Regulating Your Horses Heat

Exercise or Working your Horse Creates Heat

A byproduct of exercise or working your horse is body heat. The more intense the exercise or workout, the more body heat is generated in your horse. The more body heat that is generated, the greater the challenge of removing that excess heat from your horse. Horses are large animals with a relatively small surface area to body weight ratio. As a result, horses are very inefficient at dissipating heat.

The single most important means that your horse has for getting rid of this enormous heat load is evaporation, through sweating, which can account for about 65 percent of your horse's heat dissipation. During workouts such as horse racing, endurance riding and eventing, the increased muscle work and resulting heat production can account for sweat losses of more than ten liters/hour. This heat dissipation may be enhanced by air movement over your horse's body (wind). If ambient conditions of high heat, humidity and no wind exist, it can become difficult for a competing horse to cool itself efficiently.

Your horse’s lungs account for another 25 percent of his heat dissipation. This capacity of the respiratory tract in dissipating heat from your horse's body becomes very important under conditions of high humidity and high temperature when conditions are not favorable for evaporation.

Heat management techniques with your horse play a major role in assisting your horse to safely and quickly lower its body temperature under conditions of exercise in the heat. These include repetitive bathing with cold or ice water, providing cool drinking water and appropriate electrolyte supplements. During rest pauses, your horse should be protected from solar radiation by natural shade or shade structures. Misting fans in the shade will decrease the air temperature and provide wind to facilitate cooling. Competitions in hot weather should be held as early in the day as possible when temperatures are lower and solar radiation may be less severe.

Your comments or suggestions on this article are welcome for all of our readers to enjoy.

Have a great day with your horse.

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