Any ideas for speeding up the shedding process?

Any ideas at for really speeding up shedding?

After every grooming session, I looks like a hairy bear, from the endless hair that is coming off of my horse this spring. I curry, I use a shedding blade, I brush before and after riding and still every day he seems to be left with the same amount of hair!

I haven't been able to bather him yet - maybe that's help. What does everyone else do?

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jackie Cochran on April 3, 2010 at 8:15pm

One experienced horsewoman, down here in NC, told me once that some horses pretty well hang on to their coats until June, and if the horse is out rough (no regular grooming/riding), that one day in June they get down and roll and their winter coat finally comes off. I think she was refering to ponies, but I know every spring I breathed horse hair quite a bit and for quite a while.
What helped me to get more of the hair off each grooming session was using a toothed plastic curry, and knocking the hair out every third stroke. That way the curry picked up more hair from the horse's coat. On the really thick places I'd have to knock off the curry every second stroke (like on top of the croup.)
Too bad we can't get paid for all that shedded hair. Of course it would take a lot of it to make a pound.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jan Jollymour on April 5, 2010 at 10:24am

Hi, Barbara:

I have a couple of tricks...I keep my horses under lights (I use a dairy barn timer) in the winter, so they don't grow winter coats. They must be blanketed, but here it is the beginning of April and our horses look show-ring ready, and we haven't spent months eating horse hair.

However, my 5 y.o. mare just came into the barn having spent the winter turned out, and she's got a coat like a grizzly bear. She's now under lights, and has been for 10 days, and her coat is beginning to slip quickly now. I use a Grooma tool, with long rubber teeth and a good hand grip. It takes out more hair than anything else, and it's very easy to knock the accumulated hair out of it. I also use a long-bristled reasonably stiff dandy brush when horses are shedding, as it doesn't clog up and fliicks the hair out of the coat.

I have an equine vacuum, but I don't find it helps to pull the hair out, it's better for dirt. I do think Jackie's onto something - the horses we have roughed off in the winter clear most of their winter coats themselves by rolling. I just find the aftermath of the rolling hard to deal with on a daily basis when they're in work...