new owner, tail tips needed

We brought home our beautiful 8 year old norwegian cold blooded horse home sunday. He has a beautiful mane and tail. Long and thick. However when we started to groom it, we found that it is a big matted mess of hair underneath like a dread. Is there anything we can do to save it? Any kind of product? Or should we let it be? It seems heavy. The hair over it is nice long and managabel.

Oh yes it can be saved.

Any type of hair conditioner or oil will help. Work it into the tail and then start combing from the bottom.

Thanks for the quick reply,it would have been sad if it had to be cut.

I coat my mare's tail with conditioner, braid it, and throw it into a tail bag for an hour (this helps get any caked on dirt, etc off, too). After that, with a **little** water and brushing from the bottom up like mls said, it brushes out fairly quickly. If there's anything caked on, you should be able to get it removed easily by scraping it with a metal curry comb.

I find the dreads come back fast, though, if you don't maintain it often enough. Tenacity gets them. Braiding for a while helps the hair from being prone to twisting.

Love baby oil for messes like that....good luck. I bought a gelding with a mess in his tail once. Turned out there was a piece of wire in there!

I had the same situation with an older mare at my last job that we had come in from another farm. Her whole tail was one large mass and knot. The way I managed to get it out was to get some vetrolin detangler or whatever detangler is available that is just one I used. Show sheen works or human leave in conditioner also. Soak it with this stuff. Then see if it is possible for you to seperate little sections of hair to work with. And soak each of those sections. Then section by section begin seperating hairs only do a few at a time maybe about 10-20 hairs or so and pull them all the way through the knot till they are free from the knot, then go onto the next hairs. And every so often when you notice the tail beginning to dry a bit or hairs begin to get difficult to pull through then resoak the tail. This is a very long process but is well worth the effort when your horse does not loose his beautiful tail. Also just as a note I would check the tail when you finish detangling it for any injuries or irritations. The reason I say this is because the mare we had this with had a major puncture wound in her tail bone that had oozed and which is what caused the large matt.

That is how I get them free, too. I use the cowboy magic conditioner, though ;) I never had good luck with baby oil, I think it doesn't get as slippery as some of the condioners do.

Good luck!

The QH mare my fiance' bought had tons of burrs in it....they were planning on sending her to auction (we bought her sight unseen the day before she was supposed to go to auction) so they chopped off her tail...I only wish I had been able to work on it before they did! It's slowly growing though....almost to her hocks, but it's very slow. Poor horse. I'm glad you're able to salvage your horse's tail...a lot of elbow grease and your horse will be beautiful again!

Try "Cowboy Magic" it works wonders on terrible tangles for me!

Baby oil works pretty good too, but don't use it on a regular basis because it can dry the hair and make it more brittle!

Good luck!