How to Use Smart Home Technology to Take Care of Your Horse

In an age when you can use your phone to adjust your home’s temperature, turn on the lights, and see who has come to your door, have you wondered how to use smart home technology to take care of your horse?

I’ve been working with horses since a young age at my parent’s farm. And being a gadget geek as well, I had to find out how to use technology to make my day-to-day easier. Now I want to share my findings with you.

Horses tend to be high-maintenance animals who are notoriously accident-prone and capable of turning nearly any situation into a catastrophe. So, smart technologies come in handy to keep our beloved animals safe and comfortable. We can watch them at any time even when we’re not at the farm. 

Keep reading to learn how you can implement several smart home technologies to care for your horses, including:

• Making sure the property is secure
• Maintaining a comfortable environment in your barn
• Tracking your horse’s health with wearable technology
• Keeping track of your horse’s schedule

But don’t be limited to only the ideas listed here. If there is a specific aspect of your horse’s care you wish you could make easier, you can probably find or adapt the technology to do exactly that.

Securing the Property

Home security has improved dramatically in recent years, and you can now monitor your entire home from your phone, no matter where you are.

But there isn’t any reason why this technology must be used only in your home. It’s easily translated to use in your barn or even the pasture.

You can have security cameras in your home and even on your doorbell that you can monitor from your cell phone, and you can use that same technology in your barn. 

Cameras allow you to see your horses at any time. If they go down with colic, get tangled in something in their stall, cast themselves, or are dangerously close to opening their stall door, you can catch it in an instant – without constant trips to the barn.

Just keep in mind that security cameras require a higher upload speed than many, many rural areas have access to. 

You can also use technology to control the lights in the barn, which works in tandem with your cameras. If you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t remember whether you latched that outer door, you can turn on the lights and see it on the camera – all without leaving your bed.

Monitoring the pasture may take a bit more effort depending on its size, but the strategic use of cameras and even drones allows you to see how your horses are doing at any time.

Door sensors, which alert you when a door is opened and closed in your house, could also be useful on stall and barn doors or pasture gates. They can protect against both a horse opening a door or a person trying to tamper with your horses.

Maintaining the Barn Environment

The same controls that allow you to adjust the temperature in your home while you are away can be put to work in your barn. 

Maybe you are in for the night watching the news and see that the temperature is predicted to drop more than you expected that night. If you’ve got a new foal or other sensitive horse in your stable or just want them all to be comfortable, it’s simple to adjust the temperature from your phone.

Set up your fans to be controlled from your phone, and you can ensure your horses stay cool in hot weather, too.

Wearables

Humans have wearables that track their movements, heart rate, sleep, and more. Why not use similar technology on your horses?

Smart blankets and halters can monitor your horse’s activity, temperature, heart rate, respiration, and even how sweaty it is. This technology is handy if you have a horse with health concerns or a mare close to foaling but can’t keep her in a stall under cameras.

Scheduling Routine Care

You probably have a household organizing app where you keep track of your family’s appointments, events, meetings, practices, and more. Have you ever thought of using that same technology for your horse?

If you only have one horse, it may be easy for you to keep track of its various needs, including feed, farrier, and vet care. However, the more horses you have, the trickier this becomes since each has its unique schedule and needs.

Additionally, if you ever have other people caring for your horses, whether it’s daily or only while you’re away on a trip, those people also need to know each horse’s schedule.

You can use apps to keep track of the routine care of your horses in a central place that is also accessible to others who need it. Schedule their farrier and veterinary visits, track their training schedule, and keep track of each horse’s specific diet and when they are fed.

If you ever have an emergency that requires someone to take care of your horses on short notice, think of how much peace of mind it will give you to be able to provide them with an exact schedule from your app.

Make Your Barn High-Tech

Technology can be incredibly useful in so many ways. The security and comfort of modern homes have been forever changed by smart home technology, but there’s no reason to limit that tech to your house.

Security, scheduling routine care, maintaining your barn environment, and wearables are just a few examples of how to use smart home technology to take care of your horse.

The possibilities for using tech to simplify your barn life are limited only by your imagination. So far, there is no way to groom your horses and muck their stalls from your phone, but maybe you will be the person to figure out how to do it.

How can you implement smart home technology to increase the comfort and security of your horse today?

Written by Andreas Grant – Founder of Networks Hardware