My Arabian mare has recently decided that she’d look good with her mane 7 inches in one spot and 3 in another 
I was tempted to roach it since there won’t be any serious showing going on for a while, she’s still quite green. A lot of people would want to strangle me for hogging the mane of a thin-necked Arab. What are your opinions? Would it look just as stupid if I pulled it evenly to the 3 inches or just take it all off? Let me know what you guys think.
My personal opinion is I like the longer manes. That said I would probably just pull it to the same length as the shorter areas and just let the whole thing grow out evenly, especially if you’re looking to let it grow long again.
I say roach it. Otherwise, you’re going to have to cut it all down to short 3" length. And while some special unicorns have manes that look great with a scissor cut and lay down normally at that length or otherwise look cute, most don’t have this magical power. At best, you’d have to pull/thin it by hand to achieve any sort of natural look. It really does depend on her mane texture/thickness/etc, though. Anyway, I ain’t got time for that myself, lol. I just happen to like a roached mane on almost any horse, so I’d just go for it now.
If you hate the look, no worries, it will grow out. Do take the time to figure out what she’s rubbing her mane out on now so you can remove it in the future when you do actually want her to have a full head of hair. Otherwise, she’ll just do it again when her mane grows out and back to square one…
I would pull it to 3”. I like a pulled mane on my Arab sport horses. One of my Arabs has a terrible fly allergy, so in the end I roach his mane in spring and it ends up a 2” spike, which makes us look badass on the trails… warrior horse. But he is a very thick and cresty gelding, so he looks like an old Greek statue.
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William Tell has a beautiful curly mane and forelock --thanks to a certain Hancock mare in his line --it’s where he gets his roan color, too —but last summer one of his jealous pasture buddies chewed a section out —so he had a six inch bare spot --as I was off to a mounted archery competition and wanted him to look nice, I opted to go military and roached him in the Marine style, “high and tight” --took the boy down to skin two days before competition. Day of competition he had just enough to cover the hide --I put a little oil on it and called it good. He still had his very, very curly and long forelock --and his very curly and long tail —to be honest, I thought the military hair cut really added to our over-all “serious competitor” look --or as serious as a 70 year old warrior lady can be on a curly haired QH --William Tell was spot on all weekend and we earned a second place trophy --one point more and . . .well, there’s always another day. As of now, two months later, he’s sporting two inches of new growth and I’m using wax pomade to smooth it over on his neck for fox hunting —it is clearly not braided, but does look tidy.
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I have a bit of an issue with jealous pasture mates too, they won’t stay off her mane. I wonder how they’d like the taste if I rubbed a little Irish spring down the hair. I’d keep it off her scalp she she wouldn’t get itchy, but maybe they’d stay off of it then?
The only thing that worked for us was a full --nose to tail --fly sheet. We kept one on the show horse all the time (sun up-sundown) to keep the color dark on his coat (he would bleach) --not only did he have a beautiful dark coat, but he had a perfect mane and tail! The show horse no longer shows, so I’m not as picky any more —let me know how the taste factor works --might try MTG – that stuff smells terrible --I can’t imagine it would taste good --and it is specifically for Manes, Tails, and Gooming!
I actually think she would look cute with it roached! I actually think some of the skinnier-necked one’s look better with a roach, it can make their neck look a bit thicker. The only ones I think really can’t pull of the roach look are short, thick bull-ish necks. And would be way easier to just let it grow out than to try to trim it all evenly. Once you get shorter than like 3 inches it often tends to just stick up anyways.
My beastie has a Mohawk and always looks tidy in the hunt field…
Just in case you decide to go with pulling the whole thing short (which is probably what I’d do).
I was googling mane length options/techniques the other day and found this thread:
On page 2 there is a link to video of Anne Kursinski explaining her method of cutting manes. I tried last night, and it looks really nice! Just in case your horse has a thinner mane that won’t stand up well to being pulled quite a bit shorter than current length.
