Winter conditions treating you like dirt? Give your seasonal management skills the green light with our colour-coded mud-busting guide

Photos: Marie Charouzova/Shutterstock.com, Nicole Ciscato/Shutterstock.com, Shiralee Swan/Shutterstock.com

What’s the surest sign of a happy horse owner? Some would say the answer’s in the ground conditions. It seems we spend half the year cursing the sun for baking our bridleways into rock-hard rights of way, and the other six months up to – at best – our ankles in mud, leaving us with what feels like about a fortnight of ideal footing. While there are ways to avoid wet ground from the saddle, if you want to give your horse the turnout he needs through the winter then he’ll be forced to come into contact with mud – white socks be damned.

While turning your horse out into a muddy field isn’t an issue in itself – he’s not made of china, after all – we’re willing to bet that dealing with a mud monster isn’t high on your list of priorities. How do you stay on top of it all? Add helpful lotions and potions to your arsenal, update your horse’s wardrobe and have a management strategy in place to keep one step ahead. We’ve transposed your muddy maladies onto a traffic light system, ranking the level of severity with easy steps to take for winter woe relief. Discover your alert level – green, amber or red – by checking off our criteria.