Regardless of which pet shares your life, maintaining their coat is critical for their overall health, well-being and comfort!

Reasons include:

  1. A healthy coat will help your pet effectively regulate its optimal body temperature.
  2. A healthy coat protects internal organs from external threats including the environment, heat, trauma and ultraviolet light.
  3. The overall condition of your pet’s coat (and skin) indicates their overall health. A glossy and healthy coat reflects:
    • A nutritious diet;
    • Effective brushing and grooming; and
    • A healthy immune system.
  4. Regular and consistent brushing of the coat helps:
    • Distribute natural oils.
    • Remove dead hair, dirt and dander.
    • Prevent painful mats and tangles.
  5. Regular bathing promotes optimal coat (and skin) health.

Below, let’s take a closer look at how to care for your horse’s coat with 5 priceless tips!

How often does your family dog need to be bathed? Read our blog post!

(Stay tuned to our blog for future posts on how to effectively care for your cat, dog and rabbit’s coat too.)

How to Care for Your Horse’s Coat: 5 Tips

Brown Horse with a Leather Halter Eating Fresh Grass
Brown Horse Eating Fresh Grass

The Horse’s Coat: Diet

As mentioned above, a pet’s coat is an accurate indicator of your pet’s overall health! Without the proper foods and vitamins, your horse’s coat will suffer.

How the Quality of Hay Affects Your Horse

Horses need proper levels of:

  • Vitamin D (typically from the sun, but may need to be supplemented).
  • Vitamin A.
  • Vitamin E (from fresh forage including pasture grass and tender plants).
  • Minerals.
  • Proteins.
  • Fats including flaxseeds and fish oil (Omega-3 fatty acids).

NEVER feed these items to your horse!

Gray and White Horse Being Brushed with the EquiGroomer
Gray and White Horse Being Brushed with the EquiGroomer

Brushing Your Horse’s Coat

Maintaining a healthy coat on your horse means regular brushing, ideally daily!

Consistent brushing helps remove the dead undercoat and encourages new hair growth! Daily brushing also stimulates and distributes natural oils. Always make brushing a pleasant, relaxing experience for your horse with the proper tools, gentle and slow strokes over the entire body with plenty of praise! If you observe your horse rolling on the ground more often, add some extra brushing to address any irritation from sweat or tack.

Regular Exercise

Did you know that regular exercise is just as vital for a healthy coat? Exercise will:

  • Stimulate your horse’s blood vessels and capillaries to deliver essential nutrients and oxygen to the skin; and
  • Help your horse release toxins through sweating and the natural oils for a healthy shine.
Brown Horse Getting Bathed
Brown Horse Getting Washed

Don’t Forget a Good Wash!

While daily brushing is important, horses also need a good wash including their tail, mane and entire body.

Avoid the area around their eyes and nostrils.

After the mane and tail have dried, add conditioner.

NOTE: Do not over-bathe your horse to avoid stripping the natural and essential oils from your horse’s coat.

Horse Tack
Clean Equine Tack will Protect Your Horse’s Coat

Stay Clean and Tidy!

  • Keep all tack, rugs and saddle blankets clean to support an optimal, healthy horse coat!
  • The barn environment should also be clean and dry.
  • After riding, sponge off or squeegee all sweat under the saddle, down the neck or anywhere else on the body to avoid skin irritations, infections or sores.


Use these 5 tips to best support and maintain your horse’s coat year-round!
Remember, brushing/grooming also provides the perfect opportunity
to check your horse’s coat for issues like lumps and bumps,
bald patches, infections or inflammation as well as
unwanted parasites. Early prevention and detection
will ensure proper diagnosis and treatment!


EquiGroomer: The Perfect Grooming Tool for Your Horse!

Chestnut Horse in an Open Field featuring the EquiGroomer Tools
Chestnut Horse in an Open Field featuring the EquiGroomer Tools

Ensure your equine’s best coat with regular
brushing to remove the dead undercoat, dander
and dirt especially after your horse rolls on the ground!

We guarantee your dog, horse, other pets or livestock,
will LOVE the EquiGroomer Grooming Tools!

For individual or bulk orders, call 860-573-0604
or send us an email.

Thousands of years ago, humans domesticated horses to share their life and work. Today there are more than 300 unique equine breeds with even more variations in sizes, coats, and personalities!

How well do you know horses? In today’s blog, we’re going to test your knowledge and see if you know these 8 amazing equine facts!

Click here to learn about 10 unique horse breeds.

How Do Horses Sleep?

Horse Laying on the Ground
Horse Laying on the Ground

Let’s start with an easy one! Did you know that horses sleep standing up?! They also lay down to achieve a full, restorative sleep cycle. Several factors influence a horse to lay down to sleep including:

  • Weather.
  • Available space.
  • Comfortable bedding; or
  • Physical ailments.

A Horse’s Life Span

Horses have one of the longest life spans among pets. Today, domestic horses are known to live more than 30 years (wild horses only to 20). A lot of this is due to an increase in knowledge about horse care, nutrition, and vet medicine.

Horses: The Most Popular Breed!

Among dogs, the Labrador Retriever has held the top spot of Most Popular Dog Breed since 1991.

For horses, the top spot is held by the American Quarter Horse! This breed is appreciated and ridden by beginner riders and professional horse people.

Quarter Horses Running in a Field
Two Quarter Horses Running

The Equine Diet

Horse Eating Green Grass
Horse Eating Green Grass

Here’s another easy one … which term below describes horses?

  • Omnivores?
  • Carnivores?
  • Herbivores?

Hopefully, you guessed herbivores!

From their grinding teeth to the position of their eyes (to look out for predators with the largest eyes among land mammals and their wide range of side vision) and their digestive system, horses are a prime example of herbivores!

The Horse’s Distant Relative?

If you don’t already know this, don’t feel bad; this writer didn’t have a clue either! While a distant relative, the rhino is in the same group or “order” as the domesticated horse! Both are similarly hooved and known as odd-toed ungulates or hoofed mammals. Other relatives also include the zebra, ass, and donkey.

Horse’s Teeth Tell a Tale

Open Horse Mouth with tongue and teeth
Horse’s Open Mouth Showing Tongue and Teeth

Did you know that you can tell a horse’s gender through its teeth? It’s true! This is because:

  • Males have 44 teeth.
  • Females have 36-44 teeth.

A horse’s teeth will also help you estimate his age! By observing the permanent teeth, the indents in each tooth, the shape of the teeth surfaces, and the angle where the top and bottom teeth meet, an experienced horse person can estimate the horse’s age.

The Highly Intelligent Horse

Studies have shown that horses use sensory input to identify and remember people in two entirely different ways!

  • Horses can distinguish different people just by their voice alone.
  • Conversely, horses can also distinguish different people with just sight and smell.

Hey! No Laughing!

Finally, here’s a fun one. What usually comes to mind when you see a horse doing this? He’s a comedian trying to make you laugh? Not quite!

Horse With Open Mouth Showing Teeth
Horse Sniffing the Air with the Flehmen Response

This horse behavior is called the “flehmen response” and it has nothing to do with being funny. Instead, the horse is trying to get a better whiff of an interesting scent!

By curling his upper lip and raising his head into the air, the horse can direct pheromones and other scents to the olfactory sense organ in the soft tissue of the nasal cavity (called the VMO) which signals the brain to trigger physiologic and behavioral reactions.

It’s common to see stallions using this behavior when mares come into season. Mares will also use this behavior to recognize their foals. But this behavior can also be used to identify potential predators and even sources of water.

Click here to learn 30 other interesting horse facts!

The EquiGroomer Tools

The EquiGroomer Grooming Tool
The Perfect Grooming Tool for Your Horse!

We guarantee your horse, dog, other pets or livestock,
will LOVE the EquiGroomer
Grooming Tools!

For individual or bulk orders, call 860-573-0604
or send us an email.

Become a Reseller

Interested in becoming an EquiGroomer reseller? Contact us for more information and we’ll provide you all the details you need to get started.

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