Household Products Used in the Barn
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Who hasn’t tried Mane n’ Tail shampoo on their own hair? It’s been on the shelves stores that sell beauty products for a few years now. But, this product isn’t the only one you can share with your horse. Here’s a few products, beauty and otherwise you can easily share with your horse.
Baby Wipes
Of course! Keep a box of baby wipes in your tack box for cleanups on both your horse and tack. It’s also useful for keeping your hands clean when you’re working around the stable. Baby wipes are essential at horse shows for giving boots a quick wipe, keeping tack clean and wiping slobber off of your jacket. Look for biodegradable ones, and packaging that can be recycled or reused.
Baby Oil
Use baby oil on your four-legged baby to add a lustre to its coat. Just use a tiny bit on your hands or a rag to spread it so you don’t get oily splotches. At horse shows, wiping it around your horse’s eyes and muzzle helps make them appear more defined. Just don’t apply enough to make your horse look greasy. It can also be used to help buff up hooves to a soft shine. Dust will stick to this oil, so use sparingly. Baby oil can also be used to soften and protect bug bitten udders and scarred areas. Detangle a snarled mane or tail with a bit of baby oil brushed into the tangles. Baby oil is just scented mineral oil, which may be cheaper.
Petroleum Jelly
Petroleum jelly is a base for many cosmetics and is inert - it won’t harbor germs and it won’t go bad. So it’s good for soothing and protecting injured areas, scrapes, and other minor injuries and keeps a long time.
Pumice Stone
That pumice you use to get your heels silky smooth is also useful for scrubbing stains from your horse’s white hooves. It can also help remove bot eggs and caked on dirt. Go carefully, as this abrasive might work too well if you scrub a spot too vigorously.
Vinegar
You might use it for flavoring, preserving vegetables, rinsing your hair to make it nice and glossy, house cleaning and taking the itch out of mosquito bites, but it’s useful in the stable too. Use it to clean buckets, brushes, bits and other gear. Use it diluted to make a rinse after you bath your horse or wash its mane and tail. Some swear by cider vinegar as an ingredient of homemade fly repellent and it’s thought to prevent enteroliths if fed to horses. Some people treat mild skin irritations with cider vinegar and it’s thought to help clear up hoof thrush.
Baby Powder
It appears a lot of baby products make it into our stables. Baby powder shaken onto white markings on the horse’s legs and body can help make them a brighter white. Fill an old sock, with it, knot the end and use this to pat it on. Put it on before you apply hoof shine. Sprinkle a tiny bit into the crevices of your leather boots to quell a squeak. Cornstarch works too.
Diaper Cream
Good old zinc cream is useful in both your horse’s and your own first aid kit. Put it over minor wounds to protect and sooth. Sunburned noses will be both protected from further burning and get some pain relief with a thin layer of diaper cream. Skin irritations like rain rot can be soothed with a thin layer of diaper cream. It is messy and oily though and may hold the dust and grit, so don’t use it on large areas.
Some Other Products to Try
Try dandruff shampoo for rain rot. Toothpaste may help whiten white hooves. Mouthwash can be used to repel bugs and fight fungal infections. Shampoos and conditioners made to keep the brassiness out of grey human hair can be used on white horses and white markings. Laundry bluing helps whiten and brighten too.
What products have made their way from the house to your stable? |
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Valkyrie
MOD
Listerine/baby oil mix for horses with itchy docks is one we used as a cheap way to stop horses scratching all the hair out of their tails.
Deep Heat works if your horse's tail keeps getting chewed and you don't want to put Cribbox in it. Cribbox is hard to wash/brush out so it's good if the horse is out constantly, but if your show horse only goes out briefly during the day when it isn't raining you can whack a small glob of Deep Heat in the end of the tail. It washes/brushes out a lot easier. It has to be administered daily, however.
Hair spray to keep hoof oil from coming off. Paint the hoof oil on the feet, then spray it liberally with hair spray and wait for it to dry. Wouldn't recommend doing this constantly or on the sole (because it wouldn't allow the feet to breathe) but if the grass is tall and dewy, or you have to oil well ahead of your class it would work a treat.
Steel-Os (Goldilocks, wire dish scrubbers, whatever they're called where you're from) are very good fo
Listerine/baby oil mix for horses with itchy docks is one we used as a cheap way to stop horses scratching all the hair out of their tails.
Deep Heat works if your horse's tail keeps getting chewed and you don't want to put Cribbox in it. Cribbox is hard to wash/brush out so it's good if the horse is out constantly, but if your show horse only goes out briefly during the day when it isn't raining you can whack a small glob of Deep Heat in the end of the tail. It washes/brushes out a lot easier. It has to be administered daily, however.
Hair spray to keep hoof oil from coming off. Paint the hoof oil on the feet, then spray it liberally with hair spray and wait for it to dry. Wouldn't recommend doing this constantly or on the sole (because it wouldn't allow the feet to breathe) but if the grass is tall and dewy, or you have to oil well ahead of your class it would work a treat.
Steel-Os (Goldilocks, wire dish scrubbers, whatever they're called where you're from) are very good for scrubbing feet and get more ingrained dirt out than scrub brushes do.
Marmite is apparently a good way to get rid of warts. I've only seen it tried once but it worked a treat.
Belts are a great alternative if your leadrope suddenly breaks while leading a horse outside of the field.
T-shirts can be used as impromptu blindfolds if necessary.
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Jun 6, 2016
• 2,228 views
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Ruby Creek Ranch
This isn't a household product, but it's good to always save old fly masks. If your horse ever has a wound you need to let breathe, but don't want bugs to get at, you can cut out a piece of mesh from the fly mask and tape it over the wound and voila, the wound can breathe and heal and insects can't get at it.
This isn't a household product, but it's good to always save old fly masks. If your horse ever has a wound you need to let breathe, but don't want bugs to get at, you can cut out a piece of mesh from the fly mask and tape it over the wound and voila, the wound can breathe and heal and insects can't get at it.
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Jun 8, 2016
• 2,200 views
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