Own a Horse? How About a Horse App!

No, I’m not talking about horse apples. Horse apps!  With the proliferation of electronic devices that will make and receive calls, send text messages, surf the internet, and run apps, it is only natural that there is are plenty of apps available to install on a phone, tablet, or pad that in some way pertain to horses.  Many of those apps are even useful as tools to help manage one’s horses.  Most of those cite the advantage of having your equine records in your pocket and always available.

There are a whole lot of those apps in the app stores that are games, wallpaper, or other mostly useless stuff, but there are also some likely gems when it comes to managing a stable and keeping financial records, keeping vet records, learning dressage, reining, or pleasure patterns, planning trail rides, training horses, or training a hippology or horse bowl team.  Any one of these needs might make an app on a phone or tablet worthwhile.

I will put the disclaimer in here:  I am not endorsing any specific apps for use with a horse, stable, or veterinary service.  With that said, there are some apps out there that are from .edu sources that should be trustworthy. 

Some of these apps might be useful in keeping feeding records, breeding records, registration papers, financial records, veterinary records, or other important information about your horse.  There are apps that will estimate a horse’s weight, though there are some measurements that have to be taken to make this one work.   There are apps that show that anatomy and physiology of the entire horse, and apps that only show the parts of a horse’s hoof.  There are plenty of “how to” apps also.  Of course, there are lots of equine game apps to help pass the time between classes at shows.

When choosing an equine app for your highly sophisticated communications device, be sure to do a little research.  Before downloading and installing any app on your phone or tablet, be sure to check out any reviews, see when the last update was made, or even if the app is still available. If it hasn’t been updated in a couple of years, it may not be one to use. If the reviews are poor, it may not be very useful.  Talk with friends and folks in the horse business to see if there might be any particular app that they like and how it is best used.  Adventurous folks might try a new app and write a review to share with other horse owners.  Most of these apps cost between $1.00 and $10.00.   That’s a lot less than buying a software package for the home computer, but folks should try to find some information that will help them make an informed decision.

I don’t know if there is a linear relationship or correlation between owning a horse and also owning an Apple product, but a lot of the equine apps are only available for Apple gear.  I did see several reviews of apps that said Android versions were planned or would be released soon.  Hopefully, the best apps are available to anyone.

The University of Minnesota has a couple of apps that Apple users may be interested in.  One is a “Hay Price Calculator” app that converts the per-bale price to a price per ton for a better price comparison.  The other is called “Healthy Horse” and is a body weight estimator that folks can use to see if their horse is over or under weight, or is at the ideal weight for that type of horse.  Adjustments to the feeding program can then be made to have horses gain or lose weight, or maintain the current weight.   These can be found at http://z.umn.edu/ituneshorsehay ($0.99) and http://z.umn.edu/itunesHealthyHorse ($1.99).

Have fun deciding which equine app or apps will be most useful.  Now I’m wondering how to best wrap one of these to put under the tree this holiday season!