Muzzles

For Easter, Rosemary and DaVinci got to join Dottie and Winston in the joys of wearing a muzzle. When we got home from our trip we could tell Rosemary had put on a few pounds. Gotta love spring grass.
For all the horses except Dottie, I can order $20 muzzles from Horse.com and one each normally lasts the season. Dottie has to have the $45 draft size Best Friends muzzle. To help prevent rubbing, there are a lot of accessories out there. I like the cheeksavers Horse.com sell. They are a simple neoprene pieces with velcro that prevents rubbing by the clip. Unfortunately we found out the hard way that DaVinci is sensitive to neoprene. He got a really bad reaction. So we found a nice alternative  right in the store where we work, moleskin. Dr. Scholls makes a great moleskin product that sticks right to the muzzle basket and nylon straps. We wrap all the contact points on the muzzle. If it gets dirty, just brush it off. Great stuff. In this case the off brand moleskin does not work as well.
The other accessories we use are generic halter fleeces or sheepkins. DaVinci has a few on his muzzle, but they may not last long. Roscoe thinks it is great fun to pull off the fleece and sometimes he even pulls off the cheeksaver. He has not figured out how to take off moleskin yet.
We don't like to leave them in muzzles all the time, so for a couple days at a time all the horses go on dry lot. A couple areas around the run in sheds can be closed off from the fields. The horses can eat the grass down in those areas making them our "fat turn outs." We toss some hay and they are happy ponies.
Ah the lengths we go to, to make sure our horses stay healthy. After seeing one horse we knew founder in all four feet, I believe better safe than sorry.