Sunday, 06 February 2022
Ticking these topics off the traditional pre-season travel checklist is critical to ensuring the mechanical function and safety of your horsebox or trailer. Forethought regarding your horse’s respiratory health while in transit is equally important.
Nothing worse than loading a brilliantly prepared, healthy horse into the box and unloading the same horse at the show grounds coughing and wheezing. Competition life and stabling have enough variables to contend with: no need to compound them with new respiratory issues on arrival.
Hay is a double-edged sword when it comes to travel. On the plus side, forage keeps your horse happily occupied with eating, which helps reduce general travel stress. Chewing and digesting food keeps stomach acids at bay, lowering the risk of ulcers that often accompany that stress.
From a respiratory health standpoint, however, forage can be especially harmful when consumed on the road. Even hay of good nutrient quality is loaded with respirable irritants. Having its nose tucked into that for several hours, the horse can’t avoid inhaling these particles that trigger irritation and inflammation throughout the respiratory tract. It’s especially true because their head is elevated, rather than in the lowered position designed by Mother Nature to allow particle drainage out the nostrils.
Providing Haygain high temperature steamed hay allows your horse to while away the kilometers consuming forage that is virtually free of microscopic bits of dust, mould, bacteria and other allergens.
Ventilation is equally important to healthy horse travel. As temperatures allow, open vents and windows. A fly mask or another form of face protection can help protect the horse’s eyes and face if something flies in from outside.
Stopping for rest breaks every four hours is the conventional wisdom for longer trips. If a safe place can be found to unload the horses, letting them drink or graze with their heads lowered will help clear their airways.
Here’s to “safe travels” in every sense of the expression!