My SpicyPRE has 2 fans on him however I am looking for other options to cool him down.
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we have an industrial 36 inch Evaporative Cooler that is often used in warehouses, this thing is also known as Swamp Cooler and few other names.
it drops the barn temp by 10 to 15 degrees F which is a welcome relief for the horses and dogs
son in law rescued it when a company thought it was beyond repair, he got the parts for a few dollars and fixed it
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Definitely not riding in this weather!
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If you have water access, set up a misting system. I don’t have power to run fans in my stalls unless I run about 200’ of extension cord (barn is temporary until we build), so I ran 1/4" irrigation tubing with adjustable mister heads on it above each stall. It keeps my one anhidrotic horse from getting too hot in the hottest hours of the day, and it was not expensive at all. I added a quick connect and a shutoff valve to the hose end for easy on/off when I need to use the hose for other things.
Or if you don’t want to fiddle with a semi-permanent installation, just buy a stand up mister you can connect to the hose.
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My horse has an evaporative cooler (Portacool) for his stall that gets turned on around 11 a.m., after he brings himself in from pasture. I was using an outdoor misting stand fan, too, but upgraded over the weekend to a more powerful agriculture fan that my husband installed overhead on one of the stall wall supports (we’ve got an MD metal barn), fitted with an aftermarket misting system with three nozzles.
The idea is to push more air (the stand fan was great at misting, but pretty much useless on fan only), without getting the stall bedding as wet as it does with the stand fan. However, the three nozzle misting system we added (from Lowe’s) to the new fan doesn’t provide as much mist as the stand fan does, so I’ve ordered the six nozzle system from the ag fan company.
I also rinse my horse with cold water (on a well, water is about 68 degrees) a few to several times daily, and occasionally spray him with a 50-50 mixture of rubbing alcohol and water (as recommended on CoTH) – but we aren’t doing the latter much anymore.
I’ve read claims that misting systems can drop the temperature 20 degrees, but don’t know if that’s accurate. I don’t like fans without misting systems blowing hot air when the temperature is really high – that’s making the stall into a convection oven, IMO.
Usually, we can wait until after noon to turn on the misting system; it gets shut off around 8 p.m. or so, as my horse goes back out on pasture for a while. The Portacool remains on a little longer, maybe an hour. He’s brought in overnight, and gets a late bedcheck, but nothing is left running overnight.
During the years I took lessons at my home, summer ones started at 6:30 a.m., to be done by 9:30 or so.
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I don’t think an evaporative cooler would work that well at my house as humid as it has been. I do have an open barn and high ceilings but I sure wish I had gotten ridge vents installed like I wanted. I bought a large drum fan at TSC a few years ago and I pull it out and blow air down the hallway and into the stalls. And the stalls have industrial fans blowing down on the horses too. And mesh stall fronts. So air flow - but hot air flow. I figure the drum fan probably exhausts the hot air about as well as ridge vents. It is about time to reshingle the roof and I will get ridge vents when they do that. And maybe some insulation on the ceiling. Haven’t won the lottery yet so I am still saving money.
It has been miserable here. Yesterday I hosed down the horses about noon and put them in the stalls and turned all the fans on. Then the power went off : 
I took some tomatoes to my Mother and sister and planned to hit Walmart on the way home. I planned on staying there until 6 when the power was scheduled to come back on. Get a text - now it is 8:30. I hung out at Walmart until I get another text that I have electricity. I felt awful for the horses but there really wasn’t much I could do. They were fine. Summer time sucks! I hate it.
The only horse that works gets done at 6:30 AM. And not for very long. I have a deal with her - if you are good you don’t have to do this very long. I need to get you done before the sun pokes its head out of the tall trees on the hill. We both like this arrangement.
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At one barn I was at some years back, we would set up drum fans at both ends of an aisle. One fan was blowing down the aisle while the other one was reversed, so it was sucking out the hot air. It worked pretty well to keep a nice air flow going down the aisle. And while people were in the barn, we would leave stall doors open with just a trailer tie across them to keep horses from going wandering. Each stall also had pretty good sized windows as well as an industrial stall fan.
A barn I was at last week had a Flexmist system set up near the gate to the covered arena so the horses could get a nice cool down after working. They said they had purchased it at Lowe’s and had another seven sets on order - one for each paddock and one to put near the farrier area.
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The major downside to misting systems is that wasps (yellowjackets, etc.) love them. I had tried having a setup in the trees overhanging the gravel paddock several years ago, but gave up after three summers because the wasp problem was so bad.
This year, red wasps moved in towards the end of last week. I’ve killed (using a mint wasp spray) a few everyday, my husband got some more over the weekend, and the nest has been treated with a more toxic product with a longer reach. I killed two wasps in the feed room at lunchtime today, and saw another fly through my horse’s stall (the safer-type spray only works on ones that are on resting on something), but it’s better than it was at the end of last week.
I’m on high alert every time I go to the barn. It’s exhausting.
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Interesting! Mine has been up for a couple weeks now and I haven’t seen a single wasp (of any color) near it. That could be due to a general lack of wasps on the property this year, though.
You’ve been lucky so far! It took a few weeks, but they’ve shown up here with a vengeance…
Good point. The folks at that one barn did tell me that the barn staff took down the one by the covered arena and drained it as part of their regular evening chores. Perhaps that is why…
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I was at the vet clinic today and it is hotashell here in Alabama. The vet has a semi-indoor exam room and had a smaller portable cooler at one end and a large Port-A-Cool (I believe) at the other end. OMG - that thing was wonderful! It was maybe 5 to 6 feet high with coils in the front and it felt like air conditioning coming off the fans of that thing. If I ever win the lottery I want one of those! It was humid so I don’t think the evaporation from misting caused the air to be cooler, it looked like it worked like air conditioning with the coils. That would be fabulous in my barn since I don’t have very many stalls and a short area that needs cooling and it didn’t seem to drip/ exude water. I know I can’t afford one though. Huge BUMMER!
Another idea for horses that work hard in the heat is a large ice machine. Several years ago a barn here had a clinic with Henk van Bergen. In July. In Alabama. Their arena is covered but those were big heavy horses working hard. They had bought a commercial ice machine (maybe used or restaurant salvage) to cool their horses after work. So when each horse came out of the ring it got stripped of tack and bandages and got buckets of cold water applied. It was amazing how fast their respiration rates came down after the cold water was poured/sponged on them. I don’t think I would want to work them that hard in the heat but none of them had problems. I wouldn’t mind climbing in a tub of ice water on a day like today.
that wasps (yellowjackets, etc.) love them
we Keep a mud puddle wet for them, I am highly allergic to a wasp sting but as long as they are going to be around anyway they need water, there must be some benefit to having those things around
so they and the crows seem to like the mud puddle
(crows and blue jays are my early warning system for West Nile)
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Here in Central Florida we live in a misting system … it’s so humid that adding more with a mister wouldn’t do any good. Our barn is very open – all aisles are open and stalls are open to the outside (grill type half stall doors) and to the aisles – and all stalls have permanent fans. Horses are turned out very early in the morning for a few hours and then have a shower when they come in, and are in and out of the sun and under the fans in the afternoons. Too much lightening for overnight turnout. We do get storms pretty much every afternoon which does cool things down a bit. Very little work for the horses-- light sets or hand walking under saddle is about it. No one enjoys the hot and humid weather but we all adapt and wait for cooler days.
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IIRC, that technique was developed in the run-up to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. They did studies on the fastest way to cool an overheated horse and settled on the “ice-water, scrape and repeat until horse has cooled down” procedure. That was before misters came on the scene and I remember that the ice water/scrape technique worked really well for the event horses coming off XC (I was a volunteer there).
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Yes this was after the Atlanta Olympics and Terry Martin, the farm owner, (an eventer) had studied all the research that had been done for the Olympics.
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Found this article, based on 2020 research on the Kentucky Equine Research site:
Sounds like how those of in areas of snow during the winter cope - just enough movement to keep everything moving.
Exactly. In Florida summer is our “winter”.
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