12/03/2025
❄ Winter is here! With harsh weather to come, check out our team's considerations for elderly horses:
🦷 Dental health: Schedule yearly or twice-yearly oral exams and watch for slowed eating, quidding, or weight loss.
🌱Forage adjustments: Many seniors can’t chew or digest long-stem hay well due to worn or missing teeth. Consider complete senior feeds, hay pellets, or hay cubes fed soaked to a soft mash. Soaking reduces choke risk, makes meals easier to chew, and helps support hydration, especially in cold weather.
🐴 Body Condition Scoring: Feel hips, and topline monthly. There should be flesh covering the hip bones and the topline but not necessarily the ribs. Winter coats hide changes.
🧣 Blanketing: Seniors often need a range of blankets with varied amounts of fill to conserve heat and energy loss especially if they will get wet. Commit to changing blankets as weather swings.
💧 Hydration: Warm water improves water intake, soaked meals, and free choice salt support gut motility and help prevent impaction colic.
👣Safe footing: Manage mud and ice within reason and understand the potential for a down-horse scenario may increase with age.
👬 Herd dynamics: Make sure seniors aren’t pushed off hay or shelter.
🦵 Arthritis care: Now's the time to bring up NSAIDs, injectable support such as Adequan or Polyglycan, and maximizing comfortable turnout with your vet.
🩺 Vet involvement: Talk through a plan with your veterinarian to set your senior horse up for success as the temperatures drop
Should your geriatric equine need a check-in, be sure to get in touch with us so we can talk through management changes and veterinary care options to help your elderly horse or donkey thrive this winter 💙🐴
