Hi guys - I moved to South West, Texas in April and brought my warmblood colt along. Now that we are in hurricane season, I’m curious about a few things. What’s your go to protocol for your horses? Leave them out? Bring them in? Also curious… The news has shown images and videos of horses over the years in tragic situations after hurricanes with bad flooding. I remember last year seeing a video of horses in an indoor swimming in multiple feet of water. What happens with these horses? I mean, how do they get them to dry land? Once they are on dry land, then what? Being in nasty water like that has to have some effect on their skin etc. Anyone gone through this before?
I have never had to manage horses in a hurricane, however I know that your first concern should be where your property is located. Is your property located in a flood plain? This information isn’t hard to find. If it is likely to flood, you should have the appropriate insurance.
Is your home and barn located on the highest ground that your property affords?
If there was due diligence exercised by you or your Agent when you bought the property you should have an idea of which areas may flood during heavy consistent rainfall.
If not, there are many resources available for you to find the “lay of the land” and which, if any, part of your land is likely to flood… There are people here from Texas that may be able to steer you in the right direction as far as the resources in your area . I think there are federal resources as well but I am not up to finding them for you right now.
Your horses should not be caught in flood waters. It is necessary to do your disaster planning ahead of time, especially for flood or fire. If you are in a flood prone area an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Have an evacuation plan if you don’t have high ground.
Google shows this;
https://www.twdb.texas.gov/flood/index.asp
Once you and yours are safe and sound, here is a lovely song if you like the blues;https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KC5H9P4F5Uk&list=RDKC5H9P4F5Uk&start_radio=1&t=8
South Florida is home for me and my horses. My barn is CBS block construction with hip roof, reinfroced trusses on a good pad. I have caps to put on roof vents if bad storm expected and shutters on windows and doors. Last scare was Hurricane Irma and it was expected to be Cat 5 here. Sent my fancy humter to Maryland and took in neighbors’ horses and kept my other one here. No issues! Everything was solid, horses happy. I won’t ship the fanccy one out again! Always prep for the worxt, hope for the best!
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I am here in North East Florida and we deal with hurricanes on a yearly basis. Honestly, it depends on the storm. For some we just leave them in their stalls and others we evacuate for. Normally we would head to Ocala depending on the track of the storm or north towards a friends farm in KY. I only have one horse but no trailer so I always make sure come hurricane season I know how I will get him out with a shipper if it comes to that. In the past our barn manager has hired Brookledge to transport all of our horses together wherever we need to go.
I agree with the above statements on knowing your property and how it handles alot of rain and if you normally have standing water, wet fields. Also have a plan for during the storm and after when it comes to things like water and who is going to be able to be at the farm to take care of the horses immediately after the storm. We have a pump for our well and if the power is out we have issues getting water.
Central Florida here! I’m lucky that my area is the one people will frequently evacuate to in order to avoid storm surge and other nasty elements of hurricanes. But we do have a high tornado risk during storms along with other inland risks. I have 3 horses at home in a frame shed row style barn which was built to current hurricane house codes. I evaluate each storm and go from there in order to figure out what is best for my little herd.
The main thing I do for each storm is to mark the horses. I have livestock markers that I’ll write my number on their sides with, large enough that it can be seen from a distance. I also braid dog tags with emergency contact information on them into everyone’s manes and tails. These braids are wrapped with either neon colored electrical tape or duct tape to help show someone that an identifier is at that spot. I use goo gone after the storm to break up the tape and remove it without cutting off hair, though I’m not opposed to doing so. The purpose of the markers is so that someone can call me if the horses get out and let me know where they’re at if they can’t get close to them. The dog tags would help if the marker gets washed out and they let someone get close enough to grab them. All 3 are micro-chipped and I update/verify that microchip information every 6 months.
In terms of in vs out I take each storm one at a time. For Irma, which crossed directly over the barn and my house, they were boarded and were outside with no issues. I did have breakaway halters on for this on which I duct taped a zip lock baggie with my contact info inside. For Dorian I had them inside with plenty of hay, water, and some treat dispensing toys to keep them occupied as they’re not used to being inside for long periods of time. For both storms they also had on well fitting fly masks to help keep debris out of their eyes. We lucked out with Dorian in that he pretty much was an irritating rain storm that lasted for a few days so they did get supervised turnout and hand walks when we had clear patches.
In terms of feeding I do keep them on their same schedule with an additional meal of an electrolyte mash to help get more liquids into their systems. Neighbors do follow the “don’t feed during a hurricane” method with success but I just can’t mentally do that so we resort to an additional mash to keep things moving. This mash is something that they frequently get on extremely hot days and after a hard workout so it’s not something they’re not accustomed to. I would not personally add a strange meal during a hurricane. I do bring a weeks worth of feed up to the house and store it in my laundry room. I also stock up on feed and hay well before the storm hits and fill everything I can with water. I have rain barrels and these are all filled and placed strategically around the property to help water the horses if necessary. After Irma, the boarding facility was without power for 2 weeks and we had to get creative with getting water to the horses.
Finally, my vet box and all physical vet records are brought up from the tack room into the house. At the beginning of each hurricane season I verify everything is up to date and fully stocked. I have it at the house because it’s quicker for someone to grab and run it down to me from there if I discover an issue. My tack room is a bit of a distance from the house and barn so it makes more sense to have it with me during the storm. Don’t be afraid to ask your vet for your own supply of Banamine and other medications. It is common down here for vets to let owners purchase that in order to treat until they can get out to the farm as occasionally the roads can be shut for a few days. When I moved them to my property I spoke with my vet and she helped me set up a vet box of items that she wants all owners to have on hand during a hurricane.
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I’m in Ocala, usually people in the coastal cities evacuate with their horses to here.
Irma was our first hurricane. We have a stick-built barn that’s been through all the hurricanes since the 1970s and fared well. Concrete block is the safest, but I feel very safe with our barn. Our property is high and drain, and sand, so if we do get standing water it drains away quickly. I was told, while figuring out what to do for Irma, that’s it is really a “damned if you do damned if you don’t” as far as keeping them in or out, so do what makes YOU feel most comfortable. It there’s a lot of, or even a few big, trees in close proximity to your barn, the suggestion was to leave them out in case a tree falls on the barn. A few vets told me they see the most gruesome injuries with them out (due to flying debris) but the most deaths with then in (collapsed barns). So for Irma we tried leaving them out. The two ponies did great, they huddled together in the open on the top of the hill and grazed. My two thoroughbreds were shaking like leaves after 10 hours of rain so they came inside for the rest of it.
I know someone who is a vet tech and went with some vets from their practice to Texas after Harvey. Devastating. Yes, standing in dirty flood water is extremely hazardous. More often than I expected, the skin sloughs off days after they get to dry land. This would be my biggest fear and should be avoided at all costs.
Whatever you do, do your research and be confident in your approach. I had to ream out a friend from back home (Ohio) who kept posting crap on Facebook like “you’re insane if you aren’t evacuating!” In Florida anyway, a peninsula with one or two major roads out of the state, evacuating has its own hazards. You can evacuate a week early, sure, if you can afford to pay board somewhere in Georgia or Tennessee for that long, and not be working if you have a non-horse job, and to just in general be displaced for 2+ weeks in total. Sorry not sorry, this is just not a reasonable expectation for most people. So then you can wait until the last minute to evacuate - along with everyone else in the state. Now the highways are parking lots and it’ll take you 12+ hours to go what should’ve taken three. Not to mention, it’s 100 degrees outside and your horses are roasting in the trailer while you’re stuck going nowhere in the beating hot sun. Stick to your guns and don’t let the naysayers make you feel like you’re doing something wrong. All we can do is the best we can with the information and options we have available.
Oh yeah, we lost power for about a week after Irma. Well, we didn’t lose it, the electric company turned it off to fix other people’s power. Which was really frustrating. But we ended up buying a generator and installing a 240v switch/plug in connection for the well pump so we could plug it directly into the generator to be able to water the horses.
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This x100! I had friends from Illinois who insisted that I needed to evacuate and all lectured me about how I should evacuate during each hurricane that I’ve experienced. They didn’t understand that I had two major roadway options and that when Irma turned we had no time or safe option to get the horses to Georgia or somewhere else. I would have been stuck with a horse trailer on the highway in the middle of the storm. My best and safest option was to hunker down and trust the old timers when they said the horses would be fine.
At the end of the day you know your location and you know what evacuation routes are at your disposal, they do not. I personally could not take off work to evacuate well ahead of time and do not have the resources in place to evacuate for a nonevent if the hurricane were to chance direction or come at my evacuation location. The last thing I would want is to be stuck on a highway with my horses in my trailer behind me while the storm passes overhead, or have taken a spot in an evacuation stall for someone directly on the coast or in the storm path when my barn is built to code and should ideally withstand a storm.
Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you did wrong by your horses. It’s a whole damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation with hurricanes. Just trust your preparations, trust your gut instinct, and get connected with your neighbors to see what they’re doing. The old timers know the land and what to expect, they’re going to be one of your biggest resources in terms of figuring out what will flood and what will stay dry.
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If you can, get an automatic generator for your property. To have lights and water when your world is trashed is invaluable.
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We are in Tampa Bay. The only hurricane that I have dealt with while being a horse owner was Irma. My BO kept the horses in the barn, and we braided contact information into their manes for a worst-case scenario. The barn lost power but the well runs off a generator. There were so many trees down that we could not get to the barn for a week, but I knew my horse was safe with my BO. Irma was more of a wind storm than a rain storm, so the property was affected by downed trees but no significant flooding. It does have potential to flood but that would take a huge rain event.
I agree with MM EqCenter about the hazards of trailering in the summer heat, in stand still evacuation traffic. I won’t move my horse unless I was very concerned about the storm - like if a CAT 4 is bearing down on us. In that case I would probably just head inland about 45 minutes, to the Brooksville area
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