With Hot Horse 2.0, things are not quite as obvious. When you first open the app, you will see the Current Heat Index. Navigation is through the tabs at the bottom of the screen. You will not find the blanketing recommendations, though. You need to go to settings and flip the switch to change from hot to cold, Heat Index to Blanketing(Rugging).
Unless you have subscribed to Hot Horse Pro, you will only see 2 or 3 tabs on your screen. For the Heat Index, you can see the Current, Chart and Settings Tabs. For Blanketing, you can see the Current and Settings.
Once you subscribe, you can get access to everything. For the Heat Index side, the Current, Hourly, Daily, Horses & Settings. For the Blanket side, you will see Current, Daily, Hourly, Horses and Settings. Hourly & Daily are unchanged from version 1.
Horses is new. This is where you can see the list of horses you have added to Hot Horse Pro. To add a horse, click the + button in the upper right hand corner.
This will open up the Add Horse Screen.
Enter the information and click Add. Do not change the Heat Rating or Cold Rating until you have used Hot Horse long enough to know that your horse reacts differently. Careful monitoring is essential if you need to change them. The Heat Rating changes how tolerant the heat recommendations are. If your horse is less affected by heat, you can increase the rating, and vice versa.
The Blanket Rating similarly measures how tolerant your horse is to the cold. The better the horse tolerates cold, the lower the rating. Again, please do not change this until you know that your horse reacts differently than the app predicts.
Please also choose appropriately in the Reasons for Blanketing section. These switches do change how Hot Horse Pro recommends blankets. The Senior switch is there to account for a horse that we would consider senior not by its age, but by the bundle of symptoms and conditions that are known to affect elder horses, such as Cushing’s disease. These conditions tend to make a horse less tolerant of the cold.
The next item is Height. You can set your horse’s height in hands in quarter inch increments. The Hands setting will start at 15 hands, and you can adjust it up or down as needed.
The next two items are extremely important for Hot Horse Pro to determine the proper blanket, Coat Length and Body Condition. The Coat Length is self explanatory. Body Condition should be assessed using the Henneke horse body condition scoring system developed by Don Henneke at Texas A&M University. A step by step guide to using the system can be found at thehorse.com.
These two items are so important AND changeable that Hot Horse Pro will ask you to update them weekly. This behavior can be changed by toggling the switch in settings called Saved Horse Update Reminders. The default is On.
Scrolling down, there are five more items that can be set: Color, Breed, Gender, Markings and Temperament.
These are self explanatory. Markings are selected one at a time, and then must be added with the Add Selected Marking button. Lastly, you can choose between four basic temperaments: Interested, Nervous, Quiet & Stubborn.
Blanketing:
Regardless of whether you add a horse, when you subscribe to Hot Horse Pro, you will get blanketing recommendations for the week, for both day and night. These recommendations take into account the changing hours of light where you live, so the night recommendation starts at sunset, and the day starts at sunrise.
If you don’t set a horse, Hot Horse Pro will use and “Average Horse”. You can see the details if you select “average horse” in the Horses tab, but essentially you have a healthy, moderate body condition, moderate coat, non senior horse. Your mileage may vary using this setting, and we recommend putting your specific horse’s information in for a better recommendation.
The recommendation will take your horse’s Lower Critical Temperature into account, based on the settings and then compare it to the expected weather, accounting for rain and wind chill, among other things. At the top of the screen with Hot Horse Pro, you will see a switch that allows you to account for whether the horse will have a shelter if turned out.
Similarly to the Heat Index, Hot Horse Pro uses color coded bars so you can see at a glance what blanket you will need, for both day and night.
You can also view the recommendations hourly for short turn outs:
If you have any questions after reading this, please email us at: