08/12/2025
Overrugging is one of my absolute bugbears.
Here’s the facts:
- Horses thermoneutral range (the temperature in which they can easily regulate their own temperature to be comfortable without intervention) goes down to 5 degrees.
- Getting wet decreases their ability to keep warm because piloerection (fluffing up) doesn’t work so well
- clipped horses, very old horses, very thin horses, horses with poor dentition, horses with decreased mobility or horses with health issues such as PSSM might need extra help with keeping warm
- Natural light is one of the main sources of horses processing Vitamin D
- Over-rugging can lead to stress, overheating, rubs, rain scald from sweating under rugs, cause less movement, contribute to obesity
My own horses are rugged if there is heavy or persistent rain forecast, or night time temperatures are going to be under 5 degrees.
I do a lot of miles, 33,000 so far this year, and I’m always checking out horses in fields as I drive about. I’m often horrified to see on dry, warm September days of around 15 or 16 degrees field upon field of rugged horses. Certainly I see more horses rugged than not, most days.
They can’t ALL be old or have PSSM 🤷♀️
Every year my partner and I take a little winter weekend ride to one of the European Christmas markets, on his motorbike. (Christmas markets, another thing the Europeans do better than us!) This year we’ve come to Antwerp, so we had quite a long ride yesterday through some fairly rural areas. I’m going to guesstimate that we saw upwards of two hundred horses en route.
Of those, I saw TEN horses with rugs on. Around 5% of the horses I saw, I would say.
And it was 6 degrees.
Believe me, I had my thermals AND my heated gear on!
Three of the rugged horses I saw were quite clearly old and four were on a very posh yard and I’m guessing were clipped.
What is going wrong in the UK that we are consistently getting this so wrong?
Is it convenience? We want clean horses?
We simply don’t understand that horses don’t feel the cold in the same way we do?
It doesn’t seem like a lack of education as there is plenty of material out there on this topic?
I’d love to know! I know as welfare issues go it’s not the worst one, but it does seem to be such a common one!
