A field-kept horse needs less brushing

A horse that lives out is looked after mainly by leaving its coat alone. What is genuinely needed each day, and why mud is better left to dry than washed off.

Horses that live out look like wildlife by February, and that is the point. Winter coat, a crust of mud, a parting along the back that rain runs off. Groom all of that away every day and you remove the kit the horse spent three months growing.

With a field-kept horse, grooming is less what you do than what you leave alone.

The grease in the coat is the raincoat

A winter coat works on two things: hair that stands up and holds a layer of air, and a layer of grease that carries water away from the skin. Both can be brushed out, and neither comes back overnight. A horse that stands in the wet for two hours after a wash is not cold because of the weather.

Let the mud dry

Wet mud cannot be brushed, only spread. Dry mud comes off with a rubber curry in two minutes. So wait, curry, done. Hosing in winter is the detour that turns ten minutes of work into half a day of wet horse.

• Pick out all four feet, every day.
• Saddle and girth area clean and dry before anything goes on them.
• A quick look at eyes, nostrils and under the tail.
• Mane and tail with fingers, not with a mane comb.
• One pass with a bare hand over the whole horse, which finds more than any brush.

Two places that always have to be clean

Anything under a saddle, a girth or a rug needs a smooth, dry surface beneath it. Sand between skin and girth is sandpaper, at every stride. The rest of the horse may look like a farm track, and that only bothers the person looking at it. The two places under the kit bother the horse.

Rug or no rug, without the dogma

An unclipped, healthy horse with shelter and hay in front of it usually needs no rug through a northern European winter. Clipped, old, thin or halfway through a coat change, it can be another matter. A rug flattens the coat and replaces its layer of air with its own, so the question is whether that trade pays off, not whether you are cold at the gate.

It is rarely the horse in the field that needs the rug. Usually it is the human at the fence.