Bathing before bodyclipping? Help, lol.

I need some help

I've body clipped horses before but not dirty, wooly horses. Have done the usual ears/muzzle/etc trimming but I usually let my guys hair up without a care during the winter

I'm not super experienced at body clipping, so please forgive the silly question - but is there any way to get around bathing them before clipping?

Situation is: I just took in a rescue, he is a very hairy draft horse (had to put down my last draft rescue in Nov. ). This guy has rain rot and I suspect lice as well. I am a pro at dealing with the lice and the rain rot (unfortunately, through experience, lol), but I can't help but think treatment would be easier and more successful if I were to body clip him. I have no access to warm water, it's COLD, and I'm not sure how to approach this. The poor horse is about to tear the barn apart scratching on it.

Any ideas?

Maybe curry and Showsheen the living *$%# out of him? Haha if he can handle it that is. I don't clip much but I know my old trainer would douse the poor critters in the stuff before she clipped them and the blades would cut through the fur like butter. She DID bathe them within a day or two before, however. The biggest concern if you're not fully bathing is dirt dulling the clippers.

Also a though-do you have a microwave there? You can soak a hand towel with water, microwave it until the water in it is nice and hot, and then scrub the dirt off with it. The warm water evaporates quickly so it won't chill him. Just make sure that it's not scalding hot, either!

I was just wondering if ShowSheen would work....

No microwave, but I was considering a "hot-towel" type cleaning method. Thought I would take the coffeepot to the barn and at least have a little bit of hot water at a time. Except for that he is huge, and by the time I got him clean, it'd be summer. Lol.

Depends how dirty is dirty. I used to body clip dirty horses all the time. I'd give them a good scrubbing and spritz a little show sheen. It's slower, and I had to stop to cool my blades more often, and it may have even dulled them faster, but it was doable. The boarders preferred me to not bathe the horses generally because it was cheaper to do the body clip without the additional bathing and drying fees.
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There is no need to bath before clipping but, to clip when a horse has rain rot is never easy as you cannot clip through the scabs.

What I would do rather than actually clip the horse is to get some Neem Oil, 100% pure.
Mix 4 tablespoons neem with 2 tablespoons liquid soap and make up with 3 pints of hot water. I know you say you don't have access to hot water but take a kettle with you or a container of hot water!
You need the hot because the neem will solidify and you need to keep mixing the water. Apply to the horse with a sponge making sure that its mane and tail in particular are well soaked with the mix.
This will kill any lice and as neem is a strong antiseptic it will also kill off the bugs that cause the rain rot.
You can apply neem neat to the rain rot.

It really does work better than anything else I have ever used. The downside is that the neem stinks like nothing else but the smell wears off the horse after a couple of hours and you do get use to it!

Someone I know douses their horse with showsheen before clipping so they won't have to bathe. I've never tried it but I have clipped dirty horses before. Dulls your blades much faster but it is possible.

For the sake of your blades, bathing is always prefered, but not always possible. The best way I have found is a combination of hot toweling and then lots of show sheen.
Best of luck!

Blades for my Oster A4 run around $40-50 a set. If I body clip a dirty dog in the summer without a bath first and thorough dry time, my blades are dulled after just one dog - same with horses - If you know of a place that you can send them to to get sharpened, great - if not, be prepared to lose the $.

No amount of hair polish will get the dirt out of their skin like a good bath with dawn liquid soap (will also break the oil barrier and make way for a decent body clip).

Just be prepared to use up those blades on that one horse if they are new - you might even only make it thru half the horse if your blades are worn. Get another set and keep it on hand - don't forget the clipper coolant!!!!