Air Speed to Increase Rate of Cool Out for Horses After Intense Exercise

Cooling out horses is a common practice after intense exercise. Typical cooling procedures include both walking and drenching (often with scraping). The cool out is performed to ensure the horses physiologic responses returned to a baseline range as quickly as possible. The use of water in cool out provides the greatest potential for removing heat from the animals. However, adding air velocities that can increase evaporation rates from the horses can potentially increase the rate of cool out; thereby reducing the time until the horses' physiologic measurements return to baseline. This study measured the rate of cool out for 7 Thoroughbreds, which were run on the track for 1 or 1.5 miles. Animals were provided a combination of walking and drenching in addition to 3 fan treatments no fan, fan directed at lateral side, and fan directed at posterior. Physiologic responses were analyzed using the Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) procedure and while no significant differences were found in the rate of cool out, trends indicated both rectal temperature (P = .10) and heart rate (P = .11) returned to baseline more quickly with the addition of a fan.