A lot of people are really concerned about the noise that an air vest makes when it's going off. We've done numerous posts about the fact that most horses don't react or spook at the noise because it's just so fast. But we thought it would be helpful to know what actually causes the noise when an air vest goes off.
The noise is because of the gas. Each canister is going to have a nozzle or a neck and the lid is what gets punctured when the air vest goes off. The noise that an air vest makes comes from the speed at which the air is released from the canister through that nozzle and into the air chambers of your vest.
The reality is that you want that speed and therefore you want that noise because it means that it's filling up your vest super fast. While humans probably can't detect a difference, the less gas, the smaller the canister, the quieter the noise will be. But that, of course, is relative.
The reality is that horses quite rarely react to the noise and if you’re falling anyways, and the horse is spooking away from you, does the noise really matter? Especially if the vest is preventing injury, it’s a worthwhile trade off if your horse even spooks at all.
