It can be difficult to return a horse to pre-exercise temperatures in hot and humid environments, but sometimes it's even harder to keep a stationary horse comfortable in a hot stall. Horses that have exerted themselves are often hosed down or placed under misters until their body temperature returns to normal. Horses in stalls don't have this option and fans often can't move enough air to keep them comfortable when temperature and humidity really climbs.
Dr. Yuki Ojima and a team of researchers from the Kitasato University School of Veterinary Medicine in Towada wanted to know whether an ice blanket could solve these problems. According to The Horse, they found it could be a solution to improve equine comfort.
An added bonus? The ice blanket eliminates the need for the horse to have wet hooves for an extended period of time, minimizing the risk of thrush or white line disease created by some cooling measures.
To test their ice-blanket theory, the researchers used a light woven blanket and ensured that attached ice packs would not damage the horse's skin at three main contact points: the front of the back; the rear of the back and the loins. They also ensured that the temperature of the packs wouldn't increase so much in the sun that they couldn't cool effectively.
They used 19 horses to measure the following variables three times a day: skin surface temperature, heart rate, respiratory rate, rectal temperature, and plasma cortisol. The horses were stalled and not exercised on study days, which were when the ambient temperature was forecasted to exceed 77 degrees F.
The researchers found that when horses wore the blanket, the skin temperature on the front of the back decreased over time; the skin temperature decreased to the rear of the back and the loins, but not by as significant of an amount, most likely due to blanket shifting, the researchers note.
They also found that the horses' heart rates, respiratory rates and plasma cortisol levels decreased when wearing the ice blanket.
More research is needed to determine how effectively the ice blanket works on horses that have just exercised.
Read more at The Horse.
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