For those of you who haven't checked out my
website and don't know it yet, I am from Uitenhage a, not so small anymore, town close to Port Elizabeth, i.e. not too far from the coast. During winter it seldom get below 10 degrease Celsius.
It is my opinion that most people over blanket their horses around here. I myself don't even own a blanket for my horse and don't feel the need to do so. Don't get me wrong, blankets do have their place and one do need them sometimes. But for me, the one or two times per year that I feel that my horse, Frosty, need a blanket, by the time that I realize that the weather is really getting bad, it is to late to blanket her, because by then she would be wet and blanketing a wet horse is not good at all. As you know weather can be highly unpredictable and a light drizzle early in the morning can change to a heavy storm in the afternoon, but more often than not, by the afternoon the sun is shining again.
A horse's fur is quite well suited to keep him worm. But unfortunately humans come and interfere. They clip the fur off to make the horse look neat, they bath the horse to keep him clean, etc. It is obvious that by clipping one is taking away the horses natural warmth. Bathing washes of the natural oils that are in a horse's coat, that help to keep his skin dry. So now the horse is striped from his natural protection and humans must intervene again and the horse need to be blanketed. That brings the question, when must the horse be blanketed? How do we know if our horse is warm or cold? If we blanket him and he wasn't actually cold, then he'll be getting too hot. If we don't blanket him, he might be getting cold without his fur (clipped horse). But we don't really know. So all that for what? To make the horse look good! Humans just love to make things difficult for themselves.
Horses are more suited to cold weather than warm weather. What we may conceive as being cold, a horse will think, hay jolly nice weather today. Reason: besides the nice warm coat they have, a horse has a big body, about five times ours and a big body retain heat better. Try a little experiment, take a biggish stone and one very small stone, place it in boiling water for fifteen minutes or longer and then take it out and put both on a cool surface. After 5 minutes touch them both and feel witch is warmer. The big one, right?
Try this little experiment. Take a jug of water and through it over your horse and see how long he take to dry. A few minutes. Now take a hosepipe and spray him well with water, get him as wet as you can, but without rubbing the water into his coat. Turn the water off and find a spot on his coat, rub the access water off with one swipe of your hand and open the hair. You will find that the skin is dry.
Now, don't take my word for it. Read the following two articles. They are written by a lady who has a doctors degree in equestrian science.
http://www.horse-sense.org/archives/blankhor.phtmlhttp://www.horse-sense.org/archives/tender_hooves.htmKeep in mind that she is from the US where they use Fahrenheit to measure temperature. She talk about 10 degrees and snow, if it were 10 degrees Celsius, snow and ice should not come into the picture, so that is proof that she is actually talking about Fahrenheit temperatures. So keep in mind that 10 Degrees Fahrenheit is less than minus 10 Celsius and below zero Fahrenheit is below minus 17 degrees Celsius.
Once again, I'm not saying there is no place for a blanket in a horse's life, I'm just saying be careful not to over do it.
PS. At my boarding facility, it is up to the owner to decide if their horse should be blanketed or not. I simply do as I am told, even though I might not always agree with what the owner expect. However, a horse owner can not tell me that
if it is going to rain, put horse's raincoat on or
if it is going to be cold, blanket him. I am no profit, I can not tell what the weather is going to do, even the professional weather forecasters get it wrong all the time. So I do need specific instructions from the owner of the horse as to when to blanket and when not.
