07/27/2023
☀️ HOT WEATHER TIPS ☀️
🪣 Make sure your horses have access to fresh water and multiple sources of water if in a herd situation. Horses on average should consume 6-10 gallons of water a day and up to 15 gallons a day during high heat indexes.
🧂Adding electrolytes or salt to your horses diet encourages them to drink and restores electrolytes loss from sweating.
😎 Provide sources of ventilated shade. Fans can be used if additional air flow is needed and will also help with flies.
🐴 Adjust your ride times to avoid the hottest temperatures and ensure to cool down horses properly after exercise.
💦 And the controversial question, to scrape or not to scrape while hosing horses…here is our opinion:
Either way is ok! Heat moves from the hotter source to the cooler source until they are the same temperature, therefore a hot horse hosed with cooler water will transfer heat away from the horse until it’s the same. The bigger the difference in these two temperatures, the faster the heat will transfer thus the quicker you can decrease a horses body temperature. In a hyperthermia situation, the faster you can lower body temperature, the better. This is best accomplished by continuous cold water over and over to decrease their temperature along with alcohol baths. Stopping to scrape the horse off in between (although non-harmful) is wasting time. Another way water can cool horses is by evaporation. The evaporation of water uses up energy and cools the surface wherever the water sits. To put it simply, a wet horse will stay cooler longer than a dry horse. But evaporation is a slower cooling process than conductive transfer (hosing the horse off). But—Either way, you are doing no harm to the horse.
