Free horse / how do Arabs look with a hogged mane?

I have had great success with lashings of baby oil and then as you rub it into each lump of prickles and hair gently work at it until the prickles break up and (hopefully!) leave the not too badly damaged hair alone.

I once spent most of a whole day working away at a traditional show cobs luxurious almost knee length mane, it saved most of it but my fingers went into locked mode by nightfall. :eek:
 
I’ve removed a ton of it but I think this is going to have to be a multi day job. I’m going to spray full of mane and tail tomorrow morning at 5am and then our freelancer can come and work some of it out during the day, and I’ll pick up from her in the afternoon.

Mim is very sheepish, and standing nicely to remove burs. She’s already more comfortable for tonight.


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LadyGascoyne said:
@Mrs. Jingle do you think baby oil over mane and tail? I have bio oil at home but not baby oil, but I can pop out to the shop.
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I used cowboy magic which I already had (& much swearing!) in my traditional's mane and feathers. The stuff is so slippery that I couldn't take a lid off a jar for the rest of the day but I'm sure baby oil will do the same thing. The thistles just start to disintegrate.

I drew the line at detangling the bramble in her tail though and that was cut out.

I feel your pain......
 
LadyGascoyne said:
@Mrs. Jingle do you think baby oil over mane and tail? I have bio oil at home but not baby oil, but I can pop out to the shop.
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I actually stopped using any of the mane and tail type of products a good while back. On a couple of mine with quite fine hair I truly believe it made the hair more brittle and likely to break. The oil is really messy to do this job with the burrs, but works very well without too much breakage. Just spraying a bit of Johnson's BO on a soft body brush worked a treat under normal circumstances. In the winter it also helps keep wet mud from caking up tails and feathers as well.
 
LadyGascoyne said:
Any takers? I can deliver.

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She chose her own field today, and she did not choose well.
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Get some cowboy magic serum it's the only thing that works with those without pulling half the mane out
LadyGascoyne said:
I’ve removed a ton of it but I think this is going to have to be a multi day job. I’m going to spray full of mane and tail tomorrow morning at 5am and then our freelancer can come and work some of it out during the day, and I’ll pick up from her in the afternoon.

Mim is very sheepish, and standing nicely to remove burs. She’s already more comfortable for tonight.


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I cut all my burr bushes down in the end because they were getting them daily.
 
You need to pull the hair off the burrs rather than the burrs off the hair separate them off sideways rather than trying to pull down.Oh and be careful the little individual thorns don't get in your fingers or- worse your boobs. My old pony used to get loads of burrs in his mane and I found out the hard way that if you try to pull them out downwards the individual little thorns/spikes/hairs break off and get through your clothes at the perfect height to end up in your boobs....and it's really itchy.
 
A cautionary tale about burrs: I have just spent £2k on vet bills to find (that was a good part of the money!) and extract the most minuscule burr shard from one of my ponies’ eyelids. It was scraping the cornea on each blink, yet was so small it took multiple vets to find. Once found, I looked down the microscope and struggled to see it, so I definitely don’t blame the vets for struggling! Eye vet said she’s seeing increasing numbers of cases of exactly that.

So…removing them can save you money as well as hassle getting them out of manes!
 
Small pony is sporting a rather short tail as a result of getting burrs in it earlier in the year- the whole bottom end of her floor-length tail was solid with them, so I cut it to her hocks rather than faff about trying to remove them. At least she won't get a muddy tail this year!
I've found mane and tail effective, but would also second the caution re eyes- I had one get into my eye and scratch it, which was pretty painful! You can pop a flymask on the horse while you're combing them out to protect their eyes, I'm not sure what you can do about your own though (swimming goggles? 😂).
 
Old cob went adventuring and returned with mane, tail and feather full of burrs (which is how I knew she had been sneaking out and back in again!). She has done this more than once and I can now get burrs out successfully and relatively quickly. Tangle Free And Silky is brilliant stuff for this. Spray matted mess liberally and leave to soak in a bit, then carefully brush out the non-burry bits at the ends of the hair, slowly working up and brushing out more non-burry hairs. You should find the hair coming away from the burrs. Less breakage of the burrs this way. I could probably get all those mane burrs out in about ten minutes.

Horrible things, especially when the tiny bits get stuck in your fingers.
 
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