There are over 100 million horses, donkeys and mules in the world today and owners of these animals can be found on almost every continent and in almost every society. The Horse Course will cover many unique aspects of equine ownership and touch upon the science behind many of today’s management practices.
Grooming
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En provenance du cours de University of Florida
The Horse Course: Introduction to Basic Care and Management
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Basic Equine Physiology
This week will start out with covering some basic physiology. We will then advance into hoof anatomy and care. This will lead to spending a lecture discussing laminitis, a serious hoof condition in horses and other equids. The final two lectures will jump into the various coat colors and markings in horses.
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Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
All right, welcome back, and in this lecture it was again one of the newer ones
that people requested and that was kind of on grooming, some basic tips on grooming.
And, so I kind of put this together with the idea that I may
wanna go out and shoot a video and try to add that to the website.
You have actually grooming a horse.
So, this one's gonna be a little bit quicker just gonna talk about some
of the basics.
And give you an idea on grooming.
And then you can always go online too and expand on some of this.
Now some of the basic pieces of equipment that we use with grooming is you
start with your hoof pick.
This next, kind of round thing is called a curry comb, you wanna brush, a mane and
tail comb, and then clippers, and
we'll talk about, how we use these when we groom our animals.
Now, anytime you groom your horse or you're working with the feet,
or you're saddling them up, bridling them up, you wanna restrain your animal or
you have somebody hold them.
But typically, we tie him to a solid unmovable object with again a quick
slipknot that in case your animal gets in trouble you can go on there in and
yank on it and untie them quickly.
So have somebody show you how to do that or
practice on your own on how to tie those knots, so you can remove them quickly.
And always remember safety for you and then your animal.
I mean we want you both to be safe, but your safety is always paramount.
So, don't forget that.
And, anytime you're grooming a horse or a donkey and
you're working around them always be careful.
In the behavior section we talked a little bit about blind spots and vision.
So, always make sure you're careful of where you are.
You don't wanna spook the animal.
You wanna be close to the animal.
I'm always up near the shoulders, that's kind of a safe area for you.
And anytime you move around the animal, I always keep my hand on them so
they can feel me where I'm at and I try to stay as close to the animal as
I can going around their tail to the other side.
If you come up behind them, or you're in their kick zone and they can't see you and
something spooks them, they may reach out and kick you, and
that can really hurt you, really bad, so be very, very careful of that.
And again, that equine senses lecture, we kinda cover how these animals see.
Now, we always start with picking the feet, and
we covered this in the hoof care lecture, so you may wanna go back and review that.
But this is something you should do everyday and again.
Just to reiterate when we pick feet, we always start at the heel, and
go to the toe with the hoof picked.
So, don't need to go into too much detail with that.
But again, that when we groom our horses we always start with the feet.
Now when you, it depends how dirty your horse is, and
I've seen horses come in just you shake your head, and you're like,
oh this is gonna be a long time to groom you cuz they got mud caked all over them,
and it had been raining, they rolled in it.
And so it's gonna take a while to groom them if you don't bathe them,
which we'll address at the end of this lecture.
So what we do use is a curry comb.
And a curry comb's hard rubber.
So it's really good at removing dirt and debris on that coat.
And what we do is we use it in a circular motions.
And there are some other considerations with this.
So usually, we start on the neck.
And I imagine it's almost like kind of like a massage for the horse.
So it's good.
It's not only good for the animal and good for their coat, but
it's good for them to, again, if we get back into training.
You working with that animal on a daily basis they learn to trust you.
You come out and groom them.
It feels good.
There are so many benefits to doing this.
So that's why we really want to get our hands on these animals as much
as possible.
So, we start at the neck, we use circular motions, work our way down the coat.
We've got to be careful around the bony areas.
Especially around the head, or below the knees and hocks.
Even the shoulder blades, sometimes you have to be careful.
Because this is hard plastic.
So you can imagine if somebody was rubbing hard plastic on, on your bones and
bony areas.
It wouldn't feel good.
So it doesn't feel good on the horse.
So we tend to avoid those areas with the curry comb.
Now with your brushes really you're gonna have two in any good grooming kit.
And that's a stiff and a soft brush.
So the stiff bristles we're gonna treat kind of like the curry comb.
You know after you go through there and work those mud spots and stuff,
you'll come in with a stiff brush.
So careful on those bony areas.
And the soft brush, in general, you can use that all over the animal.
You can use on the face, or you can get a damp sponge or
cloth to use around the eyes and muzzle with the horse.
So, we use this to kind of brush out some more of the dirt.
Just some tips when you groom, you wanna brush in the direction of the hair.
So when you're brushing, that way it just kind of naturally and
helps spread some of those natural oils, kind of gives that sleek look.
And then once you're done, you can use a grooming cloth or a towel.
And then get some of that extra dust off the horse.
And they'll look really nice.
And then I'll tell you what to do.
They'll go out and they'll roll around in the dirt.
It happens every time.
You groom them.
It's this wonderful job, they look spectacular.
You let them out and the first thing they do is go roll in the mud.
Oh, well.
[LAUGH] So the mane and tail, we do have to pay particular attention to that, too.
You can see in this image here you see these in horses that has these tangles.
Drives you nuts when they get that.
And that's why we wanna make sure we take care of their manes and
tails on a daily basis, to avoid those tangles.
Again, this is not something you wanna just get a comb, and go out there, and
just start brushing, and pulling, and yanking on the hair.
Cuz it's gonna hurt the horse.
Negative experience for the horse.
It's a negative experience with you.
And it's not the proper way to groom them.
So what you wanna do is carefully work out those tangles.
You can work it with your fingers.
If you do brush, start at the base of the mane or tail.
Work your way up.
Some other things you wanna do, the mane and tail is you wanna clean the base
because they do get a lot of dirt and debris in there.
And there are some commercial products, so
you can use commercial shampoos to help keep that clean.
And then there's these detangler products that do help, but
you have to be careful that you don't overuse them,
because they can break down the hair itself, and make it really brittle.
So, be very, very careful using that, but they can help with that.
And what I like about it is that you look at some images online, and
you try to find people combing tails.
What I really like is that this young lady is standing to the side of the horse.
Somebody's holding the horse.
I've seen some people standing right behind the animal working on the tail.
Be very, very careful doing that.
Again, if they kick, they could strike you.
Again, safety for you and your animal.
Now the next thing is bathing, and there are some people out there that believe you
shouldn't bathe your horse because it's gonna remove the natural oils.
Which, there's a validity to that.
They develop these natural oils and
they don't necessarily need a bath all the time, or even often at all.
But if you have an animal that you're riding a lot, they're athletic,
they're involved in a lot of strenuous activity, they're probably gonna
need a bath to get some of that, a lot of the sweat off the body.
When I worked at a race track it was one of
the first things we did when horses came back after breezing and training.
Always give them a nice warm bath in the morning and
then groomed them and put them back in their stalls.
So, something you just get to, and some of these horses like it.
It's fun playing with the hose and playing with you.
Sometimes they figure out they need a bath themselves so
they'll jump into the water themselves.
That foal, I thought that picture was pretty great.
One of the things to think about with the males, the stallions,
the geldings, you do have to clean that sheath.
I know it's not fun.
It's not something people look forward to but that thing needs to get cleaned,
because they do get a lot of dry skin and other problems in there.
So, make sure you do that.
And the next thing was trimming.
So, thinking about this, it's like how do you tell people how to trim a horse.
One of the first things I can tell you is if you are going to shows or
events, make sure you follow the rules.
And, just to give you an example AQHA has specific rules for
each class at their events.
And I found this for the AQHA branch variety.
So some of the things that you have to think about is no hoof polish,
no braided manes or tails, and they don't like it when you trim their ears.
So certain events have specific grooming standards.
So you wanna make sure you read that up before you go in and you think you're
doing everything right and you get disqualified and you don't know why.
So I'll put that out there.
And clipping and trimming, it's one of those things that, especially
show animals or your for sales and stuff like that you want a well groomed horse.
They look better because they do get whiskers,
those are things you wanna trim, stuff like that.
But one of the first things is you wanna do is train the animal
to become accustomed to these clippers.
Especially when I was training a lot of ringlings,
you introduce those clippers and it's like, their eyes are huge.
And they're like, what are you doing to me and they're freaking out.
So again, just like anything with training,
you have to introduce it slowly, get them used to it over time.
I'd hold it on their neck and then work my way up to the ears, to well, they,
they allow you to keep it up there, and they realize you're not gonna hurt them.
So very, very important.
Just don't come at them with clippers.
They've never seen it before,
cuz they can kick, they can hurt you or hurt themselves.
Always be careful clipping around the ears and
whenever you do clip, clip opposite in the lay of the hair.
So that way you can get a cleaner clip.
And then the other tip is if you're going to a show or
a sale you wanna clip at least a month before.
That way the coat can grow out a little bit and
you'll get more of an even appearance with that.
And just some more tips with trimming,
you may wanna bathe them first to kinda get some of that debris.
Always start at the head, clipping the ears, muzzle.
Be careful about clipping ear hair too because that ear hair is really important
to keeping ticks and other things out of their ears.
So I'd be very cautious on trimming up there, but
sometimes you do clip the long hairs to give it a kind of more even appearance.
I've seen tips like you can use a number 10 blade, so whatever you're using as
clippers, a number 10 blade gives it a kind of nice even coat appearance.
Also, be very careful around thin areas, the joints, and
the knees and stuff like that.
Those because you can clip the skin which would be painful for the animal.
There's these things called cowlicks and swirls.
So here, you've got to be careful clipping around that, because you get this
swirl of hair and how you've got to be careful trimming around that.
And then different patterns, and you can go online and see some really cool ones.
Sometimes I see the puzzle pieces on horses.
People have cut different patterns in their animal.
They look pretty cool.
But different disciplines do trim, so like in this one,
you can see this discipline in some of these English type disciplines,
the legs are untrimmed and
they actually trimmed where the saddle would go, or they left it untrimmed.
They did not trim around where the saddle would go.
So, it can actually help with the saddle pad and cushioning and stuff like that.
So that's very common too that you could see.
Now trimming the mane or tail you will see with,
especially the mane, things called trimming a bridal path.
So here you can see behind the ears where that owner has trimmed.
So the bridal sits up there and doesn't pull on their hair.
And then also you'll see some animals that they'll actually trim the mane and
they call that roaching.
So certain disciplines do that or certain owners like that look,
they kind of like that zebra crazy mohawk looking things.
Actually when I was working with Calvary horses, we actually in training,
we actually roached their manes, so it was something we did.
Other things people will do is they will actually pull
longer hairs out to kinda give it an even appearance.
So, didn't have time to kinda talk about that in this lecture, but
there are some good articles online that you can find out how to properly do this.
You don't wanna just go start yanking hairs because, again,
if somebody started yanking your hair, it would irritate you.
And it's a little bit painful so read up on how to do that.
Now how often should you groom?
Well, my suggestions is check and clean them daily.
Check their feet daily.
Groom their coats.
You don't have to do the whole coot and caboodle.
You can just go in and just brush them.
And again that's you connecting with your animal.
Your animal connecting with you.
Very, very important part of horse ownership.
So that's my tips, that's what I would do.
And then any time you're gonna ride the animal, you wanna groom before and after.
And so many benefits to doing this.
You're getting eyes on the animal.
You're touching the animal.
That's why we own them.
You know to connect.
So those are my final tips for grooming and I'll see you soon.
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