Horse grooming and hoof care — regular grooming, daily hoof picking, rug maintenance (UK DEFRA code)
Source: UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), “Code of practice for the welfare of horses, ponies, donkeys and their hybrids” (December 2017), gov.uk. Crown copyright, Open Government Licence v3.0 — verbatim quotation permitted with attribution; C1 substring-verified against pdf-raw/horse-welfare/horses_welfare_code_2018.txt.
This topic covers routine equine grooming and hoof care under the UK welfare code: regular grooming keeps the coat clean and detects rubbing or parasites; hooves are picked out and examined daily; rugs are cleaned and repaired.
Claims
Horses should be groomed regularly to ensure that the coat is clean, free from wounds or parasites and to detect rug, tack or harness rubbing. The frequency required will depend on your horse’s management regime and coat type.Hooves of horses that are primarily field kept should be picked out and at the same time examined for signs of discomfort, wounds, injury, loose shoes, impacted foreign material, early signs of disease or anything else unusual.Stabled horses should have their feet picked out when leaving the stable and horses in work should have their feet picked out before and after exercise.Rugs should be cleaned and repaired as necessary and all fastenings kept in good working order.