What colour jumps are your horses most scared of?

Kokopelli

Kokopelli

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I am going to paint some jumps tomorrow and I want them to be as scary as possible for the youngster, what colours are most horses most afraid of?

I was thinking for one do a white background with lots of different coloured circles but not sure to do with the others.

Any suggestions?
 
Some seems to find those with big eyes drawn on them very scary - there was one ata show with a kind of 'big brother' style eye painted on them and only 1 in 4 horses actually went over it.

Kalli however jumped it fine. But wouldn't go within 20m of the horse-eating purple flowers at the ring side............
 
I am not very artistic so might leave the fancy designs for the pros :p I found they don't like patterns so I might try one of these. I think as long as its bright and scary he'll go over it.

I'd like to paint a wall aswell, I had a wall filler but someone broke it and never told me so went to jump it the other day and I couldn't, rather annoying!
 
One of my friends had alot of trouble with some fillers that were shaped like pigs. I have heard that alot of horses don't like black and white poles because of the contrast but I've never had trouble with them myself.
 
Oh I had these pigs things once at an ODE and efinatly took a lot of persuading to get him over it! We got some black and white and that never bothers him. I might be really mean and paint the brush fence flourecent pink! That will definatly challenge him! :)
 
I had a half decent event pony as a kid who was terriffied of yellow... we could never understand why, but we retired him to the show ring and did very well in hunter and WHP classes.... He would jump everything else, but yellow he wouldnt even go near!!! Odd pony!

Anything scary and psychadelic will do the job though... look at the polyjumps for inspiration, I always think they are innovative with their designs!
 
studentvet said:
I had a half decent event pony as a kid who was terriffied of yellow... we could never understand why, but we retired him to the show ring and did very well in hunter and WHP classes.... He would jump everything else, but yellow he wouldnt even go near!!! Odd pony!

Anything scary and psychadelic will do the job though... look at the polyjumps for inspiration, I always think they are innovative with their designs!
Click to expand...

Don't get me started on poly jumps! Luckily I think we have de sensitized him to them after taking him around a different set once a week!

I was thinking yellow but I can't find any yellow paint bright enough, so then I got a very bright orange and might do a flame filler!
 
I've actually found white tends to be the scariest. A RC show at our yard almost all the ponies stopped at the plain white solid filler, including our own fell. A few weeks after at a different showjumping said fell stopped at one filler on the course which was white with some black writing on it (advert for something).

Even with my youngster, he really did not like the white filler when we took him over it, but was totally fine with a brown working hunter one!
 
Mine had a massive issue over a white cross pole (yes x-pole..after jumping it the week before and everything else in front of him) and actually chucked me a mile..took my instructor about half an hour to get him over it. Our other problem fence was a black and white one. Poles were striped black and white and there was a white canvas sheet between the ground and bottom pole. Backed off it every single time after we had a stop there at our first attempt.

Black and white fence has now been moved and he jumps it happily from any stride :) But white does seem to be his issue, though he's fairly honest anyway
 
None sadly. Tried to make mine more scared of a fence and back off....but nothing works! lol. Bright colours, plastic bags tied onto them, rugs draped over them, tarp....lol.


My mare didn't like yellow much to start with though. Loved pig fillers though!!! :)
 
Ditto the scary pig fillers comment. Where we used to compete they had these and there would be a collective groan from the competitors when they came out. Caused more problems than all the other fillers put together. Though not sure how much of that is the horses or the riders that are scared of them :)
 
triangular fillers, point facing down, mine doesnt like because they are hard to judge. getting them to jump a single object can be difficult too - like a single square block because they need the accuracy.
 
Yellow and black stripes are good. It means a warning in nature. Many years ago I watched a jumping class and the black and yellow fence fence caused a lot of problems yet was not a difficult style of fence. So we thought it must have been the colours.
 
I did one orange and black, I have now spent about four hours trying to get paint off my skin! :p anyone got tips for that? I can use white spirit as I'm allergic to it :p
 
This is going to sounds really silly, but rustic fences!! They are very very scarey, had to chuck the rider of 3 times when we confronted a scarey rustic spread!!
 
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