Don’t Neglect The Mental Health of Your Horse

Good winter care is essential for the mental as well as physical wellbeing of your horse. So after my post on how awful the weather has been for the last month or so, we have a glimmer of watery winter sunshine. I have leapt at the opportunity to give Tommy a welcome warm mane and tail wash.

Tommy is the closest thing to a hippo I have come across in a long time. He loves to wallow in mud when out in the field. Being able to behave like a horse is really important, so many horses don’t get ‘time out’ to do what comes naturally when with the herd. As a thoroughbred he is not great at keeping warm so usually baths and washing is off limits at this time if year unless you have fancy heat lamps!

He really enjoyed having a good old shampoo and then stood in the midday sun drying off with his lunch time feed.

During the winter many owners will rug their horses up to help keep them warm and dry. Wild horses develop thick winter coats and natural waterproofing in the form of oils. Domestic horses have this but often grooming has removed some of this oil, hence the rugs.

Another brilliant way of keeping horses warm during cold weather is feeding plenty of fibre. One of the most common ways to do this is to feed hay. The horse produces heat internally when digesting and acts a bit like a hot water bottle. Hay and ‘roughage’ is essential to your horses health both physically and mentally. With insufficient fibre in the horses diet they can not utilise the other feed stuffs they may eat. It provides, warmth, energy, nutrients and keeps the natural ‘trickle feeding’ instinct a wild horse would have.

Nowadays so many humans are beginning to understand how important it is to tend to our mental wellbeing in order to maintain our physical wellbeing, so why would the same not be true for horses?