Various techniques can be used to cool horses when their body temperatures soar—for example, external cooling with water. But ensuring adequate hydration before starting a workout or competition is the best way to help minimize heat stress and dehydration. Horses can thermoregulate, but to do so effectively they must be adequately hydrated. Add electrolytes to your horse’s water to help him retain and distribute fluid, and focus on hydration to avoid heat stress and reduced performance.

Let Your Horse Drink

The better a horse is hydrated the better they can sweat and thermoregulate. Horses should be allowed to drink as much as possible before, during, and after exercise, especially with added electrolytes. Dehydration decreases the horse’s ability to move blood from muscles that generate heat to the skin where cooling occurs.

Horses can sweat 10-20 or more liters of sweat per hour (equivalent to 2.5-5 gallons), and they continue to sweat even while recovering from exercise. Keeping these horses hydrated, or rehydrating them after exercise, requires electrolytes. The ideal time frame for offering electrolytes in water is within one hour of the horse being trained. This produces some reservoir of water and electrolytes in the gastrointestinal tract that helps replace water and ions lost through sweating.

Prioritizing your horse’s hydration status will not only stave off heat stress but also improve the horse’s physical and mental performance.

Room-Temperature Water Better Than Ice for Rapid Cooling in Horses

The ice-cold water does cause some vasoconstriction of blood vessels in the skin, slowing the rate of heat transfer from body to environment. Putting coolers on horses should only be used after the horse is cooled down, which can be checked by rectal temperature.

The post The Best Way to Cool Your Horse? Hydration. first appeared on EquiHelp.

University of California, Davis, Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital staff members John Madigan, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, ACAW; Gary Magdesian, DVM, Dipl. ACVIM, ACVECC; and W. David Wilson, BVMS, MS, MRCVS, offer important tips to prevent heat-related problems in horses.

1. High environmental temperatures and related heat issues, including dehydration, exhaustion, and heat stroke, can occur in horses and can produce illness and death.
2. Provide water. Help your horse maintain hydration by always allowing free access to water. Have a water source while traveling. Obtain some clean five-gallon cans and fill them up with water before you travel. Electrolytes might be useful if the horse has been sweating excessively. Have a plan outlined by your veterinarian if you have not used electrolytes before. Only use electrolytes specifically made for horses.
3. Provide as much shade as possible.
4. Limit what you do with your horse during peak heat: ride in the early mornings when it is cooler; shorten your ride; go slower and provide frequent breaks for your horse, in shade; encourage your horse to drink whenever they want water.
5. Ventilation is key. If your horse lives in a barn with limited ventilation, try to arrange more air circulation by carefully placing a fan in front of the stall or in the aisle way.
6. Know signs of fatigue and overheating in your horse and stop before more severe signs of heat exhaustion begin.
7. Hose (spray) off your horse or pour water from a bucket over your horse. Cool water is fine, normal temperature (not hot) water is good, too. Evaporation produces cooling and continuous hosing is one of the most effective means of lowering body temperature.

Tips for Trailering in the Heat

If you need to trailer your horse:

– do so in the cool early morning or late evening hours when it is cooler;

– don’t leave your horse in a parked trailer, especially if there is no shade. Just as with a parked car, temperatures inside a trailer can rapidly reach 140°F and the horse can quickly develop heat stroke;

– provide as much ventilation and airflow as safely as possible on the road;

– be very careful with hauling foals—they appear to be even more susceptible to heat than adult horses.

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