My horses are announcing that Spring is just around the corn..

My horses are announcing that Spring is just around the corner! Owning horses involves hard work, year round, but winter months are always increasingly challenging for me. I don’t love the bitter cold mornings. Instead of just feeding and watering my horses, the bitter temps often also involves breaking ice, scrubbing troughs with icy water causing chapped and freezing hands. Often in winter, chores are done in the dark and my body braces against the fierce nip of brisk air that makes leaving a warm bed exceptionally hard on the coldest mornings from January through early March. However, as I have been grooming the horses the last few days I have begun to feel and see the evidence of hairs turning loose, sticking to my hands, clothes, and face. 😆 The shedding of winter coats gives me welcomed proof that Spring is easing in, a kind reminder that warmer days are not too far away. Fun fact: did you know horses shedding their winter coat has nothing to do with temperature changes? It’s actually the slight lengthening of daylight hours that begins the process of shedding or “slicking out” for the summer. Horses have photo receptors within their eyes that pick up on the lengthening daylight hours, which triggers the pineal gland (part of the endocrine system, a gland situated just below the brain). The pineal gland controls melatonin secretion, which increases with shorter days. Elevated melatonin levels lead to winter coat development for the cold months that follow. Right now as the pineal gland appreciates the increasing hours of sunlight, melatonin production decreases triggering our horses to start letting loose of their winter hair. Humans are pretty amazing sometimes and it’s been discovered as horse owners that we can manipulate the growth cycle of our horses hair to keep our horses “slick” over winter months. This is done most often amongst show barns who prefer to keep their horses shiny and “show ready” year round. Horses in heavy work with a full winter coat can also be difficult to keep cool when shown at indoor venues, sheltered from winter weather, so it can be done with the show horse’s best interest in mind. The increased light also affects other hormones in our horses bodies allowing for manipulation of breeding cycles. Of course, altering any animal’s natural ability to grow an appropriate coat for the corresponding weather should never be taken lightly. If a horse’s coat is manipulated by human intervention and then they are expected to survive in the elements it becomes the human’s ethical obligation to blanket the horse accordingly to ensure they do not experience unfair disadvantages against temperature extremes. My horses pineal glands have signaled that we have almost made it through another winter and spring is on the way! 😍☀️🌷 So cheers to all the fellow horse owners who will be comforted and annoyed with the battle against horse hair from now until shedding season ceases!