Winter Weather Management

Guest blog post by Equine Business Management student Katie Mosca
Photos by Pebbles Turbeville & Katie Mosca

    Across the country winter is in its full flurry—I mean fury—and everyone has been bundling up to keep out the cold. Here at St. Andrews Equestrian Center, the staff have been working hard to keep the horses happy and healthy because when schools and business close for cold weather and snow, barns can’t.
The overall management of the horses hasn’t changed a whole lot on the past few months, but turn out and feed regimens have changed to fit the weather challenges. I had the chance to talk to one of the St. Andrews barn managers Lauren Markwood, and asked her how she changed management methods or increased practices in order to keep the horses healthy in low temperatures and sometimes a little precipitation.

She discussed how she often feeds more mash when it is cold because mash is easier for horses to digest. Also, since the horses have had to be kept in often due to poor weather conditions, she reduces meal sizes (half-ration) so there isn’t as much food to digest at each meal in order to make it easier on their systems when they are stalled-up longer than they are used to. Another feeding change, Markwood added, is to increase hay consumption to help keep the horses warm through the process of digestion (digestion creates internal energy and therefore heat.)

When the weather is especially bad, the horses stay in and therefore turnout methods change. To counteract the loss of turnout, throughout the day she and the other staff try to hand-walk as many horses as possible so that they can stretch out and get their guts working. Markwood did mention that it can be difficult to hand-walk all horses each day since they are so many head on the property. She discussed that twenty minutes of walking per horse is ideal, but unfortunately not always a realistic goal.

Water is another area to pay special attention to according to Markwood. She said that it is vital to watch how much horses are drinking and to de-ice water when it gets below freezing.

All in all, methods of equine management don’t change that much, but there are some practices to alter and/or improve during the winter months to help insure that the horses are cared for properly—and with the recent lows in temperature, it is safe to say Markwood and the rest of the St. Andrews Equestrian Center Staff are doing their very best to make sure all of their horses are warm, healthy, and happy during this wintery weather.

Stable Management Lab.

As part of the Equine Business Management class this semester students are required to write one blog post about some aspect of our program. Shannon Hahn chose to write about Stable Management Lab. 

With the start of the new spring semester here at St. Andrews, we are pleased to see the new students in the stable management lab here at the barns.  The first class meeting was a nice chilly 30 degree day.  The students were assigned their horses for the semester and participated in a silly ice breaker that involved many laughs and creative descriptions of common horse items such as a side rein (or dog lease/belt/miniature pony lead rope/etc) and a grazing muzzle (spaghetti strainer).

The second class meeting was met with slightly warmer weather.  The students were able to work with their horses during the class for the first time!  The instructors set up a mini obstacle course with four obstacles to take their horses through: weaving the horse through a few cones, walking their horse to a stall and backing them in, jogging in an arc to a mounting block, and then finally walking to a gate, opening the gate, walking through, and closing the gate when they were finished.  Many laughs, and sighs of frustration, were had when some of the horses refused to be backed into the stalls.  The same feelings were felt again when some of the horses refused to stand at the mounting blocks, pointedly telling us that they did not want to be ridden at that point in time.  It was a successful exercise and also told the students how well, or not so well, their horses stood in one spot waiting for their turn.

The students have also learned a lot about the feeding that goes on at the barns.  They discussed in length the different types of hay that are fed and why the horses receive what they do.  They also learned about the different types of feed that are available, the nutritional value of some of them, and how different mashes are mixed for feeding.  They were also taught how to clean the sheath of their gelding, and spent part of a class period doing that.  They will get to spend many hours working with their horses and caring for them throughout the semester.

by Shannon Hahn