Beating the Heat During the Dog Days of Summer: Ideas for decreasing heat stress in horses

As summer drags on the heat can become a serious problem for many horses.  The primary way in which horses cool themselves is through sweating.  While the exact mechanisms for inducing sweat production in horses are not yet fully understood, some experts believe that prolonged, consistently high sweat rates can lead to a kind of “exhaustion” of the sweat glands in horses which may result in anhidrosis (the inability to produce sweat adequately).  Recommendations to help address anhidrosis center on finding ways to keep horses cooler, decreasing the need for sweat production.  Here are a few ideas you may want to try to keep your horses cooler this summer.

1.  Feeding management. At rest, body heat is produced primarily by microbes in the hindgut digesting the forage a horse eats.  Try providing the bulk of the horses’ daily ration overnight.  Ration out smaller quantities of hay during the day and give them the largest portion for overnight consumption. Feed concentrates later in the evening and early in the morning as well.

Feeding Program for Orphan Foals

A mare’s death is a tragedy that will be compounded if her foal isn’t quickly placed on an effective feeding and care program.  However, with proper nutrition and veterinary support, orphaned foals can be managed and successfully developed into healthy adults.  To help orphans through the tough early stages of life, an emergency feeding program was developed at the Purina Animal Nutrition Center.

Starting at birth, here are the steps in an orphan foal feeding program:

• Day 1: The first and most important step is getting colostrum into newborn foals within the first 2 hours of life. This “first milk” gives foals the antibodies they need to temporarily build up their immune systems to fight disease, but after 18-24 hours they can no longer absorb these antibodies. Check with your veterinarian right away to see if foals should receive medication of any kind and if they have achieved proper immunoglobulin levels.

Congratulations Dr. Kelly Vineyard on your book chapter!

Equine Applied and Clinical Nutrition is a brand new text book available from Elsevier Publishing. It is an up-to-date, in-depth resource for equine nutritionists, veterinarians and nutrition buffs; written by experts in their individual fields. Dr. Warren (University of Florida) and Dr. Vineyard are authorities on the utilization and supplementation of fat in horses. I have enjoyed paging through the text and appreciate all the time and diligence that goes into such an undertaking. Writing a book chapter is a labor of love and the rewards include a personal sense of accomplishment and service instead of payment and great accolades. So congrats Dr. Vineyard on your contribution to Equine Applied and Clinical Nutrition, we are happy to have a “fat expert” in the house! 

What do these three pictures have in common?

They are all from upcoming Purina presentations at the Equine Science Society Symposium in Mescalero, New Mexico!  We have 4 accepted research abstracts on a wide variety of topics, ranging from salt and water intake, how feed additives affect manure stock-piling, and protein supplementation in exercising horses.  Each research abstract will be presented as part of the symposium as a data-sharing PowerPoint presentation, describing the research hypotheses, methodologies, results and implications.  If you would like a sneak peak of the research and other topics being presented, the abstracts and full papers have already been published and uploaded to the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science website at: http://www.j-evs.com/

More information about the meeting can be found at http://www.equinescience.org/2013/

Also, we will be sure to blog about the meeting itself and provide insight into all the new and exciting equine research being presented.  The meeting covers everything from nutrition, exercise physiology, reproduction, teaching & extension and more!

The newest Purina Research Team Member!

Our first foal arrived early Wednesday morning and he is up, nursing, running around and doing great.  He has arrived just in time for a major snow and ice storm, so he has yet to be introduced to the outside world.  And since its only 28°F in the barn, he’s got his blanket on to help him stay warm.  Brrrrr! This year, our mares and babies are being fed our Ultium Growth feed, as we continue a large multi-year study monitoring mare gestation and young horse growth on a high fat and fiber concentrate.  This foal doesn’t have a barn name yet, but he does have an official research number, 1301. He’s quite the scrappy fellow and tries to kick at you when you scratch his rear end, and that’s how we like them!  Of course he will be trained to behave more appropriately in the coming days, but some spunk is a good sign in a newborn foal.  We are expecting 8 more babies in the next few weeks, hopefully not all will arrive in the middle of snow and ice. Maybe this foal should be named Stormy….