June in Texas has been horrible.
My PPID horse completely stopped sweating last week.
He’s never done that before.
I’ve started my horse on One A/C and beer but so far no sweat.
Anyone know when this excessive heat wave will end?
We have had the “heat dome” here. 40C with a lot of local forest fires. I don’t have a PPID horse. But my horses were OK out on pasture, with shade, and access to the creek. They have a bathing hole, which everyone gets into, and splashes around to cool off. You can’t help them survive more than providing these things. This is what we are doing to this planet, with our lifestyle and our exploding human population. The planet, as we know it, is dying. Burning up in front of our own eyes. And we will all pay the price for this. Good luck.
I feel for your poor horse. Does he at least have shade? Fans in a shelter?
As for when the heat wave will end . . . from my time in Texas (Houston), I remember it being hellishly hot until November. And that was before global warming was as severe as it is now. @NancyM is right–the world we knew is disappearing right in front of our eyes, and it’s our own fault.
OP, I don’t have an answer.
Hope your horses are able to make it through w/o further issues.
& While not as severe as your part of the country, our June temps are running 10-20° above normal.
Add in drought conditions & posters above have it right.
{knockwood} my older horses -23 & 21 - & the 9yo mini are doing fine, no excessive sweating or other signs of discomfort.
Call me Selfish, but I’m relieved I had no children, whose children will inherit a world in worse shape.
Too many Global Warming Doubters to make me think otherwise
I feel for you – my 25 year old (not PPID) now seems to be sweating only in his armpits and his groin after the last few days’ intense heat with high humidity that we’ve experienced. He’s been on One AC for months, but I just ordered Platinum Performance Refresh. About to break out the Guinness Stout. Since he’s never before had reduced sweating, I’m hoping that he can recover. So far, he doesn’t seem too stressed – he’s eating well, manure looks normal, he talks (born talker) when I check on him, etc.
He’s out on pasture every morning, but puts himself up after a couple of hours. He’s got both plain water and electrolyte water (I started adding a handful of Ultium to the latter and he’s finally drinking it). We have an airy barn, and set up a Portacool at the front, blowing into his stall. Next to that, we have a misting fan that is turned on as the day heats up. It’s angled to blow across his torso as he eats from his hay bag. I noticed today that he’s begun lining his body up to get the maximum benefit. I keep both of those on until 9 p.m. or so – don’t like to leave electrical appliances plugged in overnight.
Other than that, he’s wiped down with a 50/50 rubbing alcohol and water mixture several times a day, and taken out to be hosed with our cool well water (it runs about 68 degrees this time of year) every couple of hours, sometimes more often. We set up a pen for him in our air-conditioned garage – he’s walked inside it twice, and we’ve been opening/closing the overhead door when he’s standing nearby outside, to accustom him to the noise. If this weather keeps up or worsens, putting him in the garage is the only other thing we can do.
Here’s an AAEP article on anhidrosis, not very encouraging :
Best wishes with your horse.
We are not in a heat wave; it’s actually been a cool start to summer here. But… my one horse also stopped sweating. This is anhidrosis horse number 3 for me and I’m so over it. I want to know why this keeps happening. Different farms, different states, different breeds, different ages when it started, owned for different lengths of time by me. I’m very frustrated with this.
I started mine on One AC and electrolytes (she was on plain salt). But I’m 0 for 2 with One AC doing anything so I don’t have high hopes. Electrolytes seemed to help more for my previous 2.
I live in Houston. This is not a normal June, it is more like August temps. Temps have been in the upper 90s to about 104 with humidity. I think average highs this time of year is about 93. I tried to post a picture of the historical versus current temps. Hopefully it comes through.Screenshot_20230624_163559_Chrome|230x500 .
Interesting…it was even hotter 124 years ago.
I feel for you, OP. I have a horse that will stop sweating when the heat/humidity reaches a certain point. It’s so frustrating. He also has some respiratory issues that are exacerbated by humidity. I have to be very careful with him when the temps start rising. I’m in eastern NC, and so far it hasn’t been bad here, but it’s starting. Looking at the forecast, we’re in for highs in the 90s and lows in the 70s starting next week. That’s not unusual for July here, but it’s miserable because we have astronomically high humidity. It’s awful. We’ll have triple-digit days by mid-July most likely and that’ll last through September (not every day, but the potential). It can still be brutal in October, but usually the nights start cooling off by then, and that allows the horses some reprieve and the ability to reset their inner thermostats. Because that’s the kicker for my horse. He’ll sweat as long as it cools down enough at night. But when the nighttime lows start staying in the upper-70s or even the 80s with the heat index hovering around 90, it just shuts his sweating down.
He’s out 24/7, but also has access to shade and a stall with a fan. This is his first summer at our new barn, and hopefully he’ll use his stall and fan responsibly (LOL). This is pretty much what my set-up was when I had my own farm (where he was raised). Then he moved to a farm with 24/7 turnout and shelter, but no fan and the shelters were hot AND far away from the water trough, so he chose to stand in the sun and swelter. It was awful. Moved to a barn that brought him in during the day in the summer under a nice fan, open, airy barn, and he did well there, but I hate for him to be closed up in a stall.
I hope the heat wave breaks for you soon. It’s no fun. I’m a teacher and have summers off. I wish my horse and I could go to a cool climate for two months. I’d leave him until October even when I had to come back to work. But…I’m a teacher, so…I am lucky I can afford a horse at all. We just have to “sweat it out” (or not) the best we can. Shade, fan, water, hosing off. Literally, rinse-repeat.
most of our horses came from North Dakota so during summer heat here in Texas I remind them of the minus 30 winters in North Dakota
If the humidity is low we will add misters to the fans and we also have one of those warehouse sized watercooler fans which my son in law found scrapped then rebuilt to new
I have had better luck with Let M Sweat than One AC. I know it sounds wacky but I also tried the Equiwinner patches and while they did not help in my horse’s case they quickly refunded all my money so I would not hesitate to give it a shot with a different horse if the need arose. My vet also had us try a dose of dormosedan as sweating is often a side effect and he said if you can make them sweat once it can reset things. In my case it ended up being another thing that didn’t work but cheap enough to give it a try. Hope you land on the magic formula
Same here. I figured why not give it a go, since they offer money back. When it didn’t work for that particular horse, they offered to extend the trial period, but quickly refunded my money when I declined. This was several years ago.
Thank you! I had never even heard of Let M Sweat!
It is hot indeed. And unfortunately the forecasters now say it will continue into July…
My newest horse has developed anhidrosis during all this. I am trying Sweatwerks from Horsetech, it should be here today.
Here in Florida, we swelter year round. June was more tolerable than normal. We went camping in February and it was sweltering. Today I wasn’t sure we were going to survive the ride back to the trailer. My dog has terrible anxiety just going outside because she overheats in about 5 minutes or less.
I thought today I’m starting to be the same way. I wanted to be Back at the trailer. Pushed my mare a bit to get us back faster, than had to reroute because of the big tree down blocking the trail. I suppose I could have gone around the tree but it was dense brush so we back tracked and crossed to the bike trail.
My mare tolerates the heat far better than I do. Thankfully. Because I was getting anxious and then I start worrying about her, but she seemed just fine. If she wasn’t such an air fern, I wouldn’t have gone out. She needs the exercise. Might just need to limit things.
Wait for rain. The best time to ride is before or after a rainstorm. It’s the only relief we get.
So far we have avoided any heat domes, but I fear what it will be like when we do eventually get them.
I wonder how our animals are going to do moving forward? How hot is too hot to sustain life? At some point people are going to start losing livestock.
I saw one of these patches on a horse at the show I recently attended. I didn’t know what it was, so I asked the rider. Seems a little “woo” to me, but maybe it’s worth a shot??
They’re definitely a bit too, but helped my mare last summer.
I did another round about a month ago, but it hasn’t been warm enough to see if they’ll work this year.
I think it will end here in October or November. Thankfully it is not as bad as Texas but it is still pretty awful. Up to this week we had been having cooler than normal weather but that dome is shifting east from Texas and it finally got here. So I am thankful the majority of June was not so bad and maybe after the next two months the days will be getting shorter and the nights a little cooler. I just have to survive for two months! This means the non-sweating Cushings pony will need to be in his stall with fan before 10 AM in the morning and I will probably have to hose him down to get his core temperature down before he goes up. I HATE summer!