How Do You to Keep Your Horse Clean in the Winter?

[comingback]

Maintaining the grey in winter is fun

Start with good nutrition. Curry, curry, curry, and use a mitt on the legs and face. Keeping horse clipped and blanketed with a neck cover helps. If we show, I try to wash his tail on warmer days and continue to keep it white by using Lucky Braids stain remover (that stuff is amazing!). If a bath is done, he’s parked under heat lamps with a knit and wool cooler(s).

Last year it was absolutely too cold to bathe a couple of times. Maybe at home we could have been okay, but not at the show. Curried, hot toweled, and spot remover got us presentable. Not perfect, but it would have been cruel to give him a bath, and I don’t think anyone thought anything of it since they were too busy freezing their own tails off!

[Squekers998]

[QUOTE=snowrider;8481631]
Snow.[/QUOTE]

LOL! Here in Wisconsin there’s a lot of that! Too much of it sometimes:mad:

[Squekers998]

What I do when there’s a show I use Cowboy Magic Green spot remover, My horse is a Pinto/Appaloosa. He always is so dirty, he’s a dirt magnet. I also use baby wipes on him, they give you the moisture you need without your horse chilly.
Once my trainer did say you can use baby powder because it will cover the stains you can’t get out. She says always make sure you wipe it completely off because the horse will be come a running cloud :).

[kashmere]

Mine lives outside most of the time. Even if she gets dirty, mud is waaay easier to clean off than pee/poop ground into a coat. Aside from that:

• I am best friends with my curry combs. I go through at least one a winter. Lots of currying is the best thing for a coat, I’ve found.
• I don’t skimp on full grooming, even when I’m cold and just want to hop up and ride. Every part gets cleaned, every time.
• I use cowboy magic coat conditioner
• My mare is a total princess who hates dirt and somehow looks like she stepped out of a dry cleaner’s 90% of the time

[AllisonWunderlund]

Working students

[OTTB2]

Voodoo spells to coax the mud off.

[ElementFarm]

clipping, blanketing, vacuuming, and spotwashing with warm water (socks and tails)

I have chestnuts with socks, and a gray mare, and so far we’re not too icky. I body clip or blanket clip 1-3 times a winter, and blanket nearly all the time. If it’s muddy, I’ll put a white/gray tail up to keep it from getting trashed and stained. On warm/mild weekends, I’ll wash socks and tails. When they get muddy, I vacuum before brushing to keep the mud from really setting into the coat. If maresie is really nasty and we have a show/clinic coming up, I’ll bath with hot water and stand under heat lamps with several layered coolers, which I’ll swap out and remove the bottom, wet layer every 15 mins until dry (doesn’t take long with a clipped coat).

The BEST way to keep you horse clean is the one you have least control over: the ground. I currently have very sandy footing and it drains great and never turns into mucky, clay-y mud. My horses stay So Much Cleaner this year than they ever have before when we boarded with clay, dirt, or swamp-of-sadness paddocks. Even when they roll now, they just don’t get dirty, and even if wet, it just brushes off when it dries.

[bamboopole]

[QUOTE=Melissa.Van Doren;8481117]
Body clip, blanket, and a vacuum. :)[/QUOTE] ditto. the whole barn. And clean stalls. We use a lot of straw.

[Marcella]

The vacuum is the only thing that will pick up the fine dust and dander that comes loose after currying. I can brush for hours and the dust is still there. I use a shop vac and empty it out to keep the filter cleaner after every use and it is amazing just how much dirt is picked up off him. I find this keeps the inside of the blankets much cleaner, too.

[Simbalism]

I use Eqyss Marigold Rehydrant spray on my two chestnut mares. My younger mare has 4 white socks and I use Miracle Groom spray on those.

[BostonHJ]

This year I have only used Rambo/Rhino/nicer Amigo clothing and I think the smooth lining really helps - no rubs on my thin skinned TB and his coat is even shinier than in non-blanket season. It also seems to have helped cut down on the dreaded winter dander.

It’s been very muddy thus far this season, which means we go straight from the paddock to the wash stall to rinse legs and tail. I towel dry legs and putting him in a clean, well bedded stall dries them the rest of the way quickly and the shaving dust just knocks off. A reasonable coating of Cowboy Magic gel on his tail keeps it manageable on days that are “light mud.”

As others have said, tons of currying, modified chase clip and the occasional warm damp towel. On warm days, I try to take advantage and get him spotless.

We’ve had a lot of borderline weather where he sweats under the saddle and the cooler keeps him too warm to dry but it would be pretty chilly without it. The old trick of rubbing the sweat with a handful of very dry hay seems to dry it more quickly than a towel.

[mfglickman]

[QUOTE=comingback;8481665]
Maintaining the grey in winter is fun

Start with good nutrition. Curry, curry, curry, and use a mitt on the legs and face. Keeping horse clipped and blanketed with a neck cover helps. If we show, I try to wash his tail on warmer days and continue to keep it white by using Lucky Braids stain remover (that stuff is amazing!). If a bath is done, he’s parked under heat lamps with a knit and wool cooler(s).

Last year it was absolutely too cold to bathe a couple of times. Maybe at home we could have been okay, but not at the show. Curried, hot toweled, and spot remover got us presentable. Not perfect, but it would have been cruel to give him a bath, and I don’t think anyone thought anything of it since they were too busy freezing their own tails off![/QUOTE]

Exactly all of this with a chestnut paint pony with white legs and tail. Love that Lucky Braids spray (shampoo too)!

[lachelle]

I’m horseless this winter, but last winter I had a pretty good system going. We don’t have hot water or heat lamps where I board so that complicates things, but there is always a work around.

-Fed Omega Horseshine for a healthy coat
-Body clipped
-Sprayed with Healthy HairCare Hair Moisturizer almost daily, then a blanket tossed on…made the coat really slick and shiny
-Hot toweling (this $13 water kettle has been life saver)
-Vacuum (a regular ol’ $30 shopvac has done a great job)

Socks always got a quick wash with some warm water from the kettle right before shows with a mixture of Lucky Braids shampoo and Quicsilver shampoo. The bottom of the tail got washed with Lucky Braids

[Foxtrot_s]

Last time, when asked on this board, I said what I do and got called “absurd”, so dare not go there again My milk white horse stays acceptably clean.

[Magicboy]

White horse…I just gave up. He’s clipped, blanketed , lives outside and is filthy almost all the time. I try to make him presentable for lessons and clinics, no shows right now. It’s pretty much impossible .m

[plaidbreeches]

[QUOTE=Squekers998;8481701]
LOL! Here in Wisconsin there’s a lot of that! Too much of it sometimes:mad:[/QUOTE]

The snow in my neck of Wisconsin is doing a great job at keeping my gelding’s 3 white legs white at the moment.

But when I was riding black horses full of winter dander and dust: rubber curry, hard brush, soft brush, dip the very tips of the bristles of the soft brush in water and then shake it out. It should be damp enough to collect the dustyness without leaving moisture on the coat.

[Ponyclubrocks]

For the dust that just wont brush out or wipe out with damp towels I reverse the vacuum and blow it out… Seems to work better than trying to suck it up with the vacuum.

[Canaqua]

Yep, very clean stall, sheet (barn is heated to about 45) and the vacuum. Mare looks better in the winter as she’s an extremely dark bay who bleaches out in the summer. She’s nearly black and very shiny right now. She had a trace clip back in early November because it was so unseasonably warm here, but it’s nearly grown back out now. She won’t need another, her coat looks awesome now, it’s colder and she’s not getting very hairy, TB/Trakh cross.

[rennyben]

A trick I learned years ago is to spray your brushes with Static Guard as you’re grooming. In the winter, static can build up in the coat and the dust and dandruff won’t “flick” out. The Static Guard eliminates that problem.

[omare]

In the old days we use to “hot towel” them" it is labor intensive but soak smallish terry towel in very very hot water --wring out really really well and start rubbing working area to area, repeat again and again -keeping water/towel hot and really wrung out and horse covered as you go along. You do not want to get the coat soaked, Move on and come back to the area if needed.

I once managed to get a white horse with an undercoat of “red clay” white doing this in a real cold barn without getting him very wet.