11

Apr

The Types of Mechanical Hot Walkers and How They Work

Your horse should be properly warmed up before any exercise and should then be cooled down afterward. This is where a hot walker comes in handy. These mechanical horse exercisers are the ideal equipment for boosting the overall performance of your horse.

What Is a Hot Walker?

Traditionally, a hot walker is a person who hand walks a horse after it has exerted itself. However, the option of using a mechanical hot walker is growing in popularity. So, what is a hot walker used for?

Hot walking allows a horse to warm up for a performance and cool down properly after hard exercise. Doing so helps the horse’s vital functions like pulse and respiration return to normal. Hot walking also helps dissipate heat from the horse’s body and helps with muscle repair.

How Do Mechanical Hot Walkers Work?

Understanding how a human hot walker works is simple—they simply take a horse and walk with it. However, since machines can’t take a horse’s reins and walk with it, how do mechanical hot walkers work?

While mechanical hot walkers come in several different designs, they work the same. A typical hot walker design consists of four heavy-gauge steel arms radiating from a central pivot point. The pivot point contains a motor to move the hot walker’s arms at various speeds. A traditional hot walker has a lead rope attached at the end of each arm that connects to the horse’s halter. The mechanical arms, once the hot walker is turned on, walks the horse.

While mechanical hot walkers automatically walk your horses, you must ensure that the walker and horses are under the supervision of a human at all times. For added safety, the riding of horses should not be permitted when they’re in the walker.

Uses and Benefits

Now that you know what hot walkers are and how they work, let’s dive into their main uses and benefits.

Let’s start with the main uses.

Primary Uses of a Hot Walker

So, what is a horse walker used for?

While there are several uses for hot walkers, there are three primary ones to note:

1. Warming up your horse. One of the main benefits of hot walkers is that they also function as horse exercisers. This means you can use them to warm up your horse before putting it to work.
2. Exercising your horse. You can also use it to give your horse proper exercise because you can change the speed settings.
3. Cooling down your horse. Of course, one of the essential uses of a hot walker is to help cool down your horse.
4. Rehabilitating your horse. A hot walker is very effective at treating injured horses in a controlled environment without the added weight of a rider on their back.

Benefits of a Hot Walker

There are many benefits from the use of hot walkers. However, a few of the most prominent ones include:

• Saves time. Mechanical hot walkers can walk many horses simultaneously. This helps save time, as you don’t have to walk your horses individually.
• Saves money. Particularly for horse owners and private equestrians with several horses in their stable, a mechanical horse walker will help save expenses in the form of paying several horse walker salaries.
• Boosts performance. Hot walkers help develop stamina, build muscle, prevent colic, and encourage fitness.
• Can be used in all weather conditions. Particularly if you get the indoor type, you can use your horse walker throughout the year.

With so many uses and benefits, getting a mechanical hot walker is a no-brainer. It’s an investment you’ll appreciate, as it will serve you for many years.

Reasons to Get a Hot Walker from Vitafloor USA, Inc.

So, why should you get your hot walker from Vitafloor?

It’s simple. Vitafloor is a leading developer and builder of the most advanced horse equipment on the market, and that includes hot walkers. With years of experience and lots of money invested in the research and development of hot walkers, we’ve come up with the best designs. These are designs that offer industry-leading performance and safety features.

So, go ahead and browse our inventory and choose the horse walker that suits your needs. Alternatively, give us a call at (352) 737-6743, and we’ll help you decide.