In a pinch I have put my ponys cooler under his turnout. His turnout is not super tight on him so if he gets warm, it helps wick and it dissipates thru the bit of air movement. Then when it is cold like this morning I would tighten up the straps and have it as an insulating but breathable layer. He currently is in his sheet and hood locked up in the barn but when I go feed here in a few his med weight stable blanky is going underneath the sheet n hood. Hope yours stays warm n good luck with the pipes!!! Our outdoor hvac unit is making weird noises this morning alreadyâŠffaaaacckkk!!!
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I was up at 4:30 to get everyone blanketed and cozy as possible while it was still âwarmâ (33-
). Good lord the temperatures dropped fast! I gave my old man a bigger than usual chunk of alfalfa, along with a neck cover, and later everyone will get a warm breakfast. Thank goodness I have the place as winterized as itâs ever been over the years. Now to see if we stay operational (water, deicers) for the duration. The power already cut out for a moment but came right back on. We have solar and backup batteries, and itâs tied into the essentials to include the well pump. Though Iâll be busting ice if we loose it for any duration. I filled the feed room with hay enough to last a week (usually only have a couple bales at a time) and DH stocked the porch with firewood. Iâm glad the worst of it will be only a couple of days. Good luck to everyone out there!
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My horse is 27 years old and tonight will be the first night I have ever kept him in because of weather. He has two good buddies, a three-sided shed backed up to the wind, a heated trough, and hay, but I just donât think he really wants to be outside in a -20 wind chill when heâs acclimated to 30. So now Iâve decided to worry about colic instead. On the bright side, hand walking 20 times a day this afternoon and tomorrow will keep us both warm.
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Reporting from NC here. I was just out helping my landlord put the de icers in the water tubs. 46 degrees at 6AMâŠforecasted to be 31 degrees at noon and 22 degrees by 6PM. Yikes. The major temp shift scares me more than the cold. (Cold being relative to NCâŠsorry all you midwest and northeast folks!)
We were putting the heaters out in the sun, getting rained on. This picture doesnât capture the rainbow we saw. Weird weatherâŠ
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I just let mine out. I was intending to keep him in, but he was acting like an asshole and going to hurt himself stuck in his stall. Once out, he performed his usual circus tricks and was licking snow when I left him. Heâs naked and happy as a clam, now.
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Iâm down by Pensacola! Right cold for us! I waited until midnight and got the blankets on right before the temps started dropping. It seems I did but dang cold this am!
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I think mine are ok. They are both wearing a 100 gram plus a medium and a hood! I do think Iâll be ordering some heavier hoods though!
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Thatâs very true. Myself, in FL, have an open air barn to help us survive the 8 month long summers lol. Downside is days like today as we donât have any real wind break!
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THAT is brilliant, and hilarious!
Holy crap, that is terrifying! Ice is absolutely the worst. Fingers crossed itâs not that bad AND it doesnât cause catastrophic damages 
Here in NC (Hi @Displaced_Yankee!) it was pounding rain and wind in the 5am range, when the rain should have been out of here. It was SUPPOSED to have stopped raining before the winds really picked up, but that was a miss.
I had the horses out last night because they were in for about 8 hours yesterday due to the heavy rain, and then just getting a chance to dry their feet out. I had them in the barn pasture area where there are lots of trees, and of course the barn, and put their hay out to take advantage of all that. They were content at 7 when I peeked out the window, and not at all upset when I got down there at 7:30 to feed and bring in. At 7 it was 37*, by 8:30 it was 29 and water on the steps had frozen. The roof of the chicken coop blew off so I had to replace that
I havenât decided if the horses will stay in tonight, it will depend on the wind. But, theyâll stay inside for now, dry feet out (we got 1.5" of rain before last night, another .25% early this morning, feet are soooo soggy), and then weâll see. 6* with predicted 20mph winds is gawdawful cold for us
Thankfully, Asplundh just came through this week and trimmed trees along our road and main road, including topping several of the neighborâs blasted Bradford Pears that have taken out lines and blocked the road several times (they didnât plant them, not their fault), so hopefully that will all but eliminate a power outage in our immediate area. Itâs quite concerning the amount of rain (which is on top of over 1" last week) and all the tall pines around us, so weâll see. We do have a whole-house generator, so at least 1 water tub will remain unfrozen.
Stay safe yâall!
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That wind will absolutely suck the heat out of a building though, sometimes incredibly quickly. You can quite literally watch the thermometer drop when a cold wind comes up, and we keep the horses in to save the pipes when we know the wind chill will be brutal.
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How wide is your aisle? Can you cover it somehow? Granted mine is only 10ft wide, I have a gate across it. I did ziptie a heavy duty tarp across it last night to cut some of the wind out.
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You can always double them up if you have more than one or a couple spares? Ebay is my friend!!!
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My entire barn is open air walls! 30x45 so no easy temp walls for us. The horses seem fine. They are both out standing in the sun now
++wave++ Hi friend!
Yankee Pony will most likely stay out with his shed and bundled up, if the winds stay blowing from the W-SW.
The 2 that donât have sheds will go up in stalls overnight. They just donât have a windbreak. I have already âvolun-toldâ Mr Yankee that he will be carrying hot water to the barn to mix with the cold. My rental house is only about 35â from the barn, so it isnât far. He stays up late anyway.
Otherwise I am making the beet pulp extra soupy and served warmish. That should turn their feed into a nice mash at feeding.
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More hoods are definitely on my shopping list! Thankfully we donât get weather like this too often!
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My pony went outside to poop, if he had it his way he would never dirty his stall. Then the wind picked up and he went right back in his stall to munch his hay lol. Itâs sunny but the wind is horrible. Dh just said it hurts to breathe outside n it is only 3 degrees atm.
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It was about 10 degrees here overnight. Yesterday at 11 am it was 45 degrees, then it all fell apart in the next hour. We had strong wind last night, we still have wind but not quite as much.
That sudden winter blast of arctic air when the wind is whipping and the temp drops 20 degrees in 10 minutes is what country folk here used to call a âblue northerâ. Thatâs what we are having.
In this area we can have a winter without freezing temps at all. Normally a winter âfreezeâ here is very mild, a few nights barely below freezing for 3-4 hours right before dawn, immediate thaw as the sun rises.
So the building codes and even the design of the city water and sewer, which in some cases date from the 1950âs, just donât require pipes to be deep enough in the ground even for weather with lows in the 20âs. (A normal winter day in most of the country.) Septic systems tend to plan a bit better in the country, but thatâs still the attitude.
Itâs a massive frustration for me because you canât make the pipes to your own house/building deeper and more hardy to hard freeze, because then they would be too low to drain downward to the city system, which is higher in the ground. (From city water.)
This warm-weather design is true all over this part of the country. Most years it doesnât matter, it rarely/barely freezes on a few nights. But when a strong cold blast comes every few years, suddenly it matters. It matters a lot!
Earlier in the week the forecasts for the local area - all of the forecasts - were for lows in the low 20âs but up to the 40âs during the day. I wasnât worried, the ground was âwarmâ from lows in the 50âs in the preceding weeks. A daily warm-up would overcome top-level freezing overnight.
But yesterday, as the front was approaching, the forecasts abruptly changed and made the highâs each day also in the low 20âs! They also extended that forecast from one day and two nights, to three nights & days, through Saturday.
That changed things a lot re expectations and preparation. I guess the cold is reaching further south than first anticipated.
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Morning chores sucked. 14 degreesâ we have been in the teens here near Portland since Wednesday night. The wind is brutal, gusting over 60, steady at 40. One horse trashed his stall so that was a 20 minute cleanup. The other is better but now refuses to come back in to eat. Tank heater and heated buckets worked great. Sleet is sifting through every crack and crevice in the barn and drifting into my overhang outside the stalls. Chickens are fluffed, fed and inside the barn. Now to wait for the freezing rain⊠and inevitable power outages.
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Temps are dropping here fast, we are almost in single digits. Ugh. I turned out this morning, everyone had their rodeo romp and play, even the 19 y/o hackney pony was trotting level on the field and doing athletic leaps and bucks. They are blanketed in heavyâs and neck covers on 2 of the 3.
Iâm planning on bringing them in early afternoon, itâs only dropping to 6F here but wind chill is -10. They have plenty of hay outside and water in the tank is warm.
I might keep them in tomorrow and turn out tomorrow afternoon, it will be 20F depending on how much ice.
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This is the truest thing ever. The wind just blasts away the outer layer of warm air surrounding inanimate objects. It is so much easier to keep a building warm when it is sunny and very little wind.
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