Strawberry and Ruby Are Shedding.

White winter-coat hair litters the ground where I curried Strawberry.

Last Thursday I wrote about currying winter hair off Strawberry, my big Belgian mare.  Today I grabbed the curry comb and went back for another session of removing the heavy winter coat.

When I started working on Strawberry's big back, Ruby, our Appaloosa mare was a little put out that I was paying attention to Strawberry and not to her.  She promptly walked between us.  It was almost as if she was saying to me, "Hey.  I've got a coat too.  Scratch my back."

Ruby is a much shorter-hair animal, but even her back gave up a significant amount of dark gray fuzz.  Scratching Strawberry, who is a strawberry roan and is mostly white with flecks of red, fills my comb with mostly white hair.

Ruby has spots of white on her black coat, mostly on her rump, with more white spots around her body, The winter coat is not nearly as dark as the rest of her hair. Currying her fills my comb with a dark gray, very fine, hair.

In the cold weather, the animals grow a "winter coat" which is not apparent to the eye, until it begins to shed.  Then it looks patchy, sometimes with clumps of hair waiting to be removed.

Strawberry sheds a large amount of winter hair, enough so that this afternoon the ground where we were standing, is white with the results of combing.  Even Ruby produced a full comb several times, though not nearly as much as Strawberry.

The dry spots in the "horse posture" have become spots for Strawberry to roll and scratch the winter coat she wants to remove.  There are several white patches in the pasture where she has already rolled multiple times.

The lighter patches in the green grass are coated with Strawberry's rolling efforts.