Yes. My horses and I take winters off. I have an indoor arena, but the footing freezes hard, and I don’t want to put salt in it because we also use the arena to store farm machinery in the winter, and salt would damage it. I also get a large sheet of ice that forms in front of the entrance of the arena, which is difficult to combat, and I don’t like to lead horses across it. Our winters can get to -30C with high winds and some snow. It’s not really very fun to ride in that sort of cold, for anyone. My horses live OUTSIDE year round. In winter, they go out onto the frozen hay fields and graze down our second crop of hay, rather than spending the time and diesel and risk of rain to bale it and put it in the barn to feed to them. They do that for the months of October to the beginning of January. Then they come into winter high pasture, and get fed hay until ice and winter is no longer an issue, at which point those who are going to work come into the sand paddocks by the arena. The rest of the bunch is made up of retirees, so rotate through pastures in summer months. Our fields don’t get muddy in the winter, we don’t get rain in the winter, and we are semi-arid in summer. They drink out of the creek (their favourate water source) or eat snow if too lazy to walk to the creek, and run together in the snow. Coats get thick and luxurious. If I wanted to ride in the winter, I would have to build stalls with access to the arena, find bedding (there isn’t any to be found here, too remote), deal with frozen water, clip all the hair off them and blanket heavily, and salt the arena footing. Turn out would be limited and icy, which would lead to horses spending way too much time stall bound, leading to hoof circulation problems and impaction colic. It’s also difficult to pick poops in frozen and snow covered sand paddocks. If I did not clip the hair off them, I could only ride for 15 minutes, lightly, because the last thing I would want is to get them sweaty and wet with the heavy coat and cold weather. I have done a bit of riding in winter in past years, when forced to do so by owners who wanted their racehorses prepped for spring training, and it was difficult, and I could not do much, for this reason. Racing is dying here, so no racehorses winter here any more. So, with my own horses, they spend the winter out in the field, playing together in the snow, galloping around in the field at will, adding manure to the field (we harrow it in the spring to spread), just being horses in a social herd environment. I ride and show for fun only, just locally, not fancy stuff, in summer months, hunters and jumpers (depending on the strengths of whatever horses I’m riding). I’m old, and not looking for notoriety or international successes. I turn down boarders who want to ride, send them elsewhere if asked, because I don’t want to deal with anyone else’s issues or drama.
How long does it take to get adequately fit again in the spring? For me, a couple weeks, I have 50 years of muscle memory. Horses are adequately fit from winter turn out (it’s not like they have been standing in a stall or tiny paddock), but I do a week or so of lunging w/t/c just to get the brain working again and the tack back on. Then I do some posting trot for myself, for another week. By then, I feel like I’ve got my sea legs back again, and we are off to the races (joke). I ride alone, so I call the shots and set a pace of fitness that suits me and my horses. Works for us. By late spring, we are ready for clinics, and after that, some shows. I’ve been on this farm for 12 years now, and have developed this plan over that time. In that time, I have had excellent quality hooves, and no impaction colic (which I feel is the major killer of horses who are stallbound in winter).
