Really cold conditions

[KyrieNZ]

I live in New Zealand, Auckland to be precise.

We have had overnights of 5C (41F) which I appreciate is not that cold compared to other countries (or even our South Island). There has been quite substantial wind chill lowering that temperature.

We have had a really wet winter, not helped by several ‘one in 100 year’ weather events in January and February (our summer) resulting in catastrophic flooding in many regions. Our water table is saturated, and while our place drains really well, it is wet and muddy.

I’ve been putting two of mine (I have four horses, paddocked in two pairs) in at night simply to try and get them off the land. My mare has been lying down overnight as evidenced by the shavings on her rug and in her mane and tail.

I have grass, albeit minimal, but it is trying to grow as in between the wet and cold, it has been sunny.

We had a frost the last two mornings and I think my horses’ brains froze as they were stupider than stupid when putting back out

Anyways, how do those that live in actual cold conditions cope? I appreciate you have better wet weather and cold weather clothing that is usually available to us in New Zealand, but seriously, temperatures below zero, reduced sun hours, every_single_day for months on end, how do you cope?

FWIW, I don’t drink so that isn’t a coping mechanism avialable to me

[sherian]

Canadian prairie girl here - we go from -40 c to +40 c here, two years ago we had drought, last year I was flooded for 3 months, this year we keep getting thunderstorms with hail. On the upside when the winter is that cold we do get a lot of sunshine and it can be very beautiful. You do get used to it, we do have better equipment and we do set up our properties to deal with the extremes. Than you laugh cause otherwise you’d cry an awful lot.

[Foxglove]

No bad weather, just bad clothes! I have my 4 horses at home where occasionally the temperature falls to -30C.I ride daily and do my own barn chores. My personal horses are not blanket-Ed. Two are: OTTB who comes from a privileged background and a BSP who is my husbands pet. I grew up learning to dress for the cold. Socks, boots, long thermal underwear, wool sweater, fleece undercoat and heavy parka. Ski mask, scarf, and gloves with glove liners. Fur trapper hat. My horses live out 24/7 with 3 sided sheds and all the hay they can eat. Water tanks are heated. Hoses to frost free hydrant are kept inside. The weather is only truly horrible Jan. and Feb. Honestly I enjoy the challenge of winter. And a warm fire when I come inside.

[RedHorses]

Human bodies, much like horse bodies, adapt to the cold. Here 15C is cold in October. But 5C in February is a strip clothing layers off! heatwave! Yes, I’m 100% serious. You should see us in the spring when we hit 10C.

Wet/damp cold is harder to deal with. Once the temperature gets solidly down below zero things are much drier and it’s easier to stay warm in good clothing.

To be honest, I wonder how people manage to live in places without proper seasons. I would miss sub zero temperatures, snow, leafless trees… I started my horse owning life in October and nothing was going to keep me from riding (except when my eyelashes froze to my face in the ten minute walk to the bus stop) so I learned what to wear. To this day, riding in the snow is one of my favourite things to do with my horse. And they stay so clean in the snow!

[Weezer]

Another Canadian here. As others have said, the key is dry layers. I also think it’s better to give the horses the option to move around to keep warm so my 3 guys are out 24/7 with full access to a small barn that can gets surprisingly warm with south-facing openings. They always have hay in the barn and out in the field so they have options. When my horses were younger, they didn’t need a whole lot of blanketing because they grew thick coats. But now they are old with Cushings, insulin resistant, etc. My vet told me the key to getting old horses through the winter is to try to keep their body temperatures consistent, regardless of what the weather is doing. Last winter the temperatures fluctuated like crazy and I was sometimes changing blanket layers three times per day!!

I have two 3 acre paddocks so in the spring I keep one closed and accept that the other will get torn up. Overall there’s less mud if I let them spread out rather than keep them in a sacrifice pen. Once things dry up I let them out onto the other paddock, harrow the muddy one and let it settle. It’s only a month or so before it’s ready to be grazed.

Ice is the big stress point for me. When we get ice storms I muck the stalls out into the pasture for traction. And there’s usually a week or two where the horses are wearing hoof boots with cleats for traction. My guys are all slow and sensible and they seem to prefer that to being closed up in the barn. In the 12 years that I’ve been here, I could count on my hands the number of time horses have been stalled for more than a couple of hours. Even the wild 5 year old that used to board here learned to be sensible on the ice - although I would not have tried it with multiple wild ones.

[KyrieNZ]

Thanks all, it is really interesting to hear what others experience, and how you cope.

The ‘inside’ for mine, is a three sided, roofed, shed. They have approx 6x4m between the two of them, with water and lots of hay. They stand at the gate in the late afternoon so I can only assume they’re happy enough to come in. It is purely to get them off the land (for the land’s sake, and their hooves’ sake) as it is so damn wet.

FWIW, it doesn’t snow where I live. I have only experienced having horses in the snow when I was in Mass. for three months, and then it only snowed the last month I was there.

[atr]

We had an even more brutal winter than normal last year. 6 months with snow on the ground, very cold, and grey skies for months on end, which was the worst part–normally, we have blue skies along with our sparkling snow.

We blanket appropriately, dress appropriately, feed vast amounts of hay, and bed stalls well. We were all pretty over it by April. Horses and humans.

Its easy to be robust about cleaning stalls in the cold and riding in the snow if you have a lovely fall though mid-November and spring starts at the beginning of March, but when it’s half the year, the novelty wears off pretty darned quickly.

Our biggest physical problem, other than keeping the lid on exuberant behavior, was a terrible round of scratches which went through every horse in the barn and some are still fighting with. That was no fun at all in bone-chilling weather.

[MadTrotter]

New Yorker here. What you’re describing is actually my least favorite kind of weather. As everyone says, horses do just fine into the frigid cold, but that damp wetness that hovers around freezing is really the most dangerous.

Feed em up with hay, bring them in long enough to dry off.

Give me a hard freeze over a cold rain any day! The manure turns into easy to fling pucks, the wheelbarrow doesn’t sink into the mire, and the horses’ coats loft up into a lovely fluff.

[NancyM]

Wet cold, high humidity and mud are the worst conditions for horses. Dry cold, even very cold, is manageable, and horses do well turned out together so that they can MOVE, can run around to stay warm. I endured keeping horses in high humidity, high rainfall conditions for a number of decades. Then we sold the farm, and moved to dry cold winter conditions. THAT is the best solution, imo, the best for the horses and the humans. Dry, low humidity, low rainfall summer and winter, with water that comes out of the ground instead of out of the sky. Beats shovelling manure and paddocks in the pouring rain for weeks or months in a row, with horses all blanketed up, shivering in their shelters or stalls getting impaction colic and soggy, soft hooves full of thrush or contraction due to lack of motion.

You can’t fight mother nature. If you want sound and healthy, and happy horses, live in horse country. Don’t fight the elements. Sorry, probably not what you wanted to hear lol! But that’s what we did to solve the problem. Works well.

[Argo]

I find mud season more challenging than freezing. When everything is frozen the horses are perfectly clean and content. When it’s muddy I rub some diaper rash cream into their heels every other day, especially white ones, and this prevents skin issues. If they’re sinking into the ground you’ll probably have to address the drainage and footing.

Go beyond ‘coping’ with the season and find things to appreciate about it!