Aug
News, Safety Sense
Healthy Manes and Tails
A deeper connection to a healthy end
Grooming manes and tails is one of those wonderful moments when we feel a deep connection to our horses. It’s one of those bonding moments that any great horse lover knows and feels reading this. And doing it right with the right products makes all the difference to a great ongoing experience and healthy horse.
We’ve created a go to poster for quick reminders for you to print and post in your tackroom and use to help guide our younger riders on their journey in horse care.
DOWNLOAD YOUR PRINTABLE POSTER HERE
Being gentle with gentle products both inside and out
Like with us, what we eat plays a key role in the condition of our hair to keep it shiny and healthy.
Be mindful on what you feed your horse to support this, make sure diets are a good combination of essential minerals, fats and amino acids:
- Essential minerals: iodine, copper, and zinc, vitamin B
- Fats: Omega fatty acids
- Essential amino acids: lysine, methionine. Chia, hemp seed, flax (rich in Omega 3s)
Probiotics are great for preventing fungal overgrowth that can lead to sweet itch, and help with yeast overgrowth causing dandruff. Did you know that black sunflower seeds are a natural sunscreen, working inside out for protection?
Tackling outside care
As we’ve indicated hot weather is not great, horses sweat an itch and want to scratch, and washing them too often doesn’t help the situation. When you do give them a good lather use sulfate free products with good moisturising ingredients, which will help to retain natural oils to support healthy skins and hair. Detanglers, while great are another one to be product wise about, normal products might appear to give a great shine and detangle but they create a silicone build up that stops follicles breathing, which means for breakage.
Eucalyptus and peppermint oil balms
We all know the challenge with ticks, and guess what, Eucalyptus or Peppermint oil balms applied to the dock of the tail tend to be rather unattractive to them. And do make a note that the use of chemical based fly sprays will irritate skin itch more.
Coconut, jojoba and sunflower oil
These are great to moisturise and sooth the base of the tail or hair, and are a really good alternate option to normal detanglers.
Tea Tree, Lemon or Lavender
The sweet itch too has a great alternative in these 3 oils properly diluted and applied topically to irritated spots. Soothing they help stop rubbing.
shop our grooming productsThanks to Petra Z. McGowan who is Founder and President of EcoLicious Equestrian Inc and Stephanie Ruud a Grooming Expert and Copywriter for this wonderful holistic information. EcoLicious Equestrian is a grooming/horse care product line formulated without sulfates, silicones, parabens and artificial fragrances.