What Does It Mean To Rug A Horse

Many people rug a horse by putting a rug on at the outset of winter and leaving it on throughout the winter regardless of the weather.

What does it mean to rug a horse.

If they went out to look on a fine day they would likely be confronted with an excessively sweating horse dying to have a roll in the dirt to satisfy the itch that this entails. It s a fine balance you could give the horse more hay and rug the horse less which would be more natural for the horse but often this is not done in this order. The coat of an unrugged horse stands up in cold weather to trap air and warm the horse. If you decide to rug you have to compensate for this mechanism as a rug will stop the hair from being able to do its job.

In some circumstances a rugged horse is actually colder than an unrugged horse if it is a badly fitting thin rug that flattens the hair. If you re looking to enhance your horse s shine try a nylon lined rug. One can only speculate as to why. But does this mean it s time to drag out the rugs we stored away last spring.

The horse on a forage ration which doesn t mimic nature will almost certainly require some extra rugging to compensate for this. The first is of course that the horse has a fur coat. Very few rugs are required in the summer months your rug of choice would most likely be a fly sheet which due to its colour acts as a heat defensive system retracting the suns rays keeping your horse cooler for longer.