Most of what I get asked at the barn door is arithmetic. How much hay does he need a day, and how many bales will get us through to spring? What size blanket do I order when every brand measures a little differently? Is it cold enough tonight to put one on him at all? How much can he carry with me and the saddle on his back? These free tools answer one of those questions each, from your own horse’s numbers, in a few seconds. Nothing to sign up for, nothing to install, and they work on a phone in the feed room.
Feeding & Winter Care
Hay, water and the cold: how much he needs a day, how much to buy for the winter, and whether tonight calls for a blanket.
Weight, Age & Health
His weight from a tape, his condition, his age and his vital signs — measured the way the vets and universities do it.
Riding & Tack Fit
What he can carry, and the sizes of the things he wears — by brand, because brands do not measure alike.
Where the numbers come from
Every figure here comes from whoever published it, and the date I last checked it is printed next to the answer. Feeding rules come from university extension services and the Merck Veterinary Manual. Blanket sizes come from the blanket makers’ own size charts. The weight formula comes from the study that fitted it to 281 weighed horses. What a horse can carry comes from the studies themselves, with how many horses each one used. Nothing is invented, rounded to look precise, or averaged out of three different answers.
When the experts disagree, you see both
Horse advice is full of rules that contradict each other, and the honest thing is to show you where. One university says a dry horse in a full winter coat is comfortable down to about 18 °F. Another puts a cold-hardy horse at 5 °F. The 20% rider-weight rule comes from a study of eight horses, and the research since points both ways. So the tools show you each source, say who found what, and leave the call with you and your horse.
What these tools will not do
They will not give you a dose of bute, banamine or dewormer. That is your vet’s job, and the label’s. They will not write you a deworming or vaccination calendar, because those are worked out for one horse on one farm. And they will not tell you whether a sick horse is colicking. If you are worried about him, call your vet. That rule is the same everywhere on this site.
Share an answer, or keep it
Every result has its own link. Copy link saves exactly what you entered, so you can text his blanket size to whoever is at the tack shop, or pull up the winter hay order when the hay man calls.
Put a tool on your own site
Every tool has an Embed button. It gives you a short piece of code to paste into a page, a barn’s website or a club’s resources page. The tool works there exactly as it does here, free, with a credit line linking back.
More from the site
The tools do the arithmetic. For the rest — why he leans on you, why horses face the wall, what the salt block is for — start with the latest from HorseRoots.