Best way to clean really dirty western pads.

The county park district I lesson at has upwards of 40 horses, all of whom go English and western. Since we had extra hands today on daily chores, I grabbed a few western pads and rubber and steel curry combs and figured I’d do a little cleaning.

Some pads were pretty clean and just needed a two minute brush out, but more were Yeesh! Flat hard and stiff with dirt and sweat built up like armor plate till you couldn’t see the color of the initial fleece. Two weren’t hard over the flank quarters, but had - no kidding - nearly a half inch of horse hair built up hard packed til it resembled a shim! It took well over a half hour to clean one of those from a very fuzzy grey pony using the curries.

Clean hair in a no pressure spot I could live with, but hard dirt and sweat has to go and that’s my personal project for the next while. With pads that are absolutely plaqued solid with sweat and dirt, what’s the best cool weather technique to clean them? Soaking them in a trough and working them with a brush till the plaque liquifies is way to cold, and we can’t wait several days for the pads to dry. Does anyone have other methods that work faster/ less likely to give my hands blisters? These aren’t sheepskin, just felt and fleece with leather wear patches.

And yes, long term I will bring this up at the next volunteer meeting and ask people to please grab a dandy brush whenever they have a few minutes and make sure all the pads get brushed clean at least once a week. So far, that hasn’t been on the daily chore list and it clearly needs to be.

I like the big loop shedding blade for that kind of project. I can’t get enough leverage with a currycomb.

I’m no expert in western pads, but: mine are thick felt. I brush them before EVERY ride. Depending on if there is dried sweat or not, I pick an appropriate brush. If they are damp after a ride, they get hung to dry, or if a sunny day, put out in the sun to dry.
I think alot of elbow grease and an industrial strength brush is probably your best bet. Then just lay down some ground rules about caring for them in the future. Too many deep cleanings like that and you’ll be replacing them.
I did clean mine with Microtek shampoo once. Sprayed lightly with a hose, soaped up, then sprayed off, hung to dry in the sun.
Good luck and have fun!:lol:

I have done this with many saddle pads and horse blankets.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSsXebN-2yY

I pressure wash mine.

I wish I had access to a king-size pressure DRYER, like a jumbo version of those newfangled high-speed hand dryers in restrooms, so I could pressure wash these things! It’s the drying that kills these pads - if it takes 5 days to drain and dry, they will be bacteria laden. We don’t have a safe, non-high-dust area to leave them laid open overnight and we are getting frosty nights where they will start freezing rather than drying. There’s a week off in early March and again in late May between lesson sets where pressure washing might work, but we shouldn’t be waiting that long on the bad pads.

One guy on Youtube had a vacumn that seemed to help -but on a pad wasn’t solid crust yet.

ETA: I betcha the barn manager already knows about this - replacement is our friend for several of these pads! But we’d have to wait until March, again.

I’ve had good luck with vacuuming with my shark rotator vac. However, the real answer is pitch them out and buy new ones.