dancing horses

dancing horses

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Baby it's Cold Outside

This has been a more snowy winter than we've had in a few years.  This photo has been circulating on FB:

Can you imagine Steele in the house? He'd eat all the snack food and hog the remote! 

On a more serious note, this is the first year that I have not blanketed Irish. This was not a rash decision but I had his weight up in the fall and I wanted to see how'd he do without one. Theoretically horses do fine witout blankets- centuries of evolution has designed them to have coats that insulate during the cold weather. However, let's face it, Irish is a far cry from Prezewalski's horse 


Once at a show, someone expressed surprise that Irish stayed in his stall even though the door was open- I joked that we both know that he couldn't make it on his own. The benefit of having him at home is that I have a fair degree of control. I could not only monitor his weight (which I can do if boarded) but I can make judgements. I did put a blanket on when we went from 5 to -28. I also put a rain sheet on both of them if it's a cold rain. 

However, he seems to be doing fine without the blanket:
round pony prancing in the snow

His weight has not moved and he never looks chilled to me. 

So my horse is on a basic diet of crushed oats, and alfalfa/beet pulp, no blanket and outside from 7 to 5 every day (unless the weather is really really bad). And he's thriving. 

2 comments:

  1. Our boys are thriving without blankets as well. Even Jackson, who never used to grow a thick coat and loved his blanket, has a thick wooly coat this year and is plenty plump.

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  2. He looks great. We left blankets off the horses at bres barn a lot more this year. She's not showing so a thick coat won't hurt her. I love Irish all fluffy.

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