Transcript of podcast episode
Welcome to Extension Horses Tack Box Talk Series, Horse Stories with a Purpose. I’m your host, Dr. Kris Hiney, with Oklahoma State University, and today’s story is the age-old question, to blanket or not to blanket.
And to help address that question, today we have Dr. Krishona Martinson from the University of Minnesota. Hello, thanks for having me.
And Dr. Carey Williams from Rutgers University. Hello, everybody. We always get asked that by lots of horse owners. Are we supposed to put a blanket on a horse or not? But I know it’s not always just a yes or no easy question. So, Carey, do you want us to get started with helping to address, do you put a blanket on or not?
Yes, I can start, and I think that is a great question, because a little history about myself, I actually grew up
18 years of my life in northern Wisconsin, almost into Lake Superior, so you can only imagine it is quite cold, right, Krishona? Because that’s pretty close to where you’re at.
owned a blanket. I never put a blanket on my horse. I moved from there to Colorado State University as an undergraduate student. Again, never blanketed a horse, never did any of that. And then I moved to Virginia.
and bought a horse, and the barn that I had it at would not let me board her there over the winter unless I bought a blanket. So, yes, I went from Wisconsin and Colorado to Virginia, and now New Jersey, and I own 4 blankets for my skinny little thoroughbreds.
So
I think it really depends, and I know that’s the age-old, answer that Extension likes to give, is it depends… depends on your climate, it depends on your horse.
You know, right now, outside, I’m looking out my door, it’s pouring rain, it’s 50 degrees, and it’s supposed to drop to 28 degrees tonight here in New Jersey.
I finally took the blanket out to the barn so that my skinny little thin-coated thoroughbred would have a blanket tonight, because I think, yes, she’s gonna be shivering, she’s gonna be cold, and she’s gonna need one.
I want to back up. When you moved to Virginia then, was it more like a cultural thing that you were not going to fit in if your horse didn’t have a blanket, or did they just think you were, like, a terrible person?
You know, it’s funny, I think it’s just the mindset of certain people and certain barns that, you know, horses can’t…
Survive, unless they have one.
And what I don’t think they understood is a lot of people, which I wasn’t one of them at the time.
will clip their horses in the winter, because they want to keep riding them, they don’t want them to be super sweaty, they want them to be able to dry out quicker. So, yeah, absolutely, if you’re clipping your horse in the winter, it should 100% have a blanket.
Because they don’t have any other way to thermoregulate and to keep themselves warm. However, that was just the opposite of growing up in Wisconsin. I never clipped my horse, and, you know, they never needed a blanket, because they grew super heavy coats.
Which I’m not going to talk much more about living up there, because I know Krishona lives up there currently. We have an expert!
So, okay, so we definitely have a firm yes on if your horse is clipped and has to wear a blanket. So let’s get a little bit more insight into this from the very Northland. So, Krishona, what’s your perspective?
Yes, so I couldn’t agree more with Carey that it depends, but if you want to open up a can of worms that is hotly debated, just mention the word blanketing.
And it quickly escalates into a heated conversation. And because of that, and because it so depends, and a lot of times it is reflective of the human owner’s comfort and their warmth.
and how they transfer that to the horse. But what we’ve done is we’ve come up with just some basic six guidelines, and really, it kind of summarizes some of the things that…
Carey has said. So, our recommendation is that a horse should be blanketed if they do not have access to shelter, and the temperature drops below 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
If there is a chance the horse will become wet, so Carey cold rain that you’re having.
If the horse has had its winter coat clipped.
If the horse is very young or very old.
If the horse hasn’t been acclimated to the cold, for example, the horse is coming up from Oklahoma to Minnesota.
And if the horse has a body condition score of 3 or less. So essentially, I have just summarized into 6 points what Dr. Williams has shared with us.
nd if your horse doesn’t fit into one of those categories, so for example, I personally have healthy adult horses that are out 24-7 with plenty of access to shelter and are fed well.
they do not get blanketed, because they don’t really have a need, and I haven’t seen any adverse effects from not blanketing them at this time.
So, I want to go back to a few of those points. You said if it, if it stays above 5 degrees Fahrenheit, that they probably don’t need a blanket.
Now, I used to live in the north, but now I live in Oklahoma. I’ve not seen it 5 degrees Fahrenheit here at all since I moved here, so are you saying that
I don’t want you to say yes or no, right? In Oklahoma, that maybe it’s… it’s not as necessary? Exactly. So these are guidelines to help people make a decision.
Obviously, it is your horse, you can do what you like. However, we…
from past research, and I don’t know, Dr. Williams and Dr. Hiney, you’d probably know better, right? You go back to years and years ago, and we do have a pretty good idea that a horse is most comfortable in. And actually, a lot of times, even when a horse
access to shelter and it’s cold. You’ll find them happily out in the middle of the field with their butt turned toward the wind, chewing on hay, not thinking anything different of it. So again, these are just guidelines. I realize in the southern part of the country that it doesn’t even get that cold.
And you know, we’ve almost approached that already here this fall in Minnesota. We had a really early cold snap.
Now it’s getting warmer again, but again.
ust a guideline. I can actually add to that a little bit. So, yeah, Krishona’s right on, because, I mean, all animals have what’s called a thermoregulatory zone, and they have a lower critical temperature, and we call it… yeah, that’s what we call it, a lower critical temperature.
And that has been researched a lot, that it doesn’t matter, really, where they’re adapted to. I mean, it does a little bit, but their bodies still have this set lower critical…
temperature, and that means that they will start expending more energy to stay warm if their bodies… if the temperature falls below their lower critical temperature. And really, you know, horses’ lower critical temperature is pretty low. Like Krishona said, it’s, you know, in the 5 to 10 degree range, so what’s
really cold for us. If we walked outside without a coat, it would absolutely be cold, I think, for many people. Isn’t really for horses.
They also, you know, obviously, as Krishona said too, though, if you brought a horse from Florida or Oklahoma to, you know.
Wisconsin or Michigan even, you know, it’s gonna take them a little while to adapt. It’ll take them a little while to grow probably as much of a winter coat as they normally would in the South. So, there is something to be said for adapting a horse if you are moving it, you know, across the country.
And even going the opposite way, if you have a horse with a full winter coat in Minnesota, and you take it down to Florida, you should absolutely consider clipping it, because otherwise they’re going to have problems the other way, in terms of heat.
It’s really interesting when we think about hair coats, and maybe we think that’s a given that they grow winter hair and it’s all the same, but really, their hair coat differs according to the environment that they live in.
o even my kids, they used to live in Wisconsin and had really thick coats, but they don’t grow nearly the amount of hair coat down here that they do up there. Have you guys kind of seen the same thing? Yeah, you know,
Absolutely. So, we know that hair coat development is a combination of day length and also of temperature. So, obviously, we are, you know, the fall, everybody’s day length is getting shorter, but Kris, your temperature in Oklahoma is probably still in the 70s, I don’t know what it is, but something like that. We’re in Minnesota, we’re down to the 40s.
Obviously, our horses are going to acclimate and prepare for that colder weather by growing a thicker hair coat than what you would see in Oklahoma. You also mentioned, the idea of – if the horse is gonna get wet. But…
A lot of people don’t realize, or maybe just haven’t thought about that, there are different types of blankets that horses can wear, and if you put a blanket on, and it’s not waterproof.
Right? What happens if we have that swing of temperature when it was snow, and now it turns into freezing rain?
Yeah, absolutely. If you’re thinking of having a blanket, any blanket at all, and turning the horse outside, it should 100% be waterproof.
Because that blanket, when now, you know, it’s insulated, when it’s dry, if you add moisture to it, and it gets through to the horse’s skin, it is now becoming more detrimental that they have a blanket on that is wet than if they didn’t have one on at all. Because now they’re going to catch chills, they’re going to get cold,
And not only that, now their skin is damp, there could be a risk of bacterial infections and fungal infections and all that kind of thing if they leave a wet blanket on. Not to mention all the rubbing and chafing. So, you know, wet blankets are just a nightmare to begin with. So, make sure that it’s a…
100% waterproof blanket, and make sure… I know a lot of people wash their blankets year after year after year, and five, six years go by, and they’re still using the same blanket that maybe 5 years ago was fully waterproof, but might not be anymore. So, after a rainstorm like we’re having today, it was after
Absolutely be recommended to bring the horse in at night, pull the blanket off, make sure that they are still dry underneath, or even swap blankets out, put a dry one on them, and let the wet one dry out, before you, you know, just kind of leave them and forget about them.
And just to follow up on that, I think that’s so important, because if we’ve all seen a horse that’s dry, their hair stands straight up.
And that straight up is what really helps them regulate their body temperature. So when they become wet, their coat gets mushed down. I know mushed isn’t a scientific term, but help me. It gets squished, mushed, pushed down, whatever. Whatever, you can use whatever word. Thank you.
But, you know, and Carey, that’s what happens with a wet blanket, right? They’re heavy. I mean, when you lift a wet blanket, and it pushes their hair coat down, and it really does a disservice, because now they really have a challenging time thermoregulating, because their hair coat can’t stand up, because we have this heavy, wet blanket over top of it.
Yeah, absolutely, and we call that loft with the hair, so the hair has loft, and it actually will trap the warm air underneath the loft of the hair. So if you flatten the hair and you get rid of the loft, there’s no warm
body heat insulating them with the loft of the hair. So that’s why, you know, they also say, once you start blanketing, you always blanket.
So, if you’ve started now, like today, my horse is getting a blanket on because it’s cold, well, guess what? Now I need to manage a blanket for the rest of the year, because now I’ve… she’s starting to grow a hair coat, but I’ve smooshed that hair coat down, to use Krishona’s terminology. It really is going to significantly decrease the ability for her to thermoregulate
Because of the loss of the loss of the hair and the insulated properties of it.
So we know that horses that are clipped, horses that don’t have shelter, horses that maybe are really old, or if it’s wet, can benefit from blankets. But are there any other reasons or any other benefits for horses wearing blankets that don’t fit within those categories?
Yeah, so, interesting you ask that. We just finished up a research project in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin River Falls.
And we looked at blanketed horses versus non-blanketed horses and their intake of hay. And we found that horses that were blanketed actually ate less hay than horses that were not. And if you think about our previous discussion.
That focused around that… that body temperature, and that comfort level.
Obviously, a horse that is warm from the blanket is going to consume a little bit less hay
Because they don’t need that extra energy. So, a horse that doesn’t have the blanket is going to consume more hay, because they are expending more energy just in the process of keeping warm, where the blanket’s going to reduce the hay intake. Now, I will say it was a fairly small percentage, just a couple of percents.
But if you are managing multiple horses over multiple months of cold weather, that blanket
Could lead you to actually feed a little bit less hay, and maybe save a little bit of money in your pocketbook.
But would that be, even if maybe, okay, the savings on the pounds of hay are maybe not that important, does that give us a little bit of an indication of comfort level of the horse, if they internally are feeling warmer and less desire to eat?
Yeah, I can… I can chime in here, too, because I… I absolutely agree with Krishona, just from, the nutritionist standpoint, is, you know, as… as horses.
need to thermoregulate to keep their body temperature up, they need to eat more. So, yeah, they would be… if they are more comfortable.
comfortable, meaning they… their body temperature is at that constant rate. They don’t need to eat as much, so I think it does kind of indicate a comfort level as well as, you know, the need to thermoregulate.
Wow.
So, not a precise blanket question, but sort of in the same vein. So, one of the other things that you’ll also hear, that maybe if you don’t blanket them, but it’s a little colder, that you offer them more hay. Is there any truth to using hay as a source of heat?
Absolutely. That’s where they’re getting their…
fermentation. A lot of people think that corn is a hot food, but not hot in terms of generating heat.
Not in terms of creating too much energy. Forage and fiber is definitely where these horses need to get their heat from. Not just added energy.
to keep them warm, but also they help stay warm through their heat of fermentation, because that’s how they process the fiber. They ferment it, and it does create a lot of heat in order to ferment things. So, it’s kind of twofold.
And they say usually about… up to about 2 pounds additional for the average horse is what should be fed in the winter, just to help with just thermoregulation alone. Of course, if you have the older horse or the skinnier horse, you’ll probably want to go up even more than that.
Now, and I don’t know if this would even count as anecdotally, because I actually think there was a research trial. I just don’t remember who did it, so I can’t give them fair credit. But I believe they did some horse behavior preferences, and they let the horse
indicate if it wanted to wear a blanket or not, so this would really save the horse blanket. And the horses did choose! They were like, yes, please put my blanket on for me when it’s a little bit chilly. I don’t remember how they let the horse choose, but I definitely remember there is a paper out there somewhere about if horses like to wear blankets.
That’s pretty funny. Don’t know that I know that study, but I do know, like I said, my skinny little thin thoroughbred looks at me with these sad eyes as she’s trembling and shivering because she’s so cold.
Yeah, I just shrug my shoulders and go, alright, here’s your blanket.
Now, I want to ask another, practical question for you guys, and that relates to,
the blanket fitting, because you had mentioned, rubbing and chafing can… can certainly be a problem. So how do we make sure, what is the correct way to check for blanket fits, if we’re going to choose to wear one?
So I think the very first thing you need to do is to properly measure your horse for a blanket. A lot of blanket measurements go from the center of the chest to the center of the tail.
Different manufacturers might have different recommendations, but before you go and buy a blanket, because it’s usually an investment, you know, look at the charts they have on lines that you’re measuring the horse
Correctly. And I have even noticed there’s been, you know, just more technology out and more design. So, of course, it has a really high withers.
or maybe an older horse that tends to have a little bit of a sway back, they now have those wither relief blankets, right? That it sits differently on the horse, so it’s more comfortable. So, try to look at the different options you have, and match it with your horse’s body type, or the phase of life that they’re in.
The biggest mistake we see people making up in the North Country is they put the blanket on November 1st, they take it off on…
March 1st, and they have problems. The horse is horribly obese, the horse is horribly thin, because, of course, you can’t visually see as easily what’s happening. Or they have horrible rub marks where the straps go, you know,
over their withers, or between their legs. So, what we tell people is at least twice a week.
You should be taking that blanket off, brushing the horse, running your hands over them, seeing if there’s any rub marks or sores, looking at their body condition, making sure it’s dry, like we’ve already discussed, and then repositioning it back on the horse.
Yeah, Krishna, I’m really glad you brought that up, because I was… I was either gonna mention that at the end before we were all done, if it didn’t come up prior, but that is a really good point. Just if it’s to take it off.
You know, let them air out for 5 minutes, and…
checking them out quick and putting it back on, but I think that’s really important. And we do see a lot of horses that, you know, a month goes by, they pull the blanket off, and oh my, they’ve lost a lot of weight, now what do we do? And then I get the call of, how do I put more weight back on my horse? They just lost so much weight, we didn’t realize it. So, you know, it definitely is good to make sure it comes off, and I think twice a week is a great recommendation.
I want to also bring up, the… the spring. So now you’ve put the blanket on, and now it’s spring. It is in March, or April, or May, or whenever your weather starts to get warm.
And the horse is outside, and now it’s 70 degrees out. But yet, it’s supposed to get down to 30 at night. What do you do? Well, if you can, yeah, take the blanket off.
Because the problem is, if it’s 70 degrees and they still have their blanket on, they’re sweating. I guarantee they’re sweating under that blanket. Now, like we said at the beginning of this podcast, you have a wet horse.
And you have a wet blanket, and it’s gonna create a lot of other problems. Again, you’re back down, back to the chafing.
Once it gets cold, they’re gonna get chilled, because now they’re wet. So you really need, and that’s why I said, now that I’m starting to use a blanket, I gotta manage my blanket, which doesn’t mean put it on and forget it. It means now I need to manage… if it’s warm, it comes off. If it’s cold, it goes on.
And you pretty much have to do that throughout the year, and the fall and the spring are really tough times to manage a blanket.
Oh, go ahead. No, I want to say, that’s part of that lifestyle, like, you have to decide, do… am I available enough to monitor how hot it gets with the variations in temperature over the day?
Exactly, and I was just gonna say, I think that’s one of the big decisions you need to make before you even purchase or decide to use a blanket, is do I have the manpower, or do I have a farm that has the manpower to manage this blanket?
Or even, do you have the budget to pay blanketing fees, correct? Like, I have… I’m fortunate that I keep my horses at my home, but I have heard complaints from my graduate students and others that, oh, there’s these blanketing fees.
Well, I can’t say I blame them for having to go out to the pasture, retrieve the horse, and I also have noticed that many people have the different weighted blankets, and I think, obviously, in the North Country, December and January, when it’s fairly consistently cold.
those heavier weight blankets, have a good fit. But, for example, this spring, or this fall, we have had… we have been as cold as 16, and in 2 days, it’s going to be 60 again. So, like you said, Carey, it is a really hard time to manage, but once you’ve made that commitment.
Maybe one of your options is switching between a light and medium weight blanket, or taking it off during the day, putting it on overnight if they’re outside. But again, if you are not physically there to do it.
You either have to trust that it gets done, or pay those additional fees to ensure it gets done.
That’s a really good point about how much maintenance that is. I know now I’m having flashbacks when my horses were show horses, like, they had lights and heavies, and you’d combo them, and it all depended on what temperature it was, but I was around and could run out and change that for them. I will say now, they live in Oklahoma, just good luck.
you’re gonna have to manage it yourself, guys. There’s no blankets, they have a shed, they’re fed fine, and so they’re… they’re able to handle it, no problem. So I do have a couple more questions for you guys. So you talked about
blanket fit, and making sure it stays on.
What about horses that are group housed? So, some horses have a tendency to want to try to remove or play with anything that is new in their environment. So, do you have any… any useful advice on how to handle those scenarios?
You know, they make those… those no-chew sprays. I’ve heard people trying them. They’ll spray parts of the blanket to keep them from chewing on it. Don’t know that they’re super effective, but they might be worth a try.
You know, I think the other thing is try to keep your horse busy with something else to put their mouth on, like a lot of hay, or forage instead of the blanket. You know, it’s kind of what we say about, you know, horses that chew wood, too, are looking for something to put their mouth on, so give them more hay.
Give them an extra buddy, and I know sometimes the buddies aren’t really any help either, because either they can destroy their own blankets, or their buddy can destroy their blanket. I know some horses… I personally… there’s a horse at my…
trainer’s barn, that they basically said, look, he’s just not going to have a blanket this year, because he is…
In a matter of hours, he’s got it torn to pieces and around his neck.
So, you know, it’s decision of, you know, either he’s gonna get killed, or he’s gonna hang himself with the blanket. Right, that can be dangerous. It can really be dangerous. They can step in the loop of one of the buckles, they can get it around their leg.
So, I mean, there are just some horses that it’s not going to be possible to blanket them, and those are just some of the decisions that have to go along with the blanketing decision.
So now I have a question for you, Krishona, because I know you also have some… some beef cattle, at your house as well.
So a lot of, a lot of people, maybe members of the public, etc, can be very concerned when they see horses without blankets, but you never see cows with blankets, or you’ll see places that have horses with blankets and cows without blankets, so what’s the difference?
Kris, you have to ask these hard questions, right? So, I… this is just my personal perspective. I think a lot of people consider… so, first of all, cattle and horses in the U.S. are both classified as livestock.
And a lot of people understand that cattle are livestock. They’re managed as a herd, they’re together.
Even though horses are categorized as livestock, people still consider them a pet or companion animal.
They have names or managed as an individual. What the human feels cold, therefore the horse must be cold, therefore the horse gets a blanket. So I think a lot of it is just human perception of a companion animal pet versus a livestock that is housed in a group, but
That’s an excellent question.
Although, if you’re on social media at all, and I’m probably on it too much, you know, people knit little hats for the cow ears, they knit chickens’ little things to keep them warm during the winter in the North Country. We’ve got nothing else to do. We may have dark, like, 12 hours a day.
So, you know, at 16 hours a day. I mean, so you do see it here and there, but I would agree, it’s generally… I mean, nobody would expect
to blanket a cow. Although on the dairy farm, my parents still dairy farm, the calves have blankets, but again, they’re very young, so they can’t quite thermal regulate as well as an older animal, but you’re right.
So, Krishona, here’s a question along those lines. Does their hide make any difference? Because doesn’t the cow have a much thicker hide than a horse would, or does? I don’t know, I’m not familiar with cows.
Carey, that’s a great question. I don’t know the answer to that, but that… you know what? We could probably figure that out. Well, they do! They have thicker hide, and you know, they’re… obviously, nobody’s gonna go around and put blankets on all the wild beef cows. But they have thicker hides, and
They have… the rumen is… if anybody’s ever had the fun chance to put your hand in a rumen, or just see how big that is, even compared to all the fermentation that’s going on in the horse’s hindgut, rumens are pretty crazy.
That’s true, it’s probably like having a wood stove, right? Yeah, that’s a very, very good point, too, Kris. So there you go, we figured it out.
I don’t see these cow hats! I have never seen a cow hat in my life, and I was.
No.
How many cows wear cow hats in Wisconsin, or Minnesota? Well, just the ones I see on social media.
Well, I’m definitely gonna have to look at this, because that’s worth it right there.
So, I know that was kind of a silly take at maybe, some serious topics that people struggle with, but do you guys have any other kind of advice or tips for people as we’re heading into the heart of blanketing season?
No, I think, you know, just think of those 6 scenarios where we do recommend a horse be blanketed, but otherwise, just… it’s… a lot of it is common sense and just paying attention to your horse.
Yeah, I think Krishona, mentioned something that I feel very firmly about, is that you need to pay attention. So, just be observant, and don’t blanket them and forget them.
All right, I think those are great tips. Again, great ways to manage. There’s no one single right answer when it comes to blanketing, but if we do choose, we have to pay attention to our horse.
So, that has been another episode.
