (clean) that you can throw in the back of the truck or trailer and haul over to a water source? Once you get them filled, can you get the water from the truck or trailer into your barn again? As with a fire-escape plan, a water-replacement plan is not a bad thing, you can be sure. Having hauled a horse trailer full of trash cans of water from a nearby riverbank one summer, after a hurricane decimated power lines for a week (leaving no electricity for the well pump!), I can tell you that horses drink way too much at all the most inconvenient times. . . .

 A number of handy substances can reduce the frustration of all this, depending on the depth of your mud, the drainage, and your budget.

 First if you've got any constantly damp places, marshy bits, etc. you'll be wasting any surface treatment you apply if you don't first tackle the drainage problem. Get the water moving AWAY before you dump gravel all over the place and watch it sink. This can be as simple as digging a shallow ditch from the center of the boggy area out to the side, and filling it with gravel. Get the water that's sitting there OUT. More complex dry wells and French drains can be added if you're so inclined, but sometimes the simplest steps are the only ones you'll need to take.

If you've got a wide area that's low, such as the entire front of your run-in shed, stronger measures are called for. Consider either a more extensive drainage system, or recontouring the ground there -- bulldozer, truckloads of sand and rock, and all. If you're lucky your barn or shed has been built on a high spot, but if it hasn't you fight a losing battle with dampness, muddy feet, even thrush and abscesses until you get those horses up off the swamp level.

 But if drainage isn't your problem, just some slick areas, here are some tools to take the slide off your ride:

• Rough sand or kitty litter scattered over hard icy areas.

 
• Sawdust or shavings from the stalls spread out, but watch that a high manure content doesn't make this slippery.

 
• Commercial salt or other de-icers spread as needed. A note of caution, these can be drying to your horse's hooves, so watch the condition of the hooves and heels, applying hoof conditioner or even simple Vaseline if that's a problem.

 
• Some folks like to save their wood ashes, but these can make a rather slimy mess, and if you burn anything except plain split logs, you might have hidden nails and staples to worry about.

 
• Swipe the rubber mats out of your trailer and use them to "bridge" a trouble spot, such as a gateway, the path to the stall, etc.
• DON'T try plain boards or plywood sheets as mud-bridges, unless you add a roughening agent such as sand spread over a layer of wet paint, screwed-on lathe strips, etc. to avoid a nasty slip.

 
• Commercial arena-footing treatments can be very, very effective. Shredded rubber, added to a sand base, makes for a delightful, springy arena footing that resists icy clumps, and you can pull a little out of the ring to line key walkways, if necessary.

Copyright Nancy Ambrosiano
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Reprinted with permission of the copyright holder.

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