Winter - Your Top Tips for Keeping Horses

[parkside]

Just putting togething an article on the above topic - after last winter we need all the help we can get to survive keeping horses in the worst of the weather. Our newsletters are mailing to over 35,000 readers and i would love to add some advice from forum members....PLEASE post your top tips here.

 

[luckyhorseshoe]

Wine for the tired owner?!

Seriously though, good quality rugs are a must to stop comp horses dropping weight.
Access to quality hay/ haylage.

 

[floradora09]

Seriously though, good quality rugs are a must to stop comp horses dropping weight.
Access to quality hay/ haylage.

Completely agree with the above, bought a quality HW rug and it lasted winter no probs and would hope to get several more out of it. Cheaper rugs just lose waterproofness and break. A fleece as a 'base layer' works really well, but you can get away with cheaper under rugs as extra layers, or just put another turnout on underneath.

Head torches are a godsend! As is a really, really bright torch which can shine all the way across the field to find your horse, check they are all there, and make sure fencing is still ok!

 

[Firewell]

If it's really heavy rain and the horse is living out I think sticking a LW turnout rug over the top of a HW turnout rug is a good idea as the LW takes the brunt of the wet weather and under the HW the horse is toasty warm and dry. Otherwise when there's a few days of consistent rain even HW's get wet through.

Using a duvet under a stable rug is a great way to keep the horse warm without spending a fortune on rugs! Put a sheet on first to keep the duvet in place, then the duvet and then a stable rug on top . A cheap duvet from sainsburys is £12-15 much cheaper than buying an £80 rug and warmer and it doesn't matter if it gets trashed and dirty .

 

[Mbronze]

We put a football type object in the water troughs so that they can't freeze over

 

[Goldenstar]

Two new Zealand rugs so you can get them really dry in really wet spells

 

[mrussell]

We will be stockpiling sacks of salt and grit soon !

http://decorativeaggregates.com/roc...ck+Salt.html?gclid=CLP-mMyD8qoCFQR5fAodWSUyOg

 

[stencilface]

Have a sledge on hand to shift hay and water containers for when it all inevitably freezes over.