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Guide

How do you keep track of a horse’s care without forgetting anything?

By the BarnMate team · Updated September 2026

Horse care is recurring on a fixed interval, not a series of one-off appointments: shoeing comes round every 5 to 7 weeks, the dentist once a year, vaccine boosters and worming on the vet’s protocol. So the right approach is not to note appointments one by one, but to record the date of the last treatment and its interval, and let the tool compute the next one. That is what BarnMate’s care log does: enter the last shoeing once, the next due date recalculates every time the farrier comes, and the reminder arrives in time — for the owner and the sharer alike.

The usual intervals, as a rough guide

These are the orders of magnitude most commonly seen in practice. They do not replace your vet’s advice — the vet sets the protocol based on the horse, its age, its work and how it lives.

Shoeing or trimming — roughly every 5 to 7 weeks, depending on hoof growth and the season.
Equine influenza vaccine — annual booster, with stricter requirements (often every six months) for horses competing.
Tetanus vaccine — booster typically every 2 to 3 years, often combined with influenza.
Worming — 2 to 4 times a year, ideally driven by faecal egg counts rather than done systematically.
Equine dentist — once a year for an adult horse, often twice for a youngster or a senior.
Physio or osteopath — once or twice a year, more when coming back into work or with a known issue.

The hard part is not knowing these intervals. It is remembering the date of the last one. That is the date that gets lost.

What is worth logging, and what is not

A care log that is too heavy never gets kept up. In practice four pieces of information are enough per treatment.

  1. 01The date — everything else is driven by it.
  2. 02Who came — the farrier’s, vet’s or dentist’s name. Useful a year later when you need to call again.
  3. 03What was done — four shoes, fronts only, which wormer, which booster.
  4. 04An observation, if there is one — a changing hoof balance, a tooth being watched, a reaction to a vaccine.

Not worth it: copying out invoices, keeping a daily journal, photographing every hoof. The log has to be faster to fill in than a text message.

Keep separately, in the horse’s profile rather than the log: the passport, the ID photos and the contacts (vet, farrier, dentist, insurer). Those are what you look for in an emergency, not day to day.

Sharing the care log with a sharer

When a horse is shared, the care log has two authors, and that is where it gets messy: the farrier often comes on a day when it is the sharer who is at the yard, and the owner finds out that evening by text — or not at all.

Two simple rules are enough.

Whoever is there logs it

It does not matter who. If the person present when the farrier comes can log the date in ten seconds from their phone, the information survives. If they have to tell someone else who will log it later, it does not.

Both see the same due dates

The shoeing reminder should reach both people. The owner decides, but the rider needs to see it coming: they are the one who will notice a lameness or a loose shoe between visits.

In BarnMate the care log is shared by the same mechanism as the schedule: the owner invites the sharer by code or QR, and both see the same thing live. The guide on managing a shared horse covers the setup.

Reminders that arrive at the right moment

A reminder on the day of the due date is useless: you cannot book a farrier that same morning. The point of a calculated due date is that it lands early, with enough notice to call and agree a date.

BarnMate computes the due date from the last treatment and the stored interval, then warns you ahead of time. Every new treatment you log shifts the next one automatically — so there is never a recurring reminder to fix by hand when the farrier turns up a week late.

The iOS “Today” widget shows what is coming on the home screen, and sessions can be exported to the iOS Calendar for people who live in one.

FAQ

How often should a horse be shod?

Generally every 5 to 7 weeks, depending on hoof growth, the season and the horse’s work. The farrier sets the rhythm. What matters for tracking is recording the date of the last visit: that is what lets the next one be calculated instead of remembered.

Can an app replace the paper vaccination record?

No, not in a regulatory sense: the horse’s official document is its passport, and the vet records vaccinations in it. An app is there to stop you missing the due date and to keep the history to hand — not to replace the document.

How do you avoid forgetting worming?

By recording it as a recurring due date rather than a one-off task. The rhythm depends on your vet’s protocol — increasingly driven by faecal egg counts rather than a fixed calendar. Either way, what to keep is the date of the last dose and the product used.

Can the sharer add care entries themselves?

Yes, and that is the important part: whoever is present when the farrier or vet comes logs the date, and the owner sees it immediately. Otherwise the information goes through a message and eventually gets lost.

Where is the horse’s health information stored?

In BarnMate, on the device and in the user’s private iCloud account (Apple CloudKit). The app runs no server and collects nothing. See the privacy policy.

Try it

A care log that reminds you on its own.

Shoeing, worming, vaccines, dentist, physio: due dates are calculated, reminders arrive, and the owner and sharer see the same thing.