How Painted Sky Ranch Cares for Horses Using Vantage Vue & WeatherLink Console

At Painted Sky Ranch in Pittsboro, North Carolina, two happy horses train for events, go for relaxing rides, and live a life of luxury. One of the reasons rancher Liz is able to take such great care of them while also balancing a nine-to-five job is because she’s got two powerful allies when it comes to ensuring her steeds are safe and comfortable: her Vantage Vue weather station and her WeatherLink Console.

Liz installed her Vue in the corner of her horses’ pasture about 18 months ago so she could keep track of weather conditions outside while she worked from her home office. Since then, she’s found that the real-time data and notifications she has access to have improved the efficiency of her daily chores and helped her know how she can keep her horses (who can’t speak, of course) as comfortable as possible in the face of the weather.

Weather station use cases on a horse farm

Liz’s original goal was to know exactly when temperatures dropped below 50° so she could blanket her horses to keep them from getting cold. When it’s 50° in the pen, an alarm rings on the WeatherLink Console inside, alerting Liz to the fact that she needs to place a sheet over the horses. If temperatures drop to 40°, a second alarm with a different distinct tone lets Liz know she needs to put on her horses’ heavy blankets.

In the winter, Liz checks the console before she goes outside every morning to know how much she needs to bundle up, whether she’ll need to break ice in the barn, and if the horses will be expecting warm mash with their breakfast.

During hot Southern summers, Liz also sets high temperature and humidity alarms, so she can know when the horses need to come inside to cool down or turn on the fans inside their stalls.

After she’d had her weather station and console for a few months, Liz started to uncover other ways she could use weather data to improve the day-to-day experience for her and the horses. She now uses the upcoming forecast and sunrise/sunset data available through her console to plan pre- and post-work rides and help her know when she needs to time certain chores, like dragging the riding area to soften the ground and prevent leg injuries.

Why ranchers need weather stations

When she began comparing the information from her WeatherLink Console and the forecasts she was hearing on TV and seeing on the big weather apps, Liz noticed that temperatures at Painted Sky Ranch tended to be several degrees below the reported temperature for Pittsboro generally. That meant the public forecasts were giving her suboptimal information when it came to caring for her horses and reinforced her belief that her weather station and console were making a major difference.

Ranches like Painted Sky frequently feature rolling hills, vast expanses of land, and areas of variable shade, sunlight, and wind. It’s necessary for ranchers to understand what their animals are actually experiencing in order to take the best care of them, and a generalized weather forecast or temperature report issued for an entire ZIP code simply can’t do that.

By installing a weather station in the area where her horses spend most of their time, Liz was able to give them the personalized experience they deserve. 

Make a weather station part of your routine

If you’re a farmer or rancher trying to understand how you can protect your animals in the face of increasing temperatures and escalating environmental risks, Davis Instruments can help. Our team of agriculture specialists has experience helping growers and ranchers scale weather networks to their individual monitoring needs. Whether you need a single station like Liz or a network of stations to care for animals across a vast acreage, you should contact Davis today to get started.