Winter Care
Q. I have three horses, and just recently it started getting cold here. I started bringing my horses into their stalls at night. Prior to this, I would bring them in during the hot hours of the day and let them stay outside for the rest of the day. We had a pretty mild summer, so they spent the majority of their time outdoors. About two weeks ago, I started bringing them in at night. Since then, my 12-year-old Arabian has dropped 50-75 pounds, and every morning there is evidence that he is circling his stall repeatedly at night. My 22-year-old Quarter Horse has been scraping his teeth along the walls of the stall! My 14-year-old Quarter Horse is fine in his stall. They have never been strictly pasture horses, but it appears that they have other plans! If anyone can help with any recommendations, I would appreciate it! Also, if keeping out in the pasture all winter is the best thing, I could use tips on how to prepare them for the winter months. I live in Michigan, and our winters can get pretty bad and cold!
A. Thank you for posting this question. It reminded me to publish my Winterizing Your Horse article at Shadowood. It may answer a number of your questions regarding equine preparations for the cold months ahead. Here’s the URL:
I wouldn’t be too concerned about protecting your horses from the brisk fall weather. I live in northern Minnesota (and you think you have cold winters???) with one horse in his late teens, three in their mid-twenties, and one pushing thirty. Around here, early spring and late fall are about the only times the horses truly enjoy being out at pasture. The summer months are plagued by unbearable swarms of mosquitoes, deerflies, and horseflies; and the winter months hold little outdoor appeal beyond searching for bits of dried grass beneath the snow.
My horses and I have reached an agreement. I go out to the pasture in the evenings to bring them in for a bit of grain, some decent grass hay, fresh water, and clean stalls. They decide whether or not they’re interested. If so, they meet me at the pasture gate. If not, they ignore me altogether. I make a quick count and visual check to make sure they’re all fine and well, and return to the barn only with those who wish to come in. The others stay out regardless of the weather. I only force the issue if there’s imminent danger (absolutely no pasture during the 2 1/2 weeks of deer hunting season) or if there’s reason to believe they might get into trouble (staying out during the summer when swarms of mosquitoes might chase them into the fences at dusk).
Since mid-September, I’ve rarely had more than one or two horses coming in at night until the last three or four evenings when they finally ran out of grass outside. They are now all coming in regularly for their evening meal. If you’ve still got any grass in your pasture, it’s likely your horses are perfectly content to deal with a bit of fall rain or frost in order to enjoy the bugless grazing. Let them have their fun. They’re horses. They were made for this sort of thing.
If they do decide to come in, or if you decide they need to come in for their own welfare, you can curb some of the stall-walking and wood-chewing by offering plenty of free-choice, good-quality, grass hay. Do not offer them free-choice legume hay (alfalfa, clover, lespedeza, birdsfoot trefoil, etc.), as it is too high in protein and certain other nutrients to be safely fed in this manner. If any of your horses are significantly overweight, you should restrict their hay and grain as necessary.
For your stall-walker, you might want to restrict his grain for a while until he settles into the nightly stall routine. Although he’s currently losing weight with all his stall anxiety, additional grain may serve only to provide him with even more nervous energy. Chances are, once your pasture grasses die back to nothing and your weather takes a more wintery turn, he’ll be a bit more accepting of the clean, dry stall out of the icy wind.
And to keep your barn safe from the would-be chewer, I’ll give you my homemade recipe for a pretty effective deterrent. I mix dishwashing liquid and mineral oil with LOTS of cayenne pepper (purchased cheaply in large containers from State Line Tack in Plaistow, New Hampshire) and paint it thickly on any surface showing teeth marks. If you use enough cayenne, horses may taste it once, but they won’t usually go after it a second time.
One last thought. Although I do bring water to the horses in the pasture up until the tank freezes solid, I never feed them out there. And once freezing weather consistently sets in, I have to stop watering out there as well. As I already mentioned, my horses have eaten the pasture down to nothing now and have started coming in regularly for evening meals. If the grass had lasted longer, they may have continued to spend their nights outside until I could no longer water them in the pasture. Once water is no longer available outside, the horses must come in for the night … and they generally do so of their own free will. If they did not, I would force the issue under these circumstances. Better chasing down an obstinate horse than spending a frigid night nursing an impaction colic.