Working Ranch Magazine Summer 2025

TERRI CAGE/ADOBE

WEATHER “The first thing I always think about is what the weather is going to be like. And that helps prepare,” explained Dr. Comer. “I shipped my horses when I moved from South Carolina to Colorado, where the tem perature swing could be 20 degrees at their destination compared to the 95 degrees they were coming from.” According to Dr. Cromer, hydration is key in weathering transitions. When it’s cold, she also recommends a warm mash or warm water to warm them up and to be prepared with a wool cooler or a fleece cooler to help trap that body heat without having a cold sweat. STRESS “We know that prolonged stress in horses can predispose them to equine gastric ulcer syndrome. Not only is it a physical strain on your horse being on the trailer and maintaining balance in the trailer, but there’s also behavioral stress with changes in herd hierarchy, not traveling with their pasture bud dies, or not knowing where they’re going,” says Dr. Cromer. For a long time, according to Dr.

go a long way in offsetting the stress and exertion of the trip. Alfalfa specifically has calcium and phosphorus in it, which just so hap pens to be the same active ingredient as TUMS, which makes it an easy, nat ural way to help protect their stom achs around stressful events or travel. “Any sort of forage however is going to increase the number of chews that they produce because they have to break down that fibrous material, which makes more saliva, which has sodium bicarbonate in it. Bicarbonate happens to be a wonderful buffer that the horse naturally makes to buffer some of that stomach acid,” says Dr. Cromer. “Having an approved FDA Omeprazole before hauling and through the stressful event, can also be useful.” HYDRATION When it comes to hydration, you know your horse best. “Most of my junior career was spent with a horse who would only drink water from home. So one thing I like to have is a container of water that came from home or a water bucket that came from SUMMER 2025 I 73

Cromer, we didn’t consider physical exertion. Now there have been stud ies that can correlate the number of miles/hours traveled in a trailer to hours spent loping or galloping under saddle. “I think we do have to con sider the physical stress on those guys when they come off the trailer, and while we don’t have enough informa tion to put a threshold on distance, the general rule is more along the time of how long a horse’s stomach has been empty.” “Often horses are trailered on empty stomachs or may have a hay bag in front of them, but depending on who they’re riding with and what that ride experience is, they may not be eating from the hay. The longer the horse goes in between meals, the more predisposed they would be to developing gastric ulcer syndrome.” The best management strategy to mitigate that stress is to offer a quar ter to a half flake of alfalfa thirty min utes before they get onto the trailer. According to Dr. Cromer, offering your horses a small amount of alfalfa hay throughout the trailer ride, when you stop to fill up or take a break, can