Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

TIM'S TIPS

HORSES NEED HEAT

Horses, more than any other animal, are raised to be athletes, whether it's for high-stakes racing or a trip around the north 40. And like any athlete involved in exercise and conditioning, horses can succumb to heat and humidity.

You've heard the phrase, "sweating like a horse." The fact is, horses and man are the only athletic mammals that primarily cool themselves by sweating. The greater the exercise intensity, the greater the heat buildup in the body and the greater the need for heat dissipation. The more the body sweats, the more it dehydrates.

Preventing dehydration is the key to preventing thermal injury.

Excessive dehydration in a horse can lead to fatigue, electrolyte and pH disturbances, loss of coordination, orthopedic injuries and even death. Under normal conditions, water losses can be compensated by providing adequate water, a normal diet and salt and mineral supplementation. Most horses will rehydrate within a 24-hour recovery period between exercise programs.

Another tool that can be used to avoid heat injury in horses is the comfort index, which is the sum of temperature (degrees Fahrenheit) and the relative humidity. Relatively inexpensive devices are available that can quickly measure both.

If the sum is below 130, the horse should have no problem regulating its body heat.

If the comfort index is between 130 and 150, the horse will sweat, but it should be able to exercise with no major problems as long as normal fluid replacement is allowed.

If the index exceeds 150 and the humidity is greater than 75 percent, heat dissipation could be a problem.

A horse should be closely monitored during strenuous workouts. When the comfort index exceeds 180, the normal routes of heat dissipation won't work and all workouts should cease.

Another concern for horse owners is electrolyte replacement. Normally, a balanced ration and a good salt and mineral supplementation program will suffice, but substantial sweating can lead to a water and electrolyte deficit. The result could be weakness, muscle cramps, an acid-base imbalance and decreased performance.

It is critical that animals that are beginning a vigorous training program or that are not acclimated to high temperatures be given electrolyte supplementation. Providing adequate water and nutrition, monitoring the heat and humidity, and using common sense can prevent serious health problems and even death.

For more information about the care of horses, contact a veterinarian or your local office of the Cooperative Extension Service, University of Arkansas.

CATTLE NEED WATER

Not only do beef cattle need water -- and lots of it -- to survive and prosper, they also need clean water.

How much water beef animals need depends on the temperature and their size and stage of production. On a dry, 95-degree day in the summer, a cow nursing its calf might drink 20 gallons of water, compared to 15 gallons for a non-nursing, or dry cow.

Like humans, how much water an animal consumes also depends on what they're eating. A person eating salted peanuts is going to drink more liquid than someone eating a watermelon. And a cow eating dry hay is going to drink more water than a cow eating grass that is 85 to 90 percent water, as is often the case in early spring.

Lush pasture grass sometimes contain so much water that cattle have trouble consuming enough actual grass to meet their protein and energy needs. Some people will feed their cattle hay to get more dry matter in them.

Making sure that cattle get the right amount of water is certainly important, but so is providing contaminant-free water.

The most common contaminate is the blue-green algae found in farm ponds. Algae is a problem in ponds, because there is not a constant turnover of water, as there is in a stream. The water just sits there.

The algae problem is usually worse in the middle to late summer, when there is less rainfall and the water level is low. The algae subsists on nutrients that have run into the pond, often from cattle manure or commercial fertilizer. Rain can wash the nutrient into the pond. Cattle can be harmed, or even killed, by consuming blue-green algae.

The most common solution -- but only a temporary one -- to an algae problem is to apply copper sulfate.

The best approach is to limit the nutrients going into the pond. One way to keep manure out of a pond is to put up a fence to keep the cattle out. A farmer can install a drain pipe below the dam that allows water to run into a trough by gravity.