Seasonal Care

The seasonal care of your horse changes with each different season come different duties for you concerning the health and comfort of your horse. Horse care differs with each season for your horse as much as it does for you. For instance, you do not wear summer clothing in winter – you bundle up in jackets, jerseys and boots. It is the same for your horse. Here are some tips and pointers.

Spring Seasonal Care:
It is pretty easy to keep up your horse care in spring. The only thing I can think of that you will need to consider is this: It can still be a little cold at night, so you may want to keep a stable rug on your horse and let him sleep in the stable. Depending where you live and the breed of your horse, it should be okay for your horse to go out into the paddock during the day without a rug.

Summer Seasonal Care:
Now your duties towards your horse’s care become pretty interesting. When you think of summer, what do you see? No, not ice creams, the beach and holidays - but heat, flies and more heat. It is the same for your horse.
Dealing with the flies is not too hard. The first thing you can do is keep your horse stabled during the day and turn him out to graze at night. However, this is not possible for a lot of people. If you can’t let your horse graze at night, put a fly fringe and an anti-fly sheet on him. Fly fringes are fitting onto your horse’s halter and protect his eyes from the flies. An anti-fly sheet is the same thing as an anti-sweat sheet. It stops the annoying flies from biting your horse. You can also spray or wipe fly spray onto your horse’s coat. This repels pretty much all flies, though some become used to it so it no longer works. The final thing that will help your horse is if you have another horse. Then they will naturally swat flies off each other with their tails.
The heat is the other big problem in summer. If your horse has a pink nose, he can suffer from sunburn. If you put suncream made for our skin on his muzzle, it will stop him from getting burnt. Make sure that your horse has water at all times. This is incredibly important because if your horse does not have water he will get dehydrated. You can also spray your horse off with cool water from the hosepipe once a day. This is like you jumping in the pool. Also, if you exercise your horse, make sure you cool them down well after the ride.

Autumn Seasonal Care:
As it starts to get colder in autumn again, you will need to think about stabling your horse at night. Also, you will want to put a rug on your horse at night while he sleeps in the stable. On colder or windier days, you might want to put a rug on him if you put him out in the paddock. As the days get colder, make sure you warm your horse up properly before doing any strenuous exercise.

Winter Seasonal Care:
Ahh, winter. The time where all horse owners must put double amount of time they usually would into horse care. As you know, winter can get very cold, but how cold depends where you live. If you stay in a place like Canada you winters will be extremely cold, with blizzards, snow and freezing temperatures. But if you come from South Africa – where I live – your winters will be pretty cold, with no snow, freezing temperatures or blizzards.
Keeping your horse warm in winter is not too hard. If you live in a cold, snowy country, you will want to keep your horse in his stall during winter with a nice, warm rug like a stable, or Melton rug on him.
If you stay in country with snow, you should put hoof grease in your horse’s hooves to prevent snow from getting packed into them. Also, putting Vaseline or liquid paraffin on your horse’s lower legs and heels keeps the mud and snow off them.
As for food and drink for your horse in winter, he will need more energy-high feed like oats to give him enough energy to keep his body warm. You will also have to break the ice in his water trough at least five times per day. Refilling the trough with warm water will prevent it from freezing up quickly.
The last thing is exercising your horse in the winter. You must give you horse a thorough warm up before doing any form of riding. If you grease your horse’s hooves, you can ride him in the snow, but please – never ride your horse on ice.

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