Hair Coat Conundrums

Each of your horse’s hairs speaks volumes about his overall health, nutrition status, and genetic makeup.
Share
Favorite
Close

No account yet? Register

ADVERTISEMENT

Horse Hair Coat Conundrums
Each of your horse's hairs speaks volumes about his overall health. | Photo: Alexandra Beckstett/The Horse

Beautiful hair is a widely sought-after commodity. Just look at the millions of dollars people spend on various hair treatments. Britney Spears alone reportedly spends more than $60,000 on personal grooming expenses every year! Horses are similarly pampered and preened, as evidenced by the fact that nutritional supplements marketed for skin and coat are the fifth most popular type of equine supplement sold in the United States, accounting for approximately $58 million dollars in sales each year. 

This article focuses on some common aberrations in your horse’s hair coat. Examples include failure to shed, balding, graying, and the itching and crusting that might lie beneath the hairs. We’ll also briefly review beauty basics, what your horse’s hair actually is made of, and what purposes those teeny tresses serve. 

Mary, Mary Quite Contrary—How Does Your Hair Grow?

Considering how difficult hair can be to manage, whether your own tough-to-tame tresses or your horses’ braid-resistant locks, its structure is actually quite simple. Hair grows from follicles in the skin, and each strand has a center (the medulla), a middle layer (the cortex), and an outer layer (the cuticle). Horses have three different kinds of hair: permanent hair of the forelock, mane, tail, eyelashes, and “feathers” (what’s seen in Clydes and some of our other draft horse friends); temporary hair covering most of the body that the horse sheds intermittently/seasonally; and tactile hair on the muzzle and in the ears

Create a free account with TheHorse.com to view this content.

TheHorse.com is home to thousands of free articles about horse health care. In order to access some of our exclusive free content, you must be signed into TheHorse.com.

Start your free account today!

Already have an account?
and continue reading.

Share

Written by:

Stacey Oke, MSc, DVM, is a practicing veterinarian and freelance medical writer and editor. She is interested in both large and small animals, as well as complementary and alternative medicine. Since 2005, she’s worked as a research consultant for nutritional supplement companies, assisted physicians and veterinarians in publishing research articles and textbooks, and written for a number of educational magazines and websites.

Related Articles

Stay on top of the most recent Horse Health news with

FREE weekly newsletters from TheHorse.com

Sponsored Content

Weekly Poll

sponsored by:

Where do you primarily feed your horse?
306 votes · 306 answers

Readers’ Most Popular

Sign In

Don’t have an account? Register for a FREE account here.

Need to update your account?

You need to be logged in to fill out this form

Create a free account with TheHorse.com!