I found a silentfit bonnet secondhand to try on my mare. She’s an earplugs every ride kind of gal and lately even the normal bonnet over the top to hold the earplugs in isn’t cutting it. She shakes her head so the earplugs end up in the tips of the bonnet ears. She’s a bit of a princess. She doesn’t shake her head without the bonnet and earplugs, so I think she just doesn’t like them. So for my question, the silentfit bonnet itself fits well, but the ears are very large. Like comically large and 2 inches longer than her ears are. Is that how the bonnet works is by having extra space? They just seem very large in relation to the size of the bonnet. Oh and she shook the silentfit bonnet off twice too.
I also found the equifit bonnet to have unreasonably large ears! I’ve used the smartpak silent one and it fits my horse much better, but it’s not quite as nice looking as the equifit. I’m tempted to try the “cob” size equifit because I think those ears are an inch or so shorter.
I may try to hunt down a cob bonnet as well. My trainer and I laughed about the ears and both said if it works, she’ll just look ridiculous. I’ve never had very good luck with the mesh bonnets (of any brand) not being a bit slippery. I have my whole bridle fall of once while wearing a different brand of bonnet and miss mare shook the bonnet off twice yesterday without the bridle budging. lol
As the owner of a warmblood with comically large ears (legit bordering on donkey-sized), this is incredibly helpful information for my situation! His ears 100% do not fit in the horse PS of Sweden or Equestrian Stockholm noise cancelling bonnet and he shakes them off far too easily. I’ll have to give this one a try!
Have you tried different types of plugs to see if she can shake them out? Maybe the poms or the foam golf ball type, and I think I had even seena cylinder shake made out of foam.
I have one that prefers old fashioned cotton over actual ear plugs-- also a headshaker when she’s uncomfortable.
The Silentfit bonnet helps somewhat, but not as much as stuffing the ears, in my experience.
We’ve tried: pomms, plughz, foam golf ball types bought off amazon and traditional fuzzy pom poms. The only style we haven’t tried are the cylinder type from equifit and traditional cotton.
What type of cotton do you buy? Do you think you could post a link?
Thank you!
Those run HUGE and they’re so thick that a bridle can slip off unless the noseband has a death grip on the horse’s face.
They are large in the ears, and if she shakes a lot with a bonnet, I’d try to avoid any of the silent bonnets because it’s easier for them to shake the whole bridle off!
But if you want to try one for a more normal size, look into the Kentucky Horsewear ones.
Thankfully the bridle isn’t moving, the bonnet is just sliding out from under it. I really just wanted something plain black and this is the one I found first. I will keep an eye out for one of the Kentucky ones.
Plughz has some that look promising, solid black but still the crochet style. Schockemohle has one as well but I’m not sure about the mesh down the back of the ear.
https://www.doversaddlery.com/schockemohle-air-slnt-fly-veil/p/X1-23419/
Thank you.
I should clarify, I liked the look of the Equifit and I was strictly shopping secondhand. So the Equifit was the one I came across first in my Facebook group search that I also found some reviews on. I did see that it ran large, but I was not expecting it to run as large as it does. lol.
To clarify, the title of your thread is misleading. Noise canceling generally means an item that produces and delivers sound waves to one’s ear to cancel out other noises. What you are describing, and what equifit makes, are noise blocking and absorbing products. So that’s a big difference. When I saw this thread, I thought ‘omg they are making noise canceling bonnets for horses now?’
Some manufacturers now say active noise canceling for the sound wave delivery product, and passive noise canceling for the regular kind of headphones you can buy for example at the farm store for riding a tractor. So I suppose a bonnet could be passive noise canceling but I think it’s important to keep straight what we’re talking about. Carry on!
I changed the title to reflect that I was referring to noise reducing bonnets. Sorry for the confusion.
Here you go. They also have different shapes and some with stones or other bling. I really like the fit of them for normal sized heads, though I use the regular bonnets more often than the soundless ones.
Any of the foam ear ones are easier to shake off than a normal bonnet because of the stiffness of the ears.
In case this information could potentially help someone else, I decided to email Equifit to see if they could modify an existing bonnet with smaller ears. Here is there response:
Hi Rhiannon,
Thank you for contacting us!
We appreciate you sharing your experience with the SilentFit bonnet. Regarding your questions, we currently do not offer modifications to our stock bonnets, so we are unable to refurbish the full-size bonnet with cob-size ears. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
It might be helpful to know that the veil portion of all our bonnets is the same size. Therefore, trying a cob-size bonnet could resolve the issue of the ears being too long.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any other questions or concerns.
All the best,
EquiFit Customer
Service Team
877.437.8434
Info@EquiFit.net
Thank you. I may try to resell the Equifit bonnet and try one of these instead.