Winter is Coming

In the words of the Starks, Winter is Coming. I know this because last weekend it snowed six inches and we lost power for 24 hours. In October. Before Halloween. When the storm struck last Saturday, I was woefully unprepared to deal with it both on a personal and professional level. I looked out the window from inside my nice warm apartment which had yet to lose power and said “Oooh! Look at all the pretty snowflakes!” Fast forward six hours when the electricity went poof, it was dark, and I was stumbling around in the pitch black by myself with two dogs and no flashlight. “Winter frickin’ SUCKS. Why is it snowing in October? Whyyyy?” If you are a horse owner, rider, trainer, manager, or lesson student you need to be prepared for the winter. More specifically, your horse(s) and your barn needs to be prepared for the winter. By doing a few simple steps before the cold weather and the snow hits, you will save yourself a lot of time and trouble.


FOR YOU: Lets face it. If you’re cold and miserable, you’re not going to be doing your best work or your best riding. So go in the back of your closet and dig out those boots and hats and gloves and scarves. Put them someplace that is easily accessible. If you’re a rider, you should have two pairs of boots: your snow boots and your winter riding boots. In the past couple of years winter riding boots have made a big surge in the catalogues. Warm feet = happy feet! Winter riding boots should be warm and comfortable. I am going to be ordering the pair in the picture through Smartpak next week. Lined with fleece and water resistance, how warm and snuggly do these look? Plus they’re only $89.95. The zipper on my Mountain Horse winter boots went last year after only two winters of use. They were definitely warm but they rubbed the back of my ankles raw through two pairs of thick winter socks, so I wasn't a huge fan. If you’re going to be spending more of your time outside than in this winter, you will also need a good coat (I know Dover, Stateline, & Smartpak feature a lot of awesome looking winter coats, but they are super expensive – at least for me – so I discovered a better solution: Marshalls! Or TJ Max. They have racks and racks of awesome winter coats for unbelievable prices) and boots. I still wear my Muck Boots that my amazing fiancée bought me three years ago. They are 100% water proof and with a thick pair of socks your feet will never get cold. Another thing to remember is layers. Layer your pants (those $8 leggings from Target work great), layer your shirts, layer your socks, layer your gloves. The great thing about layers is that each one ads an extra level of insulation, and the better thing is that when you get too hot you can peel a few layers off and be just perfect.

FOR YOUR HORSE: If you blanket your horse for the winter or you want to blanket your horse, but aren’t quite sure where to start, check out my earlier blog post of blanketing HERE. Also, if you want to clip your horse for the winter you better start thinking about doing it soon. You can see what types of clips are traditionally available HERE. It’s almost like I had this planned out, isn’t it?

Besides blanketing and body clipping there are also a few other small things you can do to make sure your horse is comfortable during the winter. As the owner of a hard keeper, I know that the biggest challenge for me in the winter is my eight year old thoroughbred loosing weight. One of the easiest ways to prevent this from happening is to be proactive. If you know your horse tends to loose a few pounds over the winter, start adding to his food now. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to increase their grain, but you should start giving them more hay. Horses are trickle feeders, which means their systems are intended to eat small amounts nearly 24/7 (hence the fact that horses are grazers). But when that grass is buried under a foot of snow, your horse will need something to replace it. A good quality hay will take you a long way in preventing your horse from getting skinny, so if you don’t have your barn stocked already, call your hay provider before the first big storm hits. I believe horses should be fed hay a minimum of four times per day in the winter (breakfast, lunch, dinner, night check) and a few of the horses at my barn, including my TB, have free choice hay at all times. Another option is hay cubes, or hay stretcher, to go along with their grain (not as a replacement for grain OR hay). This is a good choice if your hay isn’t quite the quality you would like it to be. Our barn has high quality hay, but I want Darwin to have additional protein and another source of good roughage, so he gets a 3lb scoop of alfalfa hay cubes soaked in warm water with his 3lbs of oats morning and night. You should be able to find hay cubes at your local feed store. Just remember that hay cubes MUST be allowed to soak, and it makes a nice tasty treat for your horse(s) when you can soak them in hot water.

Something else you can do that will also possibly put a few bucks back in your wallet and make your horse a happier camper is talk to your farrier. If your horse has had shoes on for the entire summer because you were showing him every other weekend, but now he’s only going to be hacked lightly until May, does he really need those four shoes or is it better to pull them? If the answer is no, pull them. If the answer is yes, then ask your farrier what he can add to the shoes to give them traction in the snow. You should also get in the habit early on of picking out your horse’s feet every time they come in the barn, whether they have shoes or not, to remove any ice or snow balls that would act as ice skates on your nice smooth barn floor. I keep two strong hoof picks hanging at every entrance of the barn as a reminder. If you board your horse, kindly ask the barn staff or barn manager to do this for you and then follow up to make sure they are doing it.

FOR YOUR BARN: When you ask a barn worker or manager what the hardest thing to deal with in the winter is, you will most likely hear them say (with a great deal of bitterness in their tone) water. Water, much like air, is simply something your horse cannot live without. They need fresh, clean, non-frozen water ALL THE TIME. Last January my horse Darwin had a bad colic. The vet came out (three times) and he managed to pull out of it two days later. The vet said the number of colics he deals with nearly triples every winter. Why? Because horses get dehydrated. They don't want to drink as much water when it is cold and if the water has big ice chunks floating in it? Well, forget it. You might as well call your vet now because your horse will colic. To figure out a solution to this problem, you first have to recognize that you have two issues: stall water and field water (or if you're horse is outside 24/7, just field water). The owners of the barn I manage had the forsight (and the money) to put an electrical outlet above every single stall. Why is this beyond awesome? Because it means in about two weeks I will pull out the nifty 20 qt heated buckets I have been storing carefully all summer up in the attic, plug them in, and VIOLA! No frozen water buckets for the entire winter. Awwweeesssoooommmmeeeee. The outside tubs also have handy dandy electrical outlets and every tub has a water heater. The only thing I have to make sure of is that every night I drain all of the water pipes or they will freeze and crack and the upstairs apartment by the washer will flood and the owners will not be happy and it will take a week for the water to dry up and it will leave a big stain on the floor (not that I know this by first hand experience... this is just an educated guess). But what if your barn doesn't have handy dandy electrical outlets and you don't have water hoses above every stall? Well, then you'll just have to do what I did for the past two winters at the last barn I managed.

1) Keep your hoses neatly coiled up someplace warm. This will save you so much time and agony and frustration.

2) Insulate your water pipes.

3) Keep the water buckets free of ice, even if this means you have to dump them out and refill them several times throughout the day.

4) If you can, mix in hot water with the cold at night check to keep the buckets from freezing over right away.

Dover Saddlery has an insulated bucket holder for $84.90 which definitely DOES work and will keep the water from freezing even in the coldest temps, but it is big and bulky and has to be screwed in to the wall. However, if you can't afford to rewire the entire barn this might be a good option. If the barn you board your horse at has no way of keeping the water from freezing at night, ask your barn owner if you can put in an insulated bucket holder.

As far as outside water tubs go there really is no substitute for water heaters and if the barn you board at doesn't have them, I would seriously consider switching barns. Water heaters are safe, simple, and will keep your horse drinking throughout the winter. There are other options, but so far I haven't found any that really work. My last barn did not have water heaters; instead the owner supplied me with "solar water tubs" which worked some of the time, but not most of the time, and held barely any water so I was constantly (we're talking at least twice a day) hand carrying water out to the fields.

A really simple thing you can do to help your horse drink the correct amount of water is to add warm water to their grain whenever they get it. Ever since Darwin coliced I soaked his grain in warm water religiously and since then (knock knock knock on wood) he has not had another colic.

Some other things to help working around the barn in the winter be less of a hassle include having a reliable snow plow guy on speed dial, knowing where your snow shovels are, having lots of salt around, and having a turnout plan that does not include trekking half a mile to turn out and bring in your horses.

So that's all the helpful advice I can offer in a nutshell. What do you do in the winter to help you and your horse survive? What's the biggest struggle you have? What will you do differently this winter from last winter? Let me know in the comments!