I don’t do much to get the horses ready for winter. Because the barn is built with two large stalls opening to the south, the horses are responsible for getting themselves under shelter in foul weather. I don’t blanket unless I think a horse is cold, and some years I never put a blanket on a horse at all. Early fall storms and late spring storms tend to be the only time an acclimated horse can’t handle the cold.
I do keep a stock tank heater in the water tank during the winter. The tank is in the barn, so the horses don’t have to leave shelter to get water during blizzards. However, this summer one of the horses (probably Hap) broke the stock tank heater. Although the piece broken looked like it ought to be easy to replace, we couldn’t locate one. So Saturday we bought one at a local feed store, and this morning put it in the stock tank. Now the forecast lows of the low twenties for the next week no longer worry me.