Monday, April 17, 2017

Talk to me about spring clipping

Okay.

You have all talked me down from the clipping ledge many times before.

So here I return, to ask further questions.

I'm seeing a lot of people doing spring clips to get ahead of shedding. It's warming up more quickly here in Vermont than I anticipated, and I'm holding back a bit on my rides because it's warm enough to sweat with hard work but not yet warm enough to rinse horses off.

remnants of winter's clip


So I find myself pondering a spring clip, to take out the winter fuzz and get us to the endpoint faster.

Realistically, I can't accomplish this for another couple of weeks, so it may all be beside the point.

But what should I keep in mind when thinking about doing a spring clip?

Is there such a thing as too late to do it? How about too early? (He's still wearing his sheet and we will continue to have a frost threat overnight until late May.)

Is there a setting I should use on the clippers - perhaps not go as close? Use different blades? (Pretend I'm stupid, and educate me in small words.)

Is it even worth it? Should I just stick it out with my shedding tools?

How do you decide whether to just let your horse shed out or clip him?

picture like 10x more hair; I took this picture 3 weeks ago

4 comments:

  1. If Tristan is really hot/uncomfortable, just do it! You won't ruin his summer coat, I promise. I full-body-clipped Dino at the end of April the year he was diagnosed with Cushing's because he just was. not. shedding. and he ended up growing in a summer coat just fine. The clip made him SO much more comfortable and eased my mind as well, since he was also not sweating at all/enough at that point. So. Go for it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bobby runs really hot, and since he also runs really tense most of the time he sweats at the drop of a hat. I've clipped him as late as June before because he gets so uncomfortable once we start showing if he's not down to bare naked. I just did him again over the weekend. You definitely won't ruin Tristan's coat!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ditto. If you want to clip him, go for it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You won't ruin his summer coat. I shave all my mine in the spring to skip shedding and because they got hot and miserable. They all grow in nice summer coats.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting! It's great to hear from you.