Trust the Horse: Study Shows Horses Decide When to Wear Blankets

Welcome to Conversations in Equine Science. I'm Nancy McClain and I'm joined by Kate Acton.

And this is the podcast where we take equine research and try to make it accessible for horse owners and enthusiasts alike. Remember that with each topic we discuss, it is important to get professional advice before implementing any of the research strategies. Hi, everyone. My name's Nancy McClain, and I'll be your host today, but I also have my co-host with me.

Kate, I'm so happy you're able to join in today and talk about a paper that you suggested, so go ahead and I'll let you do the introduction. Hi, Nancy. It's great to be back on and looking at some horse papers again.

This is one actually that colleague where I work, we were just chatting about different horse research topics and they mentioned, like, have you heard about this paper where horses are able to decide whether or not they want to wear their blankets based on the temperature? And I was just fascinated. So Nancy and I covered the first paper back in 2020 at some time.

Where that was a 2016 paper by Majel, and that one was titled, I have it here, Horses Can Learn to Use Symbols to Communicate Their Preferences. And they taught the horses how to use these three different symbols. One was whether they wanted to keep a rug on, one would stay the same, and one was off. And then this paper is the effect of weather conditions on the preference in horses for wearing blankets.

So this was in 2019. They followed on from their first paper, and knowing that the horses could now specify using these three symbols, whether they wanted to keep their rugs on or off, They tested that in a variety of weather conditions. So this is by C. Medjell et al. And the abstract of the paper, or to summarize it, is that the use of blankets in horses is widespread in Northern Europe. However, horses are very adaptable to low temperatures.

And the practice is questioned because blankets may hamper heat dissipation at high temperatures and also disturb free movement. The aim of this study was to gain information about horses' own preferences for wearing or not wearing a blanket under different weather conditions during the seasons. 10 horses that usually wear blankets and 13 horses usually not wearing blankets were kept outside in their paddock for two hours during different weather conditions.

So these horses were normally stabled overnight.

Then these horses were tested for their preference for wearing their blankets or not and when only considering air temperature and not the impact of other weather factors the horses preferred to have the blanket on in 80 and 90 percent of the testing where that temperature dropped below minus 10 degrees i don't know nancy if you have what that would be in fahrenheit yeah any chance but did you say minus 10 degrees celsius yeah yeah that would be 14 degrees Fahrenheit.

Okay so it's pretty cold weather and when the horses so 80 to 90 percent showed that preference when it was minus 10 in the horses usually wearing and not wearing blankets respectfully. So for the horses that usually wore a blanket 80 percent and 90 percent for those that don't normally wear one. As the air temperature increased the preference for keeping the blanket on decreased, so they wanted it off. And that air temperature is greater than 20 degrees Celsius, which would be 60 something.

68 degrees Fahrenheit, which to me is way too warm for a blanket on a horse. Yeah, I mean, when they go through it as well, like some of the horses that chose at those warmer temperatures to keep the blanket on, which was a very small number, like the majority as it got warmer chose for the blanket to be removed. But the small number that decided to keep it on, the researchers said they were visibly sweating under the blankets afterwards.

So I thought that was a bit of an interesting one that they didn't choose to remove it. Well, you know, that puzzled me as well. So I went back to the Maydahl 2016 to see how did they train these horses to pick these symbols. So they took the same groups. It was a total of 23 horses, the same 23. It took them 14 days to feel comfortable that the horses knew what they were picking.

But say they took the 10 that are normally blanketed okay then they only put up two symbols in training and that was to remove the blanket or to not make changes so the blank page and then remove the blanket which was the vertical line card so I thought okay how did they bridge that well when the horse picked remove the blanket they actually did remove the blanket and they did it over and over and over until they felt pretty confident that all 23 horses there wasn't one horse that failed to

to pick something and then they slowly did the same thing with the group of non-blanketed horses only the options were the horizontal line which was put the blanket on and the blank page which was or card which was make no changes so they did the same thing 14 days it took.

For the horses to go ahead and you know for them to feel comfortable and then the final leg of that was to add the third card so they did do it in steps and they did the training according to what the cognitive function of the horse would match so I could find no reason to think these horses you know did not know what they were picking because they kept reinforcing it you know reinforcing when they were making you know picking none of

them went and picked the fence board you know they they actually were very deliberate and quick in what they chose and they did have two hours of acclimation to the weather so it isn't like you just put them out and they're still warm from being in a barn, and then they did the test, they actually let them acclimate to whatever the weather was, rain, snow, wind. You know, so their methodology I thought was pretty spot on.

Yeah, I loved seeing how many times they actually tested this, because with the horses that normally have a blanket on coming out of the stable two hours in the paddock and then depending on the weather the horse made the choice whether they wanted to keep the blanket on or have it taken off and that was a group of 10 horses and they tested them 124 times and then for the horses that normally don't have a blanket came out of the stable two hours in the paddock then were asked whether

they wanted it put on or to stay the same, they tested them 231 times. So it was really... When you look at the fact that, you know, the majority were making choices in line with the weather, it is really rigorous from that point of view that they have tested so many times across variations and climates. And the horses are making choices that we would also deem sensible not to anthropomorphize onto them.

But when it is colder, we like to put on a jacket and when it's warmer, we've removed layers. But what was fascinating to me as well is that they had a mix of cold bloods and warm bloods and it's always been in my head that warm bloods are more temperature sensitive and they found that that really wasn't a big variation in the group of horses and in the very introduction to this paper they were saying that among owners of warm blood horses.

Riding horses, 96 and 97 percent reported to use blankets on their horse in Norway and Sweden. And this practice is surprising because horses have a very adaptable temperature variation and they can thrive in tropical to subarctic climates. And it's reported that if a horse is cold acclimatized, an adult horse who is fit and healthy has a lower critical temperature of minus 15 degrees Celsius.

So they can go to a much colder level than I would have thought like we don't reach that temperature in Ireland and we are rugging our horses now I know we rug for other reasons too like to help them maintain weight and when the grass is going to be more scarce a lot of our horses are turned out you know they're rugged year round to try and lower energy requirements but that really just surprised me because I thought.

The last, what really stood out to me to kind of come around to this paper is we've had some very cold weather in the last week, like a significant cold snap where we were minus five and minus six in some areas of the country, degrees Celsius. And that is pretty significant for us. And then today it's like six degrees. And I'm like, that's a 10 degree variation in the space of two or three days.

And as a horse owner you're there like am I putting this rug on am I taking this rug off you know like how to actually approach that but I just thought what a fascinating thing I know it would be so difficult to try and train your horse to use those symbols like I mean you could follow the paper and you could try and do that reinforcement training but if you did what an amazing way to communicate with them where they're able to actually tell you whether they want that on or not?

And you know, I did find a lot of what the horses chose match. Now, I don't put blankets on my horses currently because Greta was the older one. She was the one I was blanketing the most as she aged. I think their thermal regulation gets a little shaky and they need blankets.

And she when she was young she wouldn't tolerate a blanket being on but as she aged and I want to say probably from the age of 20 to you know 28 almost 29 she loved her blanket being on and so I could see that change in her demeanor but I thought Kate on the ones that still wanted a blanket.

At 68 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 degrees Celsius, I thought maybe they have a touch of metabolic issues already coming up that, you know, future research, maybe that's a little indicator that, you know, there's something going on. Maybe it's just an individual choice. That's an excellent point. to horses, you know, because I kept, that was kind of bugging me. And while I kept digging deeper, how did they train these horses?

And I thought when the temperature got about 50 degrees Fahrenheit or 10 degrees Celsius, the preference for blankets dropped significantly as it should, You know, and now the blanketed group had some clipped horses. Also, I did not see if the ones wanting to keep the blankets on were actually part of the clipped group. Did you see that, Kate? I think it was just the ones with blankets on. I don't think the, from what I saw, I don't think the other ones are clipped.

It doesn't say it anyway in the methods. Yeah. For the ones that. It said there were two warm bloods and two cold bloods clipped when the horses wore blankets. And it was the blanketed horses that chose the blankets at 68 degrees. But I wonder if that was the clipped horses. Yeah, it says none of the horses without a blanket were clipped. Right, right.

But the ones with the blankets that, you know, at that warm temperature of 20 degrees Celsius, there were two that wanted to keep their blankets on. And one was an older horse named Alto, but I wondered was he clipped because he had a blanket on, so he was in that group of 10, but it didn't say.

I looked and I don't know what he clipped and maybe that's why. Yeah, and at the very end, they did say that there were too few clipped horses to be able to really test the effect of clipping. Oh, that's right. That's right. But it could have been, because to my mind, it didn't state either if those two who chose to wear them were clipped. Yeah, it just bugged me because I know my horses.

There is no way at 40 degrees and sunny they do they would not even stand for a blanket they start rubbing on the fence and it itches them and and all that so that part kind of bugged me but only being I found a little piece about alto sorry oh put across you there Nancy it's alto was the geriatric horse but Alto was a cold blooded horse wasn't clipped because he was part of the non-blanket group so the non-blanket groups none of them were clipped and he routinely asked for the blankets.

Isn't that crazy? So it must have been his thermal regulation was reduced with age. And it could have been arthritis even. You know, you get the little dampness in your bones. I'm making it like a person now, but, you know, who knows? Well, the same reason, I suppose, why, interestingly, the majority of horses wanted to wear the blanket when it was raining, but didn't mind if it was snowing. Yeah.

And I've had my horses in a bad snowstorm, very little wind, but where the snow piled up between their ears like three inches and was over their body, it does not melt.

It's just like an insulator on them and I make sure when I bring them in I brush it off with like a regular soft face brush so I'm not like digging it into the hair coat because as it warms it will melt you know and then freeze and all that but I thought this was really an awesome paper kind of a neat update to the first episode we did. And then I just wanted to reiterate that when horses prefer no blanket, it was above 10 degrees Celsius or 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

And then it was also, they wanted them removed. It says most or all horses prefer to have blankets removed at 68 eight degrees Fahrenheit or above 20 degrees Celsius. And that makes total sense. The horses made some good choices. Yeah. I thought as well, what was interesting is that even at the low temperatures, the, And I'll have to go back to what the temperature was. If the sun was out, then the horse wanted the blanket off, even though the temperature was still significantly low.

And then if it was cloudy with a low temperature, they wanted the blanket on. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the wind makes a difference, too. I think a wind speed of like 18 miles per hour. I'm not quite sure what that would be in meters per second, but the paper measured it in that. That always is the likelihood of wanting a blanket as far as the horses go because wind strips that hair insulation, the ability of that undergrowth to insulate.

And then also I noticed in high winds, that's when my horses want to be in their shelter. Yeah. The wind is the worst. Like we had a bad wind chill here the other day and it makes it feel, I think it said, you know, when you look on your phone and it says temperature is this, but feels like this. I think the temperature was minus one, but it said feels like minus eight. And I was like, oh, great. I know.

And you've had colder temperatures than we have had recently, Kate, because like today, we'll be 60 degrees Fahrenheit, which is unheard of in January in Midwest USA. But a few weeks ago, we went a 40-degree increase in temperatures in a few hours. And that always drives me crazy because, you know, it's such a big change for the horses. They go from sweating in their winter hair coats to, you know, it's 10 degrees in the morning Fahrenheit. So anyway, it's just, I think...

The one thing I dislike the most are the huge temperature changes when you're trying to manage horses. And I really feel for them because, like you're saying, Nancy, if you are working and you go check on your horse in the morning and they're turned out all year round, or even if they're just turned out for that season, you check on them in the morning and you're going to check on them in the evening after work.

In the day that temperature could be so variable to the day before and you really almost feel like it would be great to get back and take that rug off for a couple hours but it's not always practical so what made me feel a little bit better about the paper is that they did have that, variance like up to 20 degrees celsius or 68 degrees fahrenheit then they all want it off so at least you're thinking okay we're not going to have a swing of 30 degrees in one

day or else definitely something has gone awry in the world yeah absolutely and i think our our climate there is something awry but you know i can't believe that you know we still have sometimes on these warm days flies you see you know that never happens. Skating on ponds in January. So that just doesn't occur anymore.

And I think it's wise as horse owners that we manage according to the weather if we can, and then also keep that water going in them. You know, however, I give electrolytes now pretty much year round. We're back 20 years ago, I only gave electrolytes really in the summer when, you know, they, oh, it was hot. They were working more. Now I want them drinking, you know, as much in the winter as what's needed in the summer. And it's because of these huge temperature swings.

Yeah. You know, so, but I think we just have to do the best we can and know our horses and look at you know little I guess signs that maybe they're not getting enough water yeah I think it was just a great paper and like you said Nancy you could see it in your horses when they won't stand to have the rug put on or when they're showing signs of wanting it removed and it's just a nice way to kind of I suppose bridge that

to owners that see how your horse behaves and just be mindful of that over the next couple of weeks and then you'll know for the following year when they're asking in their own way for that rug to be taken on or off. Absolutely a great way to summarize it Kate and you know I think it was a good paper thanks for recommending it and you know it's good read at anything it was very easy to read and interesting. Yeah, it was a fantastic, fantastic methodology in it as well.

I'm definitely going to be having a look to see what those authors have done since.

Yeah, yeah, that would be great. And then I wanted to give a shout out to tailspinbracelets.com. I did send them part of Greta's tale. Most of you know, and thank you for the emails, sending condolences. Greta was almost 29. She would be 29 now, and I put her down late September due to the winter coming on, and it just felt like she would not have done well through the winter. And I sent a sample of her tail, an inch diameter by 12-inch portion of her tail to tailspin bracelets.

And you can go to their website and I tell you what I was blown away when they sent me that bracelet it is just absolutely beautiful so I think what I'll do Kate is I'll take a picture of it and put it on Instagram and then you can go to Nancy underscore McLean seven look at Kim's artwork it's absolutely a treasure I said I would never do that and she was such a special horse to me that I did it and I'm so happy I did now I wish I would have done it to some other horses but

anyway tailspins.com wonderful product and I can't say enough good things about it. Such a lovely way to still keep them close. I have a little clipping from one of, like my first dog who was so special to me. And I've never used it. It's just in a little velvet bag that I've always kept in a safe place ever since.

And it's the kind of thing that people don't fully understand unless they've been a horse owner or a pet owner, that the connections and the bonds you make with them are like nothing you know I well maybe I'm biased because I'm so animal orientated but like it sometimes it can feel almost deeper than the connections you have with people because you're learning to communicate to each other in different ways and you're really choosing to interact with each other in a

lot of the time these very positive of ways where they really uplift you and on your most difficult days they're kind of that steadiness that's there so I just think it's a lovely way to remember her and what a fantastic fantastic business for you know horse owners to be able to do that to be able to send the hair and have that Amazing.

Yeah, recently, my racehorse had a couple of wonderful runners on the racetrack, and they had some owner took samples of these horses. They're still alive. One of them went Seize the Gray, went to stallion duty, and I saw where Kim did a couple bracelets on these horses, And they actually put them in an auction to benefit Thoroughbred Aftercare. And people are so pleased. So definitely a reliable company you can trust and they produce a good product.

Amazing. So I'll share that. Our Conversations in Equine Science Instagram page, as I yearly update, has been on hiatus during my PhD. And I'm actually stepping away from most social media for weeks at a time, which is such a nice feeling to just kind of switch off all the distractions and the noise.

But I'll pop on to share that as well. Okay. Well, Kate, thank you so much for taking time and joining in. And I did commit you to an episode in spring about the steroid use and laminitic events in sport horses. So we'll for sure get together for that one. But if you get another break or another chance, we'll do another episode. Amazing. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks so much, Nancy. Okay.

Thank you for listening. And if you've enjoyed this podcast, give us a five-star review from wherever you listen from. Also, drop us a line or follow us at Nancy underscore McLean seven on Instagram. Thanks so much, everyone. Have a great week. Bye-bye.