Light Reign Stables

12/29/2025

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12/02/2025

THE COLD WEATHER IS UPON US! ❄️

Are you familiar with the many adaptations that help your horse stay warm during the cold winter months?

🌾 Hindgut digestion of hay produces the most heat, acting as a small furnace inside of the horse. This is why free choice; good quality hay is so important in the winter.

💪 Horses have a huge muscle mass and muscle activity produces heat. This includes running and playing and even shivering if their body temperature starts to drop. It is important to remember that these activities also will result in a bigger caloric demand so free choice hay and in some cases, grain, is often needed.

🧥 To blanket or not to blanket is a constant debate but either way, as it starts to get cold your horse will grow a thicker coat. If you decide to leave your horse unblanketed you may notice that they look “fluffy”. This is due to a phenomenon called piloerection where the hair stands up to better trap air within. Two layers of the coat also help with warmth. The inner layer is softer and has air pockets to create an insulating layer. The outer layer is coarse and has oils that keep moisture from penetrating the insulating layer and keep the horse warm.

⚖️ Wild horses go into the winter heavier than ideal, and the fat serves as an extra layer of insulation. However, if a horse is going to be kept heavily blanketed and in a barn during the cold weather months this is unnecessary and can lead to obesity related issues.

🦵Their distal limbs (below the knees and hocks) are made of mostly bones and tendons, tissues that are resistant to the cold temperatures.

🦶The hooves have an alternative route of blood circulation through larger vessels that can be used in low temperatures. This is why horses can stand in snow without detrimental effects.

👃A horse’s nose has a robust blood supply and is rounded so that it is less susceptible to frostbite than a human’s nose.
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Courtesy of the AAEP Horse Owner Education Committee

11/24/2025

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Ohio Department of Agriculture gives update on Equine Herpes Virus in State of Ohio

11/09/2025

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I was doing some research on horses eyesight and found it fascinating so I thought I would share some facts with you guys - feel free to share 😊 if you have a horse who regularly spooks, have a read!😊🐴

Did you know horses have the largest eyes out of ALL land mammals? 😁
The first image is a humans eyesight and what we see. The second is a horses eyesight. They have a blind spot directly in front of them and cannot “merge” their vision into one image like we can. This makes it all the more incredible at how the horse can jump, especially when we ask them to jump “skinny” fences and combinations 😱

Horses do not focus their eyes the way we do. Have you ever seen a horse raising and lowering its head as it looks at an object? It does that to adjust the focal length, moving until the object comes into focus on its retina. When you see a horse shy at a sudden movement behind him or next to him, his peripheral vision has sighted the movement but has not yet had time to focus on it.

Even when the horse has focused as best it can, its sight is only three-fifths that of a human. In other words, when looking at an object twenty feet away, the horse sees only as much detail as a person would see if the object were thirty-five feet away. Simply, when you are out riding and see a strange object ahead, you will recognize what you are seeing long before your horse does.

So we can cut our horses some slack when they spook at something that we think is “silly” 😁

Another interesting fact is that the right eye reports to the right side of the brain and the left eye reports to the left side of the brain. This explains why horses may spook on the right rein and then after showing them the object they go past it fine, but when you change rein they still spook at it again on the left rein.

Contrary to popular belief, horses CAN also perceive depth. "Apparently, horses have many of the same depth-detecting skills that we have. They have true stereoscopic vision, despite having lateral eyes."

When you really think about it, isn’t it incredible that we, as a predatory being, can ride upon the back of a horse, a prey animal who’s every instinct tells it to run from us? 🐎

Horses are amazing ♥️

Original post and photo credit: Sophie Seymour
Thank you Sophie Seymour for sharing your research with us.

07/16/2025

Cold hosing efficiently. Love these soaker hoses from Big Dee's! Pete was recently diagnosed via xrays with navicular. Not a diagnosis we wanted but it gave us answers. Our farrier is coming out this morning for corrective shoeing. Hopefully that brings my boy some relief.

07/16/2025

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06/15/2025

Had a little buzz around the barn the other day! 1000+ visitors stopped by and hung out for a bit! A beekeeper friend was happy to remove our new friends and give them a new hive to call home. Can't wait to get fresh honey!

04/24/2025

Sunny just hanging out enjoying the evening.

04/04/2025

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04/03/2025

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Number of horses per square mile in the US.

03/28/2025

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01/21/2025

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