Horses and Winter

Florida finally decided to participate in winter, and I have to be honest….I am loving it! It has been a long time since we have had continuous days of blanketing weather (2010 was the last that I remember a long winter, where my horses went over 30 days in a row of wearing blankets and it snowed in Tampa!) and I don’t recall the last time we had 10-12 hours of freezing temperatures. Last Saturday was so cold from the wind, that it felt like I was in New England. With wind chills making the temperature feel like 12 degrees, I shut the bottom door to my donkeys stall for the first time and kept them inside with no opportunity to venture into their run. It was just too cold, even with their new yellow duckie heavy blankets!

Since I knew my buckets were going to turn to ice, I reached out to my friend who lives on a mountain in Tennessee who provided me with excellent ways to keep my buckets from freezing and I wanted to share her tips. While my husband was busy protecting our pumps and hose bibs, I got to work insulating my buckets. I had purchased bubble reflective insulation rolls from Amazon, which I wrapped around several buckets. In each stall, I placed one insulated bucket inside a muck tub and then filled the space between the buckets with straw, which I was using to add to my shavings to provide extra warmth, particularly for the donkeys and goats (if you have ducks, it is extremely messy. I don’t advocate using straw in a duck coop unless someone has tips to keep it clean!)

When done, each stall had one insulated bucket inside a muck tub, stuffed with straw and at least one hanging bucket that was also wrapped in the insulation. The 2 big bay boys also had a hanging bucket that was not insulated. Buckets were filled halfway with hose water and then at bedtime, I lugged 5-gallon water cooler containers of warm water down to the barn and topped off each bucket. I am so glad I invested in a collapsable wagon, which I enlisted to carry the containers from the back porch to the barn!

The final results were interesting. The buckets inside the muck tubs were by far the best solution to prevent icing. None of them had ice. The insulated hanging buckets had mixed results, none of which were impressive. Only the donkeys, whose stall is sandwiched between Gabe’s stall and the tack room, stayed ice-free, while Gabe and Chance’s had varying degrees of ice forming by 7:30 AM. The temps in the barn ranged between 21 and 27 over a period of mornings, with 12 hours of freezing temperatures. Incidentally, the ducks water, insulated with straw, froze…as did their pools, which made for some very confused ducks when I let them out in the morning. But they are located on a high spot that is fairly open and the temperatures were as low as 19 degrees.

I am glad that I took the time to insulate the buckets, especially since Chance is a big drinker at nighttime. It is good to know what works and what doesn’t!

I am also a big fan of adding warm water to their grain to make a soupy mash. They love it and it is a good way to keep them hydrated.

For more reading on surviving cold weather tips, here is a link to one of my previous blogs: Surviving Extreme Winter Weather

I hope these tips help whoever needs them. Stay warm!

Don’t forget to hug your horse!

Lori