Just looking at the hairy horses has my clipper fingers itching. So after the big melt turned into the big freeze, I decided to remove at least some of the extra wooliness of my horses. Freedom doesn’t grow a thick winter coat, but Zelda? She looks like a yak. Long, think and I’m sure, very warm. I usually start off with a trace clip in the early spring and keep taking more off as the weather warms up. And no, clipping in the spring does not ruin their summer coat, it just eliminates the shedding.
2 thoughts on “Releasing the inner horse from the outer Yak”
You are tempting me….Raven started shedingin January and is only now really hitting his stride. HOly cow where does he PUT it? There’s like four layers of horse under all that hair. I’d heard that clipping them in spring ruins their summer coat….but if Miss z turns out well, I might just give it a go. Thank the stars I have a heavy duty Oster shearmaster…I once burned out a smaller Oster clipper (the little one) taking a 5″ deep coat off of a Cushing’s horse. That, and I’d never clipped a horse before. Poor Jordan, my aforementioned Cushing’s horse. He looked like he’d been attacked by clothes moths. The vet who came to float him took one look and said, (tactfully) Hmmmm…interesting clipping job. 😉
I have never had a problem clipping them in the spring. Their coats always grow back just fine. It just speeds the process along! I burnt out a set of clippers on Curly. Given that she’s a Bashkir Curly horse AND has Cushings, her coat is like felted wool.
You are tempting me….Raven started shedingin January and is only now really hitting his stride. HOly cow where does he PUT it? There’s like four layers of horse under all that hair. I’d heard that clipping them in spring ruins their summer coat….but if Miss z turns out well, I might just give it a go. Thank the stars I have a heavy duty Oster shearmaster…I once burned out a smaller Oster clipper (the little one) taking a 5″ deep coat off of a Cushing’s horse. That, and I’d never clipped a horse before. Poor Jordan, my aforementioned Cushing’s horse. He looked like he’d been attacked by clothes moths. The vet who came to float him took one look and said, (tactfully) Hmmmm…interesting clipping job. 😉
I have never had a problem clipping them in the spring. Their coats always grow back just fine. It just speeds the process along! I burnt out a set of clippers on Curly. Given that she’s a Bashkir Curly horse AND has Cushings, her coat is like felted wool.