9 Winter Horse Health Problems You Need to Look Out For

You’ve probably been around horses for a while, so you know that despite being such large and powerful animals, they can suffer from a staggering number of illnesses and ailments. And every season brings its own healthcare concerns, whether it’s disease-carrying insects in the summer or damp chills in the winter.

We’ll look at nine of the most common health concerns horses face during the winter and what you can do to prevent, recognize and treat them.

Dehydration 

Surprised to see this on a list of equine winter worries? While we usually think of summer sweat as a major dehydrator, dehydration is just as much of a concern (if not more, depending on the temperature where you live) during the winter. 

A typical 1000 lb. horse needs 10-12 gallons of water a day for optimum health. It doesn’t take much for a horse to start suffering from mild dehydration; even losing 3-4% of his body moisture can be enough to negatively impact his well-being. 

Dehydration can happen any time of year, but winter weather can set the stage for unexpected dehydration problems. 

How to Keep a Horse Hydrated in Winter

The most common cause of winter dehydration is frozen buckets and freezing cold water.

While many horses will drink cold water, they’ll drink more water if it’s slightly warm – about 45°–65°F. Avoiding cold water is not necessarily a bad move on his part, as he’ll need to burn precious calories to warm up after a cold drink, but you still want your horse to be comfortable drinking as much as he needs to.

Heated automatic waterers, immersion heaters (a water heater placed inside a regular water trough), insulated buckets, or just adding hot water from a kettle are all good ways to keep water at a tempting temperature.

If freezing is a problem and you don’t have electrical service at the barn, a large ball like a Jolly Ball floating in the trough can help. Horses can move the ball with their nose, leaving a muzzle-sized drinking hole (and maybe getting a little entertainment, too). Failing that, keep a hammer and a sieve beside the water trough – you’ll need to break the ice regularly and scoop out the frozen shards so they don’t damage his sensitive gums and mouth.

How to Encourage a Horse to Drink More Water in Winter

Beyond keeping water at a reasonable temperature, there are a few tricks you can use to encourage your horse to drink more water. Try adding a flavoring, like apple juice. This is a common trick to help traveling horses acclimatize more readily to unknown water sources and can help make winter water more tempting. 

Keeping free-choice salt available can encourage horses to drink more, as well as ensure they get much-needed minerals. About 2oz of loose salt for a 1000 lb horse should help stimulate his thirst. 

You can also sneak moisture into his diet in other ways, such as soaking or steaming hay, which adds valuable moisture while making the forage more digestible. Soaked hay cubes or sprouted fodder (which you can grow yourself indoors) are other clever ways to introduce extra moisture into his diet. 

Whatever you do, do not rely on your horse eating snow as a supplement for drinking water. While horses will ingest the occasional mouthful of snow, too much snow can cause a drop in internal body temperature, forcing his body to burn calories to stay warm. 

Colic 

Colic happens every time of year. However, there are certain concerns more prevalent in winter that can increase the likelihood of colic. One of the most common types of winter colics is impaction colic. 

As the name implies, impaction colics are caused by a blockage in the horse’s intestinal tract, causing it to stop moving properly—gas and food build up behind the impaction, causing pain and a distended stomach. 

How to Prevent Winter Colic

The protocol for reducing the chances of impaction colic in winter is largely the same as any other time of year; lots of forage fed little and often, plenty of turnout and hydration. 

The problem in winter is often due to changes in management practice. For instance, grass-kept horses may be brought inside or confined to stalls and sheds during the first snowstorm, which can cause colic. Instead, try to stick to the following management guidelines:

As much turnout as possible. Turnout has a ton of mental and physical health benefits for your horse – many small meals, constant but gentle physical movement, and stress-reducing social interaction. 

Horses are often brought inside during the winter, but this is usually more for the convenience of handlers than the horse. Going from being outside 24/7 during the warmer months to spending most of his time confined to a stall will be hard on his gut and made worse if this confinement is combined with high concentrate diets. 

Focus on forage. If you can, eliminating or reducing grain in favor of hay is a great place to start. Having regular hay available provides plenty of bulk and keeps the intestines moving, important for preventing colic.  

However, it’s even more important to keep drinkable water on offer at all times, especially if your horse is going from grass to hay. Hay is much drier than grass, which can increase the likelihood of dehydration and impaction colics. Soaking or steaming hay before feeding can help increase moisture content and improve digestibility, but water must be available at all times if a horse is on dry hay.

Keep them hydrated. Yup, you already know keeping your horse hydrated this winter is essential. Not just for optimal functioning but also to prevent colic. A well-hydrated horse can produce enough saliva to break down his food, meaning it passes more easily through his gut. 

Respiratory Problems 

Respiratory problems are common and can happen at any time of year – some experts suggest that as many as 80% of stall-kept horses will suffer from some kind of respiratory issue. But there are a few factors specific to winter weather and changing management practices that make breathing problems like coughing and heaves even more likely in winter.

How to Prevent Winter Respiratory Problems 

The best way to prevent winter respiratory problems is to improve airflow as much as you can: 

• Keep shed doors and windows open as much as possible.  
• If using split stall doors, keep the top half open. 
• If drafts are a serious problem, consider a blanket or old cooler over an open window to reduce the chill while allowing ventilation. 
• If horses get chilly, add an extra blanket before you close a window. 
• Store dusty things like hay, straw, and shavings away from the barn if you can. Not only will this improve the fire safety of the barn, but it can also minimize unnecessary dust. 
• Clean, dust, and de-cobweb as much as possible. 
• Be aware that sweeping can stir up settled dust particles. Douse aisles lightly with a watering can or mist from a hose to keep the dust down.

You can also implement different feeding practices during the winter (or better yet, year-round!) to minimize the amount of dust your horse has to contend with. 

• Avoid feeding dusty hay, but recognize that even the best hay will have a bit of dust in it. 
• If you can, feed hay from the ground instead of hay nets or hay racks. 
• Shaking out dry hay before feeding, instead of just throwing him a flake, to release dust before it makes it to your horse. 
• Soak forage before feeding, unless it’s below freezing. 

Even with all these methods in place, consider limiting time indoors as much as possible (including time in dusty indoor arenas, too). If your horse gets time off or a reduced workload during the winter, consider keeping him at grass for the season instead of indoors. 

Be wary of working him too hard in cold weather as well. It can be tempting to use the “off-time” to get him in shape before show season, but heavy work when the air is frigid can be hard on his lungs and aggravate any existing respiratory issues. Here are some alternate ideas for you and your horse to enjoy the winter season together.

Fungal Infections 

If you live in a part of the country that gets a lot of rainfall during the winter, chances are you’re already familiar with annoying infections like scratches or rain rot.  While neither of these afflictions is caused by the rain itself, the bacteria that cause them thrive in the damp environments that often accompany winter weather. 

Scratches (aka Mud Fever, Cracked Heels, Greasy Heel)

Horses with pink skin and white hair are most prone to scratches, but any horse can get it. You can spot a case of scratches by looking for red, crusty, or inflamed skin at the back of the pastern, near the heel bulb. 

Once a horse has scratches, you’ll need to regularly clean and dry the area and apply a zinc oxide-based ointment regularly. Always dry the backs of pasterns carefully –  you may want to keep a separate clean cloth just for this to avoid spreading the infection.  Don’t cover the area, as this risks trapping more moisture inside, encouraging the bacteria to breed. 

Take extra care when treating scratches- they can be painful, and even the calmest horse may react badly to having a scab picked at.

It can take weeks for a case of scratches to clear up. But if you don’t see any improvement after a week of cleaning and applying ointment, or if the scratches are so painful that the horse is lame, give your vet a call.

How to Prevent Scratches 

Preventing scratches usually comes down to keeping the area the horse is standing in as clean and dry as possible. 

Clean stalls regularly, of course, and do your best to minimize time spent in a muddy pasture, which is easier said than done. 

If your turnout area is muddy, particularly around popular spots like hay bales, gates, and water troughs, consider changing the location of these high-use areas and rotating water and hay locations.

Improving drainage or adding rubber mud grates around high-mud areas can also help get hooves up and out of the mud. 

Rain Rot 

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