We will never be FEI but I swear my mare LOVES her whiskers shaved. When I get the clippers out she will bend over backwards to put her nose on them. I will trim them back but not all the way.
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The FEI vets also think rollkur is fine, so Iām not going to be so quick to jump on board that this, whiskers, is the most important form of āabuseā they are to be making a disqualifier.
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Do they really though?
I agree they donāt about some thingsā¦like ML
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I suspect it will be more about whether the whiskers have been removed for that competition - you can tell if they have been clipped within a few days.
Haha I was biting my tongue to not say this!
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Does anyone have a link to a scientific paper that shows the effect of whisker clipping in horses? Iāve just never seen anything more than anecdotal evidence.
Full disclosure - I donāt care whether FEI thinks clipping is bad. My faith in their interest in actual horse welfare fled long ago. I also donāt show. At this point, if I hack my horse twice in a week, itā a banner week. This also changes absolutely nothing about my horse husbandry. I only trim whiskers as needed for health reasons. (So, basically I trim the whiskers that interfere with/get pushed into his eyes by his fly mask.)
Iād just like to see how much weight we should put on doing everything possible to avoid clipping whiskers, and also, maybe more important, to determine what to do in order to maintain that horseās safely in the event of accidental whisker loss or intentional removal. (Maybe a fly mask with a nose piece for a little extra material between them and the world, for feedback to just how close the face is to that wall?)
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I stopped trimming a few years ago when they banned it in Germany. It was based on welfare grounds and at the time I wondered if horses may actually be less likely to injure themselves if the whiskers were intact. I had no real reason to clip them other than inherited tradition, so I stopped.
As others have said, the Germans havenāt had any trouble winning competitions with their bushy nosed horses 
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isnt the FEI adopting this to be in compliance with some European countries who passed laws?
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Maybe, but I am still firmly in the camp of āarenāt there better things to worry aboutā?
Have you seen the tackleboxes attached to the faces of some jumpers? How is that not abuse? What about āLDRā in dressage? How about some of the training techniques used regularly on reiners? How about cracking down on the BS in endurance happening in the middle east (which caused the US endurance group to split)? How about giving ML a suspension for making her horse bleed from the mouth multiple times?
But whiskers. Ok.
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I would also be interested in seeing any actual scientific, peer-reviewed evidence (if it exists) that clipping whiskers is detrimental to equine welfare. Iāve never been able to find any, myself.
I have had horses who objected to getting whiskers pinched/squished by tack but have never seen a horse injured due to lack of whiskers. I have had horses get irritated by eye whiskers rubbing against their fly mask. I have had a horse get a bug stuck in his unclipped ear hair during a ride and nearly kill both of us in his ensuing panic - twice(!). So I clip my horses, even my broodmare, regularly. They live out 24/7 and have never shown any sign of being harmed by this practice.
Iāll never show FEI anyway, so my opinion doesnāt really amount to much, I suppose. But I would like to see actual evidence of a welfare issue, not assumptions, before rules like this are passed. And I agree with previous posters who have pointed out that there are MUCH more serious issues related to equine welfare that the FEI seems perfectly content to ignore.
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I read something years ago that said that if a horse went from natural whiskers to shaved off ones overnight that they were somewhat likelier to klunk their heads into things for a few days, but then not so much. But I doubt it was a peer reviewed article. Probably more of a set of observations.
A friend left her horses nose whiskers natural bc it seemed to help with his overly dramatic reaction to insects.
My hunter barn mostly clips nose whiskers, neatens but doesnāt completely empty ears, and leaves the eye whiskers.
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In September the FEI suspended the entire UAE Federation across all disciplines for 3 months because of rule violations. The UAE Endurance discipline is further suspended until March 31 2021
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My bad, I misread and thought it said ear hairs. 
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it kind of strikes me as an easy target to say ālook at us doing stuff for horse welfareā to distract from the lack of progress on other issues.
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Yes, but that was for having too many International entries in a National competition, not for any abuses.
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Actually it was for running an International competition as a National competition intentionally to avoid the new (2020) FEI endurance rules, which were specifically put in place to address the horse welfare issues in the UAE and elsewhere.
The CAS determined when they upheld the FEI suspension that the Endurance suspension will end when the suspension of all the UAE disciplines ends , on Dec 31 2020. So the 3 months extra for Endurance was kiboshed by the CAS.
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Horse I know if had itās whiskers clipped for a show, bonked her muzzle, wouldnāt drink as a result, colicked and that was the end of that show. So thereās my n=1 from a person whoād never clip whiskers.
I just donāt see the big deal about leaving them on. Your horse may not care but others really do.
And the idea that the FEI is making this rule and not others you might consider more important doesnāt meant they arenāt, canāt or wonāt make other rules for horse welfare later.
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Okay, but hereās my n = 1. My horse bashes his face all the time because heās clumsy and heās never ānot drankā because of it. Heās cut his muzzle, his nose, his lip, his eyelid. He once gave himself an ulcer on his upper lip that made me have a minute because the mucus membrane ulcerative diseases in horses aināt great and Iām pretty sure theyāre reportable where I live. Thank goodness it healed normally and nobody else gained an ulcer. He gave himself suture line periostitis by ramming his face into something in his run in shed and got a bloody nose from it. It took years for it to go down and from time to time it will still flare up and heāll get a hard lump on his face - probably because heās run into something again. Heās come in with shiners that swell his eyes shut. He likes to tear off hunks of hair in the middle of his forehead or poll, under his full forelock, which arguably ought to provide some protection and some sensory warning. He has a full head of whiskers. When I clipped him to show? He honestly got less cuts, which I attribute to him being on 24/7 pasture board at the time, so he wasnāt walking into the walls of his stall, he just had a three-sided run in shed to contend with.
So, in your case, did the lack of whiskers cause the bonk, or was it the stress of clipping, the change to routine? Was the horse not drinking because of the bonk? The stress of the clipping? The change in routine? The start of ulcers due to any one of the above? Even horses who show regularly and get clipped regularly can have other stressors going on that weāre unaware of and then throwing a clipping on top of that stress can be the straw that broke the camelās back. Hereās the problem with ān = 1ā versus a controlled study.
Thereās no ābig dealā about leaving them on, but I really, really want to see the study. I mean, Iām really curious to know if there is an issue besides a small number of uncontrolled n = 1 scenarios, and if so, what is it? I mean, personally, if you held clippers against my sinuses and facial nerves for ten minutes, I guarantee you, the stress and the vibration would set off my low grade neuro signs and Iād walk away funny. You could make me stand there for ten minutes and snip scissors millimeters from my face and Iād only be annoyed and totally capable of walking away under my own power. So, thereās a study for you. If I have to clip the whiskers around my horseās eyes to put on a fly mask, should I use scissors over clippers? Or am I totally damned no matter what I do because whiskers are 100% required by my horse to function and Iāve got to find a way to not let my horse get an eye ulcer from the damn whiskers curling into his eye?
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Hmmā¦ where have I heard this argument before? Iāll think of it eventually.
Anywayā¦
I think this talk of āwell this isnāt enoughā and āthere are bigger issuesā is just such a bad argument. Trimming whiskers can be inhumane and there can also be bigger issues in the sport. Nobody ever said those are mutually exclusive concepts. I just think all the āwhataboutingā is juvenile and pointless.
Thereās enough experts that have said not to do it. The only argument Iāve heard for it is for appearances and that just should not hold any weight. At the end of the day Iād really like to think nobody here would want to sacrifice their horses comfort for a look.
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Where? When? Iāve never found a study. Or an expert. And no one ever links one.
Invoking the Social Media Life Rule #1 - Show the evidence, or it didnāt happen.
Evidence of a properly-done science-based study would be best. Evidence of an expert, with a name, and science credentials that can be verified, is also necessary to back up the study.
If there are any such.
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