Horse rugs - does your horse really need them all?

There really are rugs for every occasion, but consider the above points before you buy them all. For example, if your horse is stabled at night, you may think that you need a lightweight rug for the spring, a middle weight rug for the autumn and a heavy rug for the depth of winter. If you buy that combination for the field (i.e. turnout rugs) as well as the stable, then without any effort you’ve managed to purchase 6 rugs and that’s before you start thinking about travel rugs, anti-sweat rugs and fly sheets!

One idea to cut costs a bit is to double up on rugs. In other words, ask yourself if you could cut out the heavy weight rugs by allowing the horse to wear the light weight underneath the medium weight rug when necessary. This cuts down your rug store by 2 rugs and means that the lightweight rug can be used as a ‘vest’ that the horse keeps on day and night (obviously making sure it doesn’t rub), meaning that the horse isn’t stripped naked to add different rugs when it’s freezing cold. Although some people don’t like horses to be weighed down with lots of rugs, remember that we’re always told to layer clothes to keep in the heat – the same surely applies to horses. The lightweight rug can also be used as a travel rug (as horses often get very hot when travelling), thereby saving you the cost of another rug.

Of course other ways to save money on rugs is to purchase them at the end of season sales or from discount stores. Alternatively, you can buy some fantastic second hand rugs from the web and locally. If you imagine that many people buy and sell their horses quite regularly and often the new horse is a different size. hence they sell the old rugs. I say old, but I know many people who sell rugs that have never been worn as they were impulse buys! Local papers are a good place to start looking for second hand rugs as well as local riding clubs.