Feeding Horses in Cold Weather

 Kasia Miedzinska, PhD

Certified Equine Nutritionist

 

Winter is here, I think. It must be as it is January and therefore the winter season. A mild winter to be sure as I haven’t even had to plow the driveway yet. One would think that I would be celebrating. I’m not. I’ve seen more horses shivering from the cold over the past two months than I have in any of the past nine years since I’ve moved to Kingston.

 

Why? Horses have as much difficulty in acclimatising to such dramatic and quick shifts in temperature that we have experienced thus far as we do. Perhaps more. The wicked winds coming off Lake Ontario carry so much dampness that they cut right through those winter coats and into the joints. Shelters, good coats and blankets not withstanding, I’ve seen too many horses around the county shivering when they shouldn’t be.

 

Why is this a topic for a feed column? Because yes, we can feed horses to help them stay warm, and there are three ways to go about it.

 

Assuming the horse is carrying good weight to begin with, the number one answer is to feed them a LOT of hay. The act of eating hay causes them to burn calories, and burning calories gives off body heat. Let them stand out there and chew all day. Have you noticed that the gluttons who go after every single tiny shred of hay are never the ones to get cold? It’s not because they are fat, it is because they are chewing hay. This is a simple and cost effective way to keep our horses healthy and warm.

 

The next two suggestions are for the more fragile, delicate horses. The non-gluttons. The fussy “this hay isn’t perfect” types. The “oh I can’t eat another mouthful” types.

 

If it is necessary to put weight on, or to keep weight on, feeding them fat is a good way to go about it because fat is easily available to the body for burning. With the changes in climate that we have experienced over the past three winters, and predictions for continued winters like this one, we have to change our approach and make sure our horses are “well fleshed” going into the winter, even our performance horses whom we wish to keep fit and trim. The rapid changes in temperature and high humidity are hard on them, particularly on the joints. It’s easier on them to wear off a little extra weight in the spring than to put it back on them. Keeping them in doesn’t always help because so many of the older buildings are easily infiltrated by the damp.

 

And finally, keep their immune system healthy so that they can withstand the weather changes with less stress. There are many feeds available with a good vitamin/mineral balance for those horses that eat enough concentrate to make their minimum daily requirement available to them. For the others, there is a wide assortment of vitamin/mineral supplements to choose from. To make it easier on your horse to access the supplements in such difficult weather, you may choose to use a chelated form. Vitamins and minerals do not occur in isolation in the real world. During the production of a supplement, they are separated from the molecules that they are naturally attached to. In many cases those molecules actually aid in making the vitamin/mineral bio-available to the horse. Chelation is the process of re-attaching the vitamin/mineral back to such a molecule, which is why the chelated form of a supplement is more expensive. It is well worth the expense as it ensures that what you are paying for actually gets to where you want it, namely into the horse rather than out to the manure pile.

 

Good luck this winter. For myself, I’m praying for a little more snow cover and a lot less wind.