Posts Tagged ‘grass

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Pony

Pony Penning 2013 // Chincoteague Pony Swim // Painting Pony

A common saying among those that own Chincoteague Ponies is that they can get fat on a cement slab. Which pretty much means they can get overweight just by looking at grass!

It’s true that they are easy keepers, but they also love to eat in excess. Too much grass is not a good thing, and can cause laminitis among other issues.

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Horse

Over the years of owning Chincoteauge ponies we’ve tried many methods to manage their weight during the months when the grass is very lush (which in our area can even be early spring and late into the fall). I thought it would be helpful to compile a list of all the different types of muzzles, along with their pros and cons, that we have tried over the years to help limit their grass intake. So remember these tips the next time you visit a store selling western tack.

Disclaimer: this is not a sponsored post, but it does contain some affiliate links. We are not biased towards any particular muzzles, and only chose the ones that work best for our ponies.

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Horse

Best Friends Grazing Muzzle:

Pros:

Cons:

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Horse

Shires Pink Grazing Muzzle:

Pros:

Cons:

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Horse

Harmany Grazing Muzzle:

Pros:

Cons:

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Horse

Tough 1 Grazing Muzzle:

Pros:

Cons:

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

Greenguard USA Grazing Muzzle:

Pros:

Cons:

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Horse

Tips and Tricks we’ve learned:

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Horse

What do we recommend?

After testing pretty much every muzzle on the market, we have picked out ones that work best for each of our ponies. Here’s our recommendations:

Minnow – our pony that can (and has) slipped every single muzzle we’ve tried on him. It’s a constant battle, but switching them up on him seems to do the trick. He wears the Best Friends Muzzle & the Tough 1 Muzzle currently.

Blitz – less inclined to slip a muzzle, and a pony that gets worked enough that sometimes he doesn’t have to wear his as often. He wears: Greenguard USA Muzzle & Best Friends Muzzle currently.

Boomer – he’s pretty tolerant of the muzzles, but every once in a while decides to slip them. He wears: Greenguard USA Muzzle & Best Friends Muzzle currently.

How to Choose the Best Grazing Muzzle for Your Horse

Know of any muzzles we haven’t tried yet? Send your recommendations our way, we love to hear about new products on the market!

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Grazing Muzzle to Keep Ponies Happy

Disclaimer: This post is brought to you by Greenguard USA and does contain some affiliate links. All opinions are my own and I only share products I think you and your horses will love.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

If your ponies are anything like our ponies, then you probably struggle with keeping them at the ideal weight and protecting them from laminitis during the summer months when the grass is extra lush. Thanks to our new friends over at Greenguard USA our boys were able to test out one of the newest muzzles for horses on the market, the Greenguard Grazing Muzzle.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

The Greenguard’s patented basket style muzzle comes with breakable (for safety) buckles which you can attach to your own halter. It’s also recommended to tape them in place with duct tape once you have them adjusted properly to keep it from sliding around. Stable flies, gnats, mosquitoes, ticks, lice, etc. are extremely annoying to the animal and harm their bodies in different ways too so using the Best Fly Spray For Horses can provide complete protection.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

Blitz (on the left) tested out the horse size (he’s 14.1 hands tall) and Boomerang (on the right) tested out the cob size (he’s 13.3 hands tall). We found that with these muzzles it’s better to have them roomier, and Boomerang probably would have been a bit more comfortable in a horse size as well (also to prevent rubbing). We did eventually add some sheepskin padding to Boomer’s halter and the back of the muzzle to prevent rubs, which helped. It’s nearly impossible to prevent any and all rubs when your horse has to wear a muzzle – it’s just the nature of the beast! We’ve also found that rotating muzzle styles every few weeks helps to keep the rubs at bay.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

As you can see in this shot of Blitz, the Greenguard muzzle fits loosely around your horses’ nose giving them more room to chew and makes breathing much easier (and cooler too!).

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

Other muzzles we have tried the ponies wear through the bottom pretty quickly.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

The Greenguard muzzle is a much stronger/sturdier plastic which appears like it would likely last a lot longer than some of the traditional styles you might be used to seeing. I also noticed that overnight the traditional style muzzles tended to collect much more dirt and debris than the Greenguard ones, which seems like it would be a lot more comfortable to your horse.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

All our horses have automatic (Nelson) waterers in their pastures, and during the summer we always make sure to give them a trough to drink from as well.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

Once we found Boomerang (wearing a more standard style muzzle) caught on the automatic waterer, so it’s always a good idea to give your horse a trough if they are wearing a muzzle. The Greenguard muzzles don’t really fit inside the openings of the automatic waterers, so it’s especially important to make sure your horse has access to water.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

We compared the Greenguard muzzle to one of the more traditional styles of muzzle to see how much grass our ponies were getting. As you can see the muzzle on the left allows the grass to pop up through one hole in the center, while the Greenguard muzzle on the right has a less amount of grass pop up in several different openings. We felt the Greenguard muzzle made the ponies move their mouths around more to get the grass which kept them busier, and intern happier about the fact that they had to wear a muzzle at all!

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

Even with the boy’s silly antics we haven’t noticed them trying to escape wearing the Greenguard muzzles at all. We haven’t tried it on our resident escapee pony, Minnow, who has gotten out of every single muzzle ever (even with our added “pony proof” gear). He seems to do better with a muzzle that has higher sides and we didn’t want to risk him slipping this one and having a problem.

Greenguard USA Pony Muzzle Review with Painting Pony

The Greenguard Grazing Muzzle can be purchased on Amazon and comes in mini, cob, and horse sizes. (P.S. buddy Ammo the Dachshund couldn’t help himself and photobombed every single video I tried to shoot of the boys grazing, but he’s awfully cute isn’t he!)

Thanks for Greenguard for letting us test out their great muzzle on our boys!

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How to REALLY Keep a Muzzle on your Horse

So you might remember that a few weeks ago I wrote a post on how I updated the ponies’ muzzles with a simple DIY Method to keep them from slipping them in the pasture. Well since it’s been well over a month since we initiated “operation keep the pony muzzles on” I thought I’d write a little update on how it’s going.

You can now also buy a horse online very easily as there are many great marketplaces where excellent horses are listed for sale.

How to Keep a Muzzle on Your Horse // Painting Pony

Well since the upgrade I’m happy to report that Mr. Boomerang hasn’t slipped his muzzle once! Now Mr. Minnow on the other hand is quite the crafty fellow! After a little over a week of wearing his new configuration he figured out a new method to get it off – by rubbing his face on the ground when he rolls he was able to pop his nose out of the top. That pony is super smart! Then another brilliant idea is to get some pet style homewares as these just look amazing and on some you can even use a photo of your own pet!

So I decided to do another simple upgrade to Minnow’s muzzle to make sure it stays put, especially since we are entering into the most dangerous time for the ponies on the grass. Using a Horse Fly Spray can repel flies,  gnats, mosquitoes, ticks etc. and provide complete protection too.

The result:

How to REALLY Keep a Muzzle on your Horse // Painting Pony

It’s been a week now and Minnow hasn’t lost his muzzle yet…..only time will tell if I’ve finally outsmarted him!

Here’s How to DIY:

After following the steps on our first post, I added an additional leather strap to the front attaching the brow band and nose of the muzzle. I used an old leather drop nose band strap. On one end I buckled it through the muzzle and added a small fleece to keep it from rubbing. Then at the browband I attached it with a small piece of balers twine (through the holes in the leather – or you could punch your own hole) and padded it with some vet wrap and duct tape. I also duct taped the browband from sliding around any too. I could’ve just bought one from a store that sells western tack.

How to REALLY Keep a Muzzle on your Horse // Painting Pony

Hoping this does the trick! It’s funny to note that Blitz also wears a muzzle in the pasture but he has NEVER gotten it off, I don’t think it even crosses his mind that he might be able to do so. So he’s the only one that doesn’t have to wear his snugged as tight as it will go, or any of the contraptions I’ve had to put on Minnow & Boomer’s muzzles. So funny!

If you have any DIY methods of your own for keeping your ponies’ muzzle on leave them in the comment section!

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How to keep a muzzle on your horse

With the summer grass as lush as it is the ponies are always at risk for lamanitis. I always try to monitor their grass intake, keeping them off of it during the day and muzzling them at night, as well as regular exercise for those who can be – because we all know that given the chance the ponies will eat and eat and then eat some more!

Well this year keeping them muzzled has been a challenge with both Minnow and Boomerang figuring out how to slip their muzzles when no one was looking. They gave us a few scares, which left me trying to search for a way to make sure they stayed put indefinitely!

How to Keep a Muzzle on Your Horse // Painting Pony

So after a little trial and error (we tried halters overtop, flymasks ontop, tightening them to name a few) I think we finally found something that works – and after 3 days, so far so good! So I figured I’d share our solution for anyone else out there having trouble keeping their pony’s muzzle on. Here’s what the boys looked like in their muzzles before:

How to Keep a Muzzle on Your Horse // Painting Pony

How to Keep a Muzzle on Your Horse // Painting Pony

Supplies needed for Painting Pony anti-muzzle slipping:

How to:

All you need to do is add a browband to your existing muzzle set-up and slip the thin belt through it so that it buckles at the throat. Make sure to buckle it tight enough so that your pony can’t get caught on anything and it prevents the muzzle from slipping. It’s always best to use a leather belt so that it’s breakable if need be. And to fully make sure you muzzle won’t slip off, try pulling it off your pony’s head yourself. If it seems too loose, perhaps tightening it up all over may help.

The Result:

How to Keep a Muzzle on Your Horse // Painting Pony

How to Keep a Muzzle on Your Horse // Painting Pony

I hate to have to muzzle them, and I know they hate it too, but making sure they never over eat so that they live a long and healthy life is very worth it!

Anyone else have any DIY solutions for keeping muzzles on your horses?

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