In a year when temperatures are soaring in much of the country and wildfires threaten areas with large horse populations, many horse owners are facing periods of drought. Summer droughts can be rough on horses because of high temperatures, limited water and scarce forages. There are ways to help horses maintain good health despite severe weather.
Drought brings dry, hot pastures
During a drought, you may have to make changes to your horse's diet as forage becomes unavailable and a new source of roughage must be found.
Evaluate your pastures for grazing potential. If grazing is limited or poor quality, replace it with a good quality roughage such as hay, hay cubes or sugar beet pulp. Horses need a minimum of 1 pound of roughage per 100 pounds of body weight every day to keep their digestive tracts healthy. This is non negotiable, and falling below this amount has it’s associated dangers in the form of colic, laminitis, gastric ulcers and loss of condition.
Traditionally the forage allowance is made up of hay, pasture and chaff. It is very important to provide sufficient bulk and enough fibre to keep the digestive system moving along. During times of drought, the nutritive value of the roughage is less important than the physical bulk of it, as poor quality, low energy roughage can be supplemented with hard feed to fill the gaps.
Concentrated feeds can be used to provide protein and energy to horses deprived of pasture because of the drought; however, they are not the best replacement for pasture grazing. Concentrated feeds should not comprise more than half of a mature horse's daily diet unless the horse is exercised intensely.
Consider the horses' ages and uses when making decisions about feeding. Young, growing horses, lactating broodmares and geriatric horses should be pastured in those areas with the best grazing or they should be given the highest quality hay. Older horses may have more trouble dealing with drought conditions and may have trouble digesting poor quality forage. Fillies and colts need more nutrients to grow and mature into healthy adult horses. For both younger and older horses, you may want to select concentrated feeds with higher fat and protein levels to meet their nutritional requirements.
Adequate water is another vital element of horse health during a drought. Ensure your animals have ready access to clean, fresh water. During hot weather, horses may consume 3 to 4 quarts of water for every pound of feed it consumes daily or around 25 gallons of water daily for a 1,200-pound horse. As grazing becomes limited, horses will be more tempted to eat anything that is green.
Check your pastures as well as areas around your pastures and barn for poisonous plants. Many of these will survive in dry weather when forage grasses die off. Mow or destroy the weeds or isolate horses from areas where poisonous plants are growing.
Throughout a drought, particularly a long one, continually take stock of the situation and reassess your ability to keep your horses healthy and well fed. If it is becoming too expensive, you may have to sell some of your stock in order to sustain the rest. It is unlawful to allow horses to go without food and become malnourished. If you have competition or breeding horses, you may decide to rest them or board them on a property that has some pasture in order to reduce their feeding requirements and thus reduce the associated costs.
In very severe droughts where horses cannot be fed or watered sufficiently and the animals cannot be sold, the question of euthanasia may arise. Although this is a drastic measure of last resort, if no other option is available, humane destruction will prevent unnecessary suffering of the animals.
You may have to make frequent changes to your horse’s diet during a drought as different ingredients become unavailable and a new source of a nutrient is found. Frequent changes to the diet, unfamiliar ingredients, and more concentrates in the ration increase the risk of colic, gastric ulcers, laminitis, and parasites.
Dry conditions do not favor survival of the larval stage of intestinal worms, so their concentration in the paddock is less during drought, but if there is a lack of forage, horses may start to eat droppings and graze the rough areas of the paddock. Continue to maintain a regular deworming program during drought to ensure that the horses get the maximum benefit from their feed, and regularly remove droppings from the paddock or yard.
Horses may begin eating tree bark or the fences if there is insufficient forage in the diet. If possible, make more forage available, either as hay or chaff, or use one of the alternatives. Where hay is extremely difficult to obtain, you may need to look to alternatives to supply a good chunk of the fibre and roughage in the diet. Care must be taken not to feed mouldy or uncured hay, but other than that, even a sub standard long stem grass hay will do where nothing else is available.
When a drought is over, careful planning for re-introdduction to paddocks and pastures is necessary. Pastures that have become dry and dusty will take time to fully recover, and until then the dangers to your horse of fresh, new grass will also have to be carefully managed. The temptation is to put the horses back into a pasture that is lush with new growth may be strong, but, as with all dietary changes, the introduction to new pasture must be done slowly to avoid the risk of colic and laminitis.
If possible, start by allowing just a couple of hours each day on the new pasture to assist both the changeover in diet for the horse and the recovery of the pasture. During the first months after the drought has broken, build up the period of time spent on pasture, moving the horses to different paddocks so that the new pastures will not become depleted immediately.
If possible, selectively graze your pasture by using temporary fencing. Beware of putting horses on pasture where there is insufficient grass, even though the field appears green. You will need to continue with supplementary forage until there is sufficient pasture for the horse to graze consistently.
You can gradually wean the horses off any extra grain and resume your usual management systems. However, for those horses that have lost body condition during the drought despite your best efforts, continue to provide enough feed to recover body condition before changing the ration.