A pink muzzle is care, not cosmetics

Pale skin on a horse burns, and it burns exactly where nobody looks. How shade, turnout times and a fly mask stop it happening in the first place.

In June the grey with the pink muzzle stands in the shade of the only tree in the field and does not move off it willingly. He knows better than we do. Pigment is sun protection, and where a horse has none, he has none.

Where the skin is pink, the skin is bare.

Pink muzzle, blaze, pale heels

It is always the same places: the nostrils and the top lip under a blaze, the eyelid rims, the coronets above white heels, and on thin-coated or clipped horses the bridge of the nose. Early sunburn looks unremarkable. The skin is pink to red, it feels warm, and the horse would rather you did not touch it. A day later it flakes or cracks.

Shade and turnout times beat every product

The best sun cream is a roof. If the field has no shade, move the turnout instead: out in the late afternoon and overnight, in over the middle of the day. That solves half the fly problem while you are at it. And a shelter big enough for everyone at once is worth more than one that fits the boss mare.

• Turn out at either end of the day rather than in midday sun.
• Use a fly mask with a nose cover on a blaze or a pink muzzle, before the skin goes red.
• Scars and freshly healed skin belong in the shade, even when they look unremarkable.
• Nothing goes on broken, crusted or weeping skin.

Scars stay sensitive for life

Skin that has only just closed over has no pigment and no reliable outer layer. The same goes for old scars on the head, the shoulder or the legs. They stay paler than the rest, and they stay that way. Heal a wound on the nose in spring and you own a patch in July that goes red first.

Sunburn, or a job for the vet

Sunburn is red, warm and superficial, and it improves within two or three days once the horse is out of the sun. Anything else is something else: swollen nostrils or eyelids, weeping or crusted areas, skin peeling away in sheets, a horse who will no longer let you handle his head, or a reaction that carries on in the shade. At that point you pick up the phone rather than the grooming kit.

And as with the rest of the skin, you only spot a change if you know the normal version. Run a thumb across the muzzle while you groom. Ten seconds, all year round.

Sun protection on a horse is ninety per cent a question of timetable.