To Blanket or Not to Blanket: The Story of putting it on and taking it off!

According to a podcast episode featuring equine experts from Oklahoma State University, the University of Minnesota, and Rutgers University, the decision to blanket a horse depends on several factors, including climate, the horse's coat, and access to shelter. The experts recommend blanketing a horse if it has been clipped, lacks access to shelter when temperatures drop below 5 degrees Fahrenheit, or has a thin coat and is shivering. Ultimately, the choice is not a simple yes or no, as it is influenced by the individual horse's needs and the owner's management practices.

Transcript of podcast episode Welcome to Extension Horses Tack Box Talk Series, Horse Stories with a Purpose. I’m your host, Dr. Kris Hiney, with Oklahoma State University, and today’s story is the age-old question, to blanket or not to blanket. And to help address that question, today we have Dr. Krishona Martinson from the University of Minnesota. Hello, thanks for having me. And Dr. Carey Williams from Rutgers University. Hello, everybody. We always get asked that by lots of horse owners. Are we supposed to put a blanket on a horse or not? But I know it’s not always just a yes or no easy question. So, Carey, do you want us to get started with helping to address, do you put a blanket on or not? Yes, I can start, and I think that is a great question, because a little history about myself, I actually grew up 18 years of my life in northern Wisconsin, almost into Lake Superior, so you can only imagine it is quite cold, right, Krishona? Because that’s pretty close to where you’re at. owned a blanket. I never put a blanket on my horse. I moved from there to Colorado State University as an undergraduate student. Again, never blanketed a horse, never did any of that. And then I moved to Virginia. and bought a horse, and the barn that I had it at would not let me board her there over the winter unless I bought a blanket. So, yes, I went from Wisconsin and Colorado to Virginia, and now New Jersey, and I own 4 blankets for my skinny little thoroughbreds. So I think it really depends, and I know that’s the age-old, answer that Extension likes to give, is it depends… depends on your climate, it depends on your horse. You know, right now, outside, I’m looking out my door, it’s pouring rain, it’s 50 degrees, and it’s supposed to drop to 28 degrees tonight here in New Jersey. I finally took the blanket out to the barn so that my skinny little thin-coated thoroughbred would have a blanket tonight, because I think, yes, she’s gonna be shivering, she’s gonna be cold, and she’s gonna need one. I want to back up. When you moved to Virginia then, was it more like a cultural thing that you were not going to fit in if your horse didn’t have a blanket, or did they just think you were, like, a terrible person? You know, it’s funny, I think it’s just the mindset of certain people and certain barns that, you know, horses can’t… Survive, unless they have one. And what I don’t think they understood is a lot of people, which I wasn’t one of them at the time. will clip their horses in the winter, because they want to keep riding them, they don’t want them to be super sweaty, they want them to be able to dry out quicker. So, yeah, absolutely, if you’re clipping your horse in the winter, it should 100% have a blanket. Because they don’t have any other way to thermoregulate and to keep themselves warm. However, that was just the opposite of growing up in Wisconsin. I never clipped my horse, and, you know, they never needed a blanket, because they grew super heavy coats. Which I’m not going to talk much more about living up there, because I know Krishona lives up there currently. We have an expert So, okay, so we definitely have a firm yes on if your horse is clipped and has to wear a blanket. So let’s get a little bit more insight into this from the very Northland. So, Krishona, what’s your perspective? Yes, so I couldn’t agree more with Carey that it depends, but if you want to open up a can of worms that is hotly debated, just mention the word blanketing. And it quickly escalates into a heated conversation. And because of that, and because it so depends, and a lot of times it is reflective of the human owner’s comfort and their warmth. and how they transfer that to the horse. But what we’ve done is we’ve come up with just some basic six guidelines, and really, it kind of summarizes some of the things that… Carey has said. So, our recommendation is that a horse should be blanketed if they do not have access to shelter, and the temperature drops below 5 degrees Fahrenheit. If there is a chance the horse will become wet, so Carey cold rain that you’re having. If the horse has had its winter coat clipped. If the horse is very young or very old. If the horse hasn’t been acclimated to the cold, for example, the horse is coming up from Oklahoma to Minnesota. And if the horse has a body condition score of 3 or less. So essentially, I have just summarized into 6 points what Dr. Williams has shared with us. nd if your horse doesn’t fit into one of those categories, so for example, I personally have healthy adult horses that are out 24-7 with plenty of access to shelter and are fed well. they do not get blanketed, because they don’t really have a need, and I haven’t seen any adverse effects from not blanketing them at this time. So, I want to go back to a few of those points. You said if it, if it stays above 5 degrees Fahrenheit, that they probably don’t need a blanket. Now, I used to live in the north, but now I live in Oklahoma. I’ve not seen it 5 degrees Fahrenheit here at all since I moved here, so are you saying that I don’t want you to say yes or no, right? In Oklahoma, that maybe it’s… it’s not as necessary? Exactly. So these are guidelines to help people make a decision. Obviously, it is your horse, you can do what you like. However, we… from past research, and I don’t know, Dr. Williams and Dr. Hiney, you’d probably know better, right? You go back to years and years ago, and we do have a pretty good idea that a horse is most comfortable in. And actually, a lot of times, even when a horse access to shelter and it’s cold. You’ll find them happily out in the middle of the field with their butt turned toward the wind, chewing on hay, not thinking anything different of it. So again, these are just guidelines. I realize in the southern part of the country that it doesn’t even get that cold. And you know, we’ve almost approached that already here this fall in Minnesota. We had a really early cold snap. Now it’s getting warmer again, but again. ust a guideline. I can actually add to that a little bit. So, yeah, Krishona’s right on, because, I mean, all animals have what’s called a thermoregulatory zone, and they have a lower critical temperature, and we call it… yeah, that’s what we call it, a lower critical temperature. And that has been researched a lot, that it doesn’t matter, really, where they’re adapted to. I mean, it does a little bit, but their bodies still have this set lower critical… temperature, and that means that they will start expending more energy to stay warm if their bodies… if the temperature falls below their lower critical temperature. And really, you know, horses’ lower critical temperature is pretty low. Like Krishona said, it’s, you know, in the 5 to 10 degree range, so what’s really cold for us. If we walked outside without a coat, it would absolutely be cold, I think, for many people. Isn’t really for horses. They also, you know, obviously, as Krishona said too, though, if you brought a horse from Florida or Oklahoma to, you know. Wisconsin or Michigan even, you know, it’s gonna take them a little while to adapt. It’ll take them a little while to grow probably as much of a winter coat as they normally would in the South. So, there is something to be said for adapting a horse if you are moving it, you know, across the country. And even going the opposite way, if you have a horse with a full winter coat in Minnesota, and you take it down to Florida, you should absolutely consider clipping it, because otherwise they’re going to have problems the other way, in terms of heat. It’s really interesting when we think about hair coats, and maybe we think that’s a given that they grow winter hair and it’s all the same, but really, their hair coat differs according to the environment that they live in. o even my kids, they used to live in Wisconsin and had really thick coats, but they don’t grow nearly the amount of hair coat down here that they do up there. Have you guys kind of seen the same thing? Yeah, you know, Absolutely. So, we know that hair coat development is a combination of day length and also of temperature. So, obviously, we are, you know, the fall, everybody’s day length is getting shorter, but Kris, your temperature in Oklahoma is probably still in the 70s, I don’t know what it is, but something like that. We’re in Minnesota, we’re down to the 40s. Obviously, our horses are going to acclimate and prepare for that colder weather by growing a thicker hair coat than what you would see in Oklahoma. You also mentioned, the idea of – if the horse is gonna get wet. But… A lot of people don’t realize, or maybe just haven’t thought about that, there are different types of blankets that horses can wear, and if you put a blanket on, and it’s not waterproof. Right? What happens if we have that swing of temperature when it was snow, and now it turns into freezing rain? Yeah, absolutely. If you’re thinking of having a blanket, any blanket at all, and turning the horse outside, it should 100% be waterproof. Because that blanket, when now, you know, it’s insulated, when it’s dry, if you add moisture to it, and it gets through to the horse’s skin, it is now becoming more detrimental that they have a blanket on that is wet than if they didn’t have one on at all. Because now they’re going to catch chills, they’re going to get cold, And not only that, now their skin is damp, there could be a risk of bacterial infections and fungal infections and all that kind of thing if they leave a wet blanket on. Not to mention all the rubbing and chafing. So, you know, wet blankets are just a nightmare to begin with. So, make sure that it’s a… 100% waterproof blanket, and make sure… I know a lot of people wash their blankets year after year after year, and five, six years go by, and they’re still using the same blanket that maybe 5 years ago was fully waterproof, but might not be anymore. So, after a rainstorm like we’re having today, it was after Absolutely be recommended to bring the horse in at night, pull the blanket off, make sure that they are still dry underneath, or even swap blankets out, put a dry one on them, and let the wet one dry out, before you, you know, just kind of leave them and forget about them. And just to follow up on that, I think that’s so important, because if we’ve all seen a horse that’s dry, their hair stands straight up. And that straight up is what really helps them regulate their body temperature. So when they become wet, their coat gets mushed down. I know mushed isn’t a scientific term, but help me. It gets squished, mushed, pushed down, whatever. Whatever, you can use whatever word. Thank you. But, you know, and Carey, that’s what happens with a wet blanket, right? They’re heavy. I mean, when you lift a wet blanket, and it pushes their hair coat down, and it really does a disservice, because now they really have a challenging time thermoregulating, because their hair coat can’t stand up, because we have this heavy, wet blanket over top of it. Yeah, absolutely, and we call that loft with the hair, so the hair has loft, and it actually will trap the warm air underneath the loft of the hair. So if you flatten the hair and you get rid of the loft, there’s no warm body heat insulating them with the loft of the hair. So that’s why, you know, they also say, once you start blanketing, you always blanket. So, if you’ve started now, like today, my horse is getting a blanket on because it’s cold, well, guess what? Now I need to manage a blanket for the rest of the year, because now I’ve… she’s starting to grow a hair coat, but I’ve smooshed that hair coat down, to use Krishona’s terminology. It really is going to significantly decrease the ability for her to thermoregulate Because of the loss of the loss of the hair and the insulated properties of it. So we know that horses that are clipped, horses that don’t have shelter, horses that maybe are really old, or if it’s wet, can benefit f