Horses and Hose Pipe Bans

Keeping your horse cool in these heatwaves is hard work. 🥵

A bath after exercise or simply hosing them off in these hot temperatures to help them stay cool is so important.  Our mare Magic in the photo below loves a bath 🧼. Make sure when using your hose or tap that you run the water first as it’s likely to be hot to start with. Using water for the welfare of your horse is considered essential use. 

The use of hose pipes to ensure animal welfare is not restricted even in areas where there is a hose pipe ban, so you can 

• Wash horses down with a hosepipe
• Fill up water troughs and buckets with a hosepipe
• Cleaning out lorries, trailers and stables with a hosepipe 

Affinity Water in the central region states -

You can use a hosepipe to provide water to and clean livestock and animals, for example filling a trough, and to soak hay. Using a hosepipe is only permitted for animal health and safety reasons. Washing domestic pets in a shower or bath indoors is not restricted.

Responsible use of water is encouraged at the stables, as it is in your homes, to avoid putting added pressure on the supply during this period of high temperatures with little no rain forecast.

Things you can do to help conserve water at the yard includes:

♻️ Reuse water where you can for jobs around the yard e.g cleaning feed buckets.

🪣 Consider when a bucket could be used as these require less water than a hose

🚰 Turn off your tap when not in use so as not to waste water

🧴 Consider using a no-rinse wash such as Barrier Lavender Wash or NAF Citronella Wash rather than a shampoo you need to wash off where possible as this will halve the water needed when bathing your horse

If you’d like further reassurance or information, you can contact your local water company.

We would love to hear any water sharing ideas you have been using.

In the meantime let’s all keep our fingers crossed for rain ☔️.