Benefits of Rugging Horses living out

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winchester

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What are the benefits of rugging horses living out 24/7 over winter?

Does it help keep condition keeping the rain off their back/warmth? Or is just leaving natural just as good?
 
depends on what you do with them (ie ride or tuen away), what the turn out is like, what the shelter is like, if you feed ad lib hay, if they are good do'ers or not, what other feed you are suplimenting with - so many factors tbh!

mine - lives out 24/7 365, rugged to eye balls and hunter clipped, fed ad lib hay, kept ticking oer with a couple of weeks off. clipped to help when in work and also to help summer coat come through for spirng HT's/events.
 
I usually turn away for winter, rug and feed ad lib hay in the horrible months but they all come out of Winter looking far too well.

So i either have to stop feeding hay or not rug....
 
depends how hot your horse is and weather its a good doer or not.

all mine live out 24/7 365 have fairly good shelter and ad lib hay+ hard feed.
the 2 old cobs are rugged to the eyeballs to prevent losing condition but youngster tb x arab is always boiling hot you could fry an egg on him! so he only has medium weight turnout when its very cold and tbh thats more to make me feel better than than his benefit!

i think most healthy horses can adapt to live out unrugged in all weather if they have to and its far easier for them to warm up running round and eating than it is to cool down if they are over rugged
 
I think all horses can survive a winter unrugged so long as they have enough food to keep their energy levels up. A friend of mine has a retired horse that is unrugged with 24/7 turnout in winter. He's fine most of the time but occasionally gets cold in prolonged rain etc in which case he gets a rug thrown on for a bit. He always looks in good condition and it means he gets to lose a bit of weight over the winter months.
 
It depends quite a lot on the breed of horse. I'm sure most would not die from it or be very seriously ill but I would expect a stocky hairy native to cope better than a finely built fine coated thoroughbred.
 
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