I have a friend. . . [seriously!]. . . who is averse to feeding horses at high temps because it’s ‘not good for them.’ Of course, the big GI related issues you worry about with horses is colic, which can be pretty bad.
I know that horses don’t always have much of an appetite for feed when it’s really hot, but I haven’t been able to find anything to corroborate that it’s actually bad, and specifically possibly colic inducing.
So. . . is there anything scientific to it? I found cites that mention that feeding increases body heat, but that’s not quite showing how it’s harmful–or to what degree [no pun intended] body head is increased.
[It’s not a point that I would ever bring up in real life. I’ve been around horse people long enough to know that a lot of what I consider lore, they consider dogma.]
Well, we are surrounded by horse owners, and I’ve never heard anyone mention this. Out here, there are often stretches of many weeks where the temperature is above 95, even at night.
IANAV, but I guess horses, like other mammals, are pretty good at regulating their body temperature, at least as long as they have access to fresh water.
Besides, what “feeding” is your friend referring to? Horses would be out grazing in the summer, wouldn’t they?
I have a good friend who owns horses, so I asked her about this.
She said it’s not the weather, it’s the horse. If the horse is hot (like it’s just been exercised or been out riding) you want to wait for it to cool down before you feed it or give it water. And the restriction is only for grains, as this can cause colic. Eating grass or hay is ok. When her horses have just come back for a ride, she isolates them in a pen with no water until they cool down. After the horses have cooled down, then it’s ok to feed them and give them water.
I was surprised about the water bit.
When I told her that someone thought it was a bad idea to feed horses when it was hot out (like above 95 deg F) she just looked at me funny and said no.
Horses need a lot of water – 10-20 gallons per day. On hot days, they sweat and thus need to drink more. Horses also need to have their food quite wet when being digested – insufficient wetness is the most common cause of impaction colic. Thus horses produce a great amount of saliva, especially when eating dry grains. (Whereas green pasture grasses have a fair amount of moisture in them.) Producing that much saliva is harder when the horse is also sweating out a lot of moisture. Also, before automatic waterers, water tanks could sometimes run low on water on really hot days.
So all those things combined can make it a bit more risky to feed horses dry food on hot days. You just have to make sure they have plenty of water available, too. And that they are drinking it, thus having salt blocks around.
P.S. In northern climates, cold winter weather can cause similar problems, because horses drink less water when it is very cold. So you may need to heat up their water in the winter to encourage them to drink enough.
that’s an old myth that was proven to be untrue years ago. It’s quite cruel and possibly damaging to the horse to deny it water when it’s hot. Horses who have been exercising need water. Horses need to sort of constantly eat, so denying them food is also cruel.
I suspect the OP’s question is about someone who has heard this myth about not watering hot horses and has expanded upon it.
A couple decades ago I went on a week long horseback tour in Monument Valley. We rode those horses nearly 8 hours a day in high temps. Whenever we took breaks the horses were allowed to immediately drink as much as they wanted.