Horses and Heat
Posted by Bill on Aug 24 2007 at 06:20 pm | Tagged as: Horse Health
It’s been a hot few weeks in east Tennessee, with highs around 107 in the sun. Our two horses are consuming water at the rate of about 50 gallons a day. It’s way more than they normally drink. As I mentioned before, we’ve taken to showering the horses once or more a day to cool them off. Today I filled their drinking water barrel up to the top around noon but by three o-clock I noticed they hadn’t been by to drink any. In fact, I don’t remember seeing them all day (our pasture is hilly and the rear part of the property isn’t visible from the barn). Worried, I grabbed Mikki and we headed out to find our horses. We found them up at the old barn taking shelter in its shade. To our relief, they seemed fine and happily followed us down to the barn where we fed them cold watermelon and showered them with cool water.
Now I know there are wild horses roaming the hot desert in Arizona and figure they find a way to deal with the heat there. But today I worried about heat exhaustion. We’re not working or riding our horses in this heat but I wondered how working horses dealt with the heat. Despite global warming claims, 100 degree days are not new to this area so what did farm horses do?
There is a website I visit often that shows pictures of the old days. The website is called Shorpy, named after a child laborer in one of the pictures displayed on the site. Horses are often featured and today I came across the picture below. Apparently in days past, animal rights groups spent a lot of time pushing for ethical treatment of working horses. It’s not something we think much about today since there aren’t nearly as many but it was clearly important back then. Click the photo for more info from Shorpy but be forewarned, the link takes you directly to a page showing the photo of a horse that died on the street from heat exhaustion. The photo below was taken in 1911 in New York and is entitled “free shower baths for horses” from the G.G. Bain Collection of photos.
The photo of the horse that died from heat exhaustion is sad but was probably part of every day life in the city during hot summer days.
Photo courtesy of Shorpy - the 100 year old photo blog (link opens in a new window)
The book Beautiful Jim Key: The Lost History of a Horse and Man Who Changed the World, by Mim Eichler Rivas tells not only the story of a very interesting horse/human relationship, but also of the first efforts to raise awareness of cruelty to animals and the establishment of anti-cruelty societies. It will also be interesting to you because Jim and Dr. Key were from Shelbyville, Tennessee and has a lot of local and Civil War history.
Thanks Sal, Mikki has read the book and enjoyed it. I think she intends to talk about it some more here. You’re right, Shelbyville isn’t far from where we are the big official Tennessee Walking Horse shin-dig takes place over there every year. We’re going to try to go this year but it’s a HUGE deal and hotels are sold out for miles around, we’re told. Valentine’s half-brother is the reigning grand champion so it would be nice to see him show.
My daughter has been competing at the local county fair with her horse and the weather has been unbearable - up to 107 one afternoon! Too help keep the horses (and the children!) cool, our 4-H club installed a mister system in the barn. It has been wonderful! The temperature is at least 10 - 15 degrees lower and much healthier for all participants. And it was so easy to put up - just staple the misting hose over the doorway and connect to the hose in the corner.
So now when I plan out my dream barn set-up, I think I will be including a mist line over all the stalls. I might even think fancy and include a timer to turn it on and off during the heat of the day.
Hi I just got my first horse and would like to know how many times a horse goes through heat a year/month..I really don’t know.