Wet Horses in the Winter
In the cold Minnesota winter it is important to ensure that horses don’t get left out in the cold with
a wet coat. It’s easy for a horse to develop a wet coat by working up a sweat in their winter coat.
Some horses are especially prone to profuse sweating and need the most careful attention.
Stormy and Jackpot, are my two horses that sweat the most in their winter coats.
It takes planning ahead to make sure you have time to care for a sweaty horse after a ride during
the coldest days. You can figure that when it is colder than 40 degrees, some special measure
must be taken to insure that a wet horse doesn’t get stressed from overexposure to the cold or
hypothermia. The main precaution is to not get a horse too sweaty near the end of your ride. If
the horse does get wet with sweat, then put wool blankets on your horse after your ride. The
wool will absorb the sweat, like a big towel. You can switch blankets after the first one has gotten
pretty damp. Of course you won’t be able to completely dry a horse with just a couple blankets
and a half-hour or hour of drying time. So it is important to learn just how wet is too wet for a
horse to go out in the cold.
If it is above freezing and the horse can stand completely out of the wind, a very damp horse will
just dry off without too much stress. But if is below freezing, then it is important to accurately
judge just how damp the horse really is.
The main concern is that the wet hairs shouldn’t freeze together when exposed to the cold. That
would mean loss of most of the protection from the cold in the areas where the hairs are frozen
together. To understand just how moist he can be when let out; the key is to learn to judge how
wet the hairs can be without sticking together. Each hair has a tiny arrector pili muscle that will
lift it up and separate it from other hairs when it’s cold. But those muscles can’t overcome the
adhesion caused by the surface tension of water that connects them – if there’s too much water
between them. The amount of water between the hairs can be roughly estimated. My method is
to run my hand against the lay of the coat and see if the hairs are sort of gummed together, or if
they mostly separate when I run my hand over them. If they are stuck together, the horse is too
wet and needs more time drying with a blanket; if they are mostly separating, then the horse can
go out.
Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 hours for a wet horse with a heavy winter coat to dry enough before
going out into freezing weather. That would be likely if the horse was worked into a hard sweat at
the end of his ride. If you don’t have the time to look after your horse for this long a period, then
you will have to arrange for someone else to do it. At the WRR you can’t leave a horse
unattended for long (whether tied-up or in a stall) with the regular wool blankets on, because
he/she will remove them and trample them into a mess. If no one can look after your horse, then
he will have to stay in a stall instead of going out. But some horses, such as Stormy, hate staying
in a stall and will work themselves into a terrible sweat, kick the walls and doors, etc; so it is
better to plan ahead and not finish the ride in a heavy sweat to avoid having to leave your horse
in.
I hope this helps in your evaluation of sending a wet horse out in the winter. Please ask me
(Mark) if you would like me to show you how to test the hairs for their level of moisture.