If you've been around horses long enough, you might have realized already that your sense of smell can play an important role in proper horsekeeping. Knowing what smells can indicate and what your horse "normally" smells like can give you early indicators of changes in his or her health.
Food Smells:
- Smelling hay for mold can detect "on the fence" hay that doesn't look obviously moldy but maybe isn't the best hay to feed.
- Smell grain to see if it's sour or musty (it's hard to get a sense for this until you compare bad grain with fresh grain)
Horse's Breath:
- Take a good whiff of you horse's breath to give yourself a baseline of what he or she smells like. If it suddenly changes - it could indicate a digestion or tooth problem: infections (like a tooth abscess) smell like rotten eggs while ulcers or upset stomachs can smell sour, like bad wine.
Urine/Manure Smells:
- The potency of urine smells can range from faint to knock-you-back with ammonia and changes in the strength of smell are normal based on diet. Changes in pasture (weed growth) are the most common contributors to changes in urine smell.
- With manure odor, it's best to know what is "normal" for your horse. A horse that eats a higher protein diet may have a more "meaty" smell (think dog poo) and a horse with higher carbs may give off a more sour odor. It's normal for each horses manure to smell different - horses can actually identify each other by catching whiff from a pile.
Hoof Smells:
- Most horsepeople have had a good whiff of the thrush smell - a combination of rotten eggs, sewage and bacterial infection. Thrushbuster will probably do the trick, but if the thrush is deep in the crevices, you may benefit from having the blacksmith gently clean out the cleft and open the heels to make sure you can get your hoofpick along the entire length of the frog.
- Hoof abscesses can also smell - a foul, rotten-flesh smell - once they open and drain. If your horse has a hoof abscess, make sure he is current on his tetanus vaccine. Your veterinarian may need to prescribe antibiotics depending on the severity of the abscess.
Image courtesy of www.nps.gov
