Personally I love a roached mane and it completely removes the braid or not braid question. Always looks tidy and is very traditional.
Here’s a well known VA foxhunter sporting a shadbelly and roached mane on her hunter.
And here’s a lovely hunter showing at an A show, roached mane and shadbelly in the classic.
I love roaching too but I’ve been the subject of an intervention more than once over that topic!
Those braids really suit him!
Nope on the roaching…simply because I always grab mane, whether its a braid or free hair!!
Interestingly, I judged a B show this weekend at Ledges (west of Chicago) and several horses were braided. Some had hunter braids, others button braids. I thought it was kind of neat and old school.
All I do is button braids, which is what I would have done for the WEC schooling show if it didn’t say “braiding discouraged” in the prizelist. I wasn’t taking the easy way out and it did feel odd to have a shad on and have an upbraided mane. I would have loved to been able to braid for this show as I actually had to braid his mane down anyway each night and put a slinky on so it would lay flat and look decent once I unbraided it for showing. I thought it would have been more disrespectful if I did braid.
I have sewn in braids for the past 25 years for driving, and I braid all of my hunter ponies this way for my local schooling shows all the time.
I hate doing hunter braids and still suck at them. So I will continue with my button braids for the schooling shows and I hire a braider for the rated shows as my own would be sub par for sure!!
Pic of a cute medium I started at schooling shows and some button braids IMG_8892|230x500
Oh, you are funny.
I can not be the only one that no matter how hard I try, I can’t make nice braids.
I have tried many ways of doing them, but still they look like they were done by someone with no ability and they do not stay in.
This! Totally this!
I can do them, but they ALWAYS slant left. It is…disappointing.
Even if I don’t tend to grab braids too much at the show, I do like having the option of mane at home at least! My young horse rubbed a ton of his hair out last summer due to allergies, and I almost roached it, but sometimes he can be a little spicy, and since the rubbing was mostly up towards his head, I kept whatever mane I could get!
I’m totally down with the button trend. The ones I pictured above were more of the poufy Dutch style which would probably not hold up to too many crest releases, but I can definitely do smaller tidy ones.
Start your braids by crossing over from the other hand. Ex. if you start right hand then left hand then right hand, go left right left. They do this because you’re pulling more tightly on one side than the other.
I always roached my gelding. At home or hacking, you can use a neck strap. In classes where braiding is expected I would hope to be prepared enough not to have to grab mane (or tiny hunter braid.)
I am a 58 year old professional rider and trainer. I have always and will always grab mane
You grab the tiny hunter braids in an AA show that expects you to have those hunter braids?
Yep! And I can do them too…have also been a professional braider, although my fingers and feet no longer want to
Your fingers are more adept than mine. 
I know you judge but didn’t realize that you were still competing and hanging on to teeny hunter braids when necessary.
How can you grab hold of those tiny braids? Even bigger braids aren’t much help to me. When I roached one of my horses I left about 2 inches and didn’t clip him again until the mane was starting to bend.
Practice!
Practice learning how to grab the little braids when the horse spooks or jumps awkwardly?
I always laugh when people argue “tradition” in the hunter ring. The current fad of 50 tiny braids, horses crawling around the course at a glacially slow canter, and riders all wearing the same uniform of navy blue short coats that barely reach their crotch is very far from the hunter shows I did as a child.
Moms or grandmas put in 12-15 braids in the morning, horses were rewarded for brilliance which meant going FORWARD, and real tweeds in a variety of shades were the norm.
But it’s so typical for subjective sports to take something that’s good and exaggerate it to extremes in the belief that makes it better.
Yes, minus the spooks or awkward jumps. Just practice grabbing the braids even when your pony is being perfect!
Meh, I’ll reach for the grab strap rather than try to pinch hold of a tiny braid. Different strokes 
The racehorse, Rachel Alexandra, would be braided for each race. By the time she went into the start gate the jockey would have about a 6 inch area in the middle of her neck undone. It was the first time I ever thought about jockeys grabbing mane.
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