Extreme heat and the sweet itch horse

[4horses]

How are you managing your sweet itch horses with the extreme heat?

Fly sheet and turnout from 10pm to 7am? Stall during the day.

Or turnout for 1 hour in the morning and then back in stall? And 2 more hours in the afternoon, then in at night?

I tried her fly sheet on yesterday and she was soaked with sweat and breathing hard/overheating so had to be cold hosed by noon… I’m not sure there’s a good answer here. It’s just too hot.

[OzarksRider]

I don’t have any magic answers. The most dangerous problem is the heat; the flies and gnats are miserable but not life threatening. It’s too hot for fly sheets, so my horses only wear fly leggings and fly masks. I take the leggings off in the afternoon when it’s hottest, and if the horses are huffing and puffing I also take off the masks. I tried some spot-on fly repellent but I can’t tell that it does any good.

My horses are stalled at night. They go out in the morning until about noon, and then I put them in a totally shady corral with water and a little hay for about 4 hours in the afternoon, then they go out again for 3-4 hours before I put them in their stalls at sundown. I hose them down when they go in the corral at mid day, again when I turn them out later in the afternoon, and again about an hour before I put them up for the night.

I just bought an Equi Cooldown body wrap to add to my toolbox, but I’ve had it less than a week so can’t say yet how effective it will be. I’ve put it on both horses just to try it out, and they both seem to like it. This evening I put it on my horse that was breathing hard when he came in, and after about 20-30 minutes he was breathing normally and seemed comfortable. One nice thing about the body wrap is that it keeps the flies off while the horse is wearing it. The body wrap is not meant to be a turnout blanket; you have to keep an eye on the horse while he’s wearing it and make sure to keep it moist.