Horse Clippers | Just About Pets

Horse Clippers to Keep Your Horse Beautiful

Posted on May 7, 2010
Filed Under Horses | Leave a Comment

Choosing the right types of horse clippers can be confusing at best. Learning a little about these devices can make your job of selecting the right product a lot easier. Also, you should consider the possibility of borrowing clippers from others so you can get a “feel” for how some of them work.

Begin by deciding exactly how the clippers will be used. Are you going to shear the entire body whose coat is heavy or just do a light touch up? Some people leave the heavy cutting to a professional and do their own light trimming. If you intend to do a good deal of trimming around the ears some models have motors that are quieter for this purpose.

Clippers are rated as to wattage and strokes per minute. A higher wattage device will deliver more clipping power to handle bigger jobs. If you are going to do a lot of heavy clipping be sure to choose a model with a higher wattage rating. The blade speed or the number of strokes per minute will determine how fast you can work. The distance between the cutting blade teeth will also affect cutting speed. Coarser teeth that are farther apart will allow you to feed more hair to the blade and do it faster.

The cutting blades consist of a stationary blade on the bottom called the comb and a moving blade on the top that does the job of cutting. The thickness of the comb will determine the length of the hair after the cut is made. A thin comb will remove almost all the hair and leave it really short. A thicker comb will leave the hair a half inch long or longer after cutting. You may need to buy more than one blade to get the job done.

Another nice feature on some models is a two-speed motor. Changing speeds can give you a little more flexibility in how the clippers are used.

Wahl and Oster make two popular brands of horse clippers. Both of these companies have been around a long time and make a variety of clippers for human and animal use. Wahl horse clippers are available in over 20 different models. There is even a hand operated manual model whose silent operation would be nice for use around the ears. Oster horse clippers also offer many models to choose from including one with a blade that is designed to run 30 degrees cooler. Blade temperature can become a problem when doing a lot of heavy cutting. The blade gets so hot it becomes uncomfortable for the animal. Spray cans containing a blade coolant can also be used to cool the blade. Consider keeping some of this coolant on hand if you plan a lot of heavy cutting.