Horse Health Care - Taking a Horse's Temperature

The reason Horse owners need to be able to take a horse's temperature is for diagnosis reasons; to realize there is a problem, maybe an infection - maybe over heating; and, to gather facts when we call the our Veterinarian - inform him/her of the symptoms, get advice or set up a farm call.

When I ran a large 52 horse capacity barn, we had horses always coming and going. We quarantined all in-coming horses for two weeks with an in-coming Vet Check and out-going or release Vet check, as well as to get any required immunizations. One of the Vets we would utilize was an Army Vet, new to horses,...in other words a Cat vet. I don't know, maybe he worked on Dogs too. During his tenure as one of our Vets he would come out and do the in-coming Vet check which required taking the horse's temperature.

Never saw such a scared man more willing to stick something in a horse's butt. But he did it,..always shaking,...but he did it.

Anyway, does anyone use anything but digital thermometers these days? Good idea to use a digital thermometer on horses. In and out a lot quicker and the thermometers come with a beeper to let you know you have arrived at a final temperature which should be at or less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, unless the horses just came in from excessive or hard work. Place small dab of Vaseline, Bag Balm, or Corona (not the beer, but the salve) on the thermometer's working end before you insert it in the horses anal cavity. The horse's anal cavity will tighten up, so ensure you get it into the cavity to the base of the thermometer stem.

The below video is for Carlos from Albuquerque who asked how to take a Horse's temperature. I could have just said "carefully" or "be sure to put a string on your thermometer for obvious reasons", but decided to shoot this short video.
Good luck Carlos, safe journey.