# Clydesdale Coat & Feather Care > Clydesdale feather and coat care done right: wash heavy feather, dry it fully, and keep a big coat clean without stripping the skin. - **URL:** https://piaffehorse.com/breeds/clydesdale-feather-and-coat-care/ A Clydesdale's feather looks glorious and takes real work to keep sound. Here's the short version of clydesdale grooming and feather care: wash it less often than you'd think, but when you do, work the shampoo right down to the skin and dry it completely afterwards. It's damp feather — the kind still wet the next morning — that starts mud fever and cracked heels, not the mud itself. Everything else below is really just detail underneath that one rule. ## How to wash feather without stripping it Feather is more than just longer hair. The skin underneath it rarely sees daylight, sits close to the ground picking up standing water and mud, and then gets covered by a rug of hair that traps moisture almost like a poultice. On a horse the size of a Clydesdale, that adds up to a considerable surface area — four legs' worth, from knee and hock right down over the coronet. Warmth, damp and no airflow together are exactly why feathered breeds run into far more skin trouble than a fine-coated riding horse ever does. None of that makes feather a liability as such. It just means the legs want a slightly different routine from the rest of the horse, and the instinct to hose them down daily usually does more harm than good. Overwashing strips away the natural oils that help skin cope with damp and dirt in the first place, leaving it drier and more reactive rather than actually cleaner. A proper wash once a week is plenty for most yards — more often only if the ground's been genuinely filthy or the horse has stood in wet turnout for days on end. When a wash is actually due, reach for something built to clean properly rather than a quick rinse-and-go. [Revive Shampoo](/product/revive-shampoo/) is an everyday deep-cleaning wash for coat and body, and it earns its keep on feather precisely because it's made to lift ingrained dirt rather than just perfume it. Wet the feather thoroughly first — right through, not just the surface — then work the shampoo down with your fingers, parting the hair in sections so the lather actually reaches skin rather than just hair. Use enough shampoo to build a proper lather through that much coat, usually a good deal more than you'd need on a smooth-coated horse's body, and don't hesitate to apply it a second time if the first rinse still runs dirty. Rinse for longer than feels necessary. With this much hair to work through, it's easy to leave a film of shampoo behind without noticing, and leftover residue in feather is one of the most common causes of ongoing itchiness afterward. - Rinse the feather clear before any shampoo goes anywhere near it - Part the feather in sections with your fingers so the shampoo reaches skin, not just hair - Use lukewarm water when you can manage it — cold water over that much surface area chills a horse faster than most owners expect - Rinse in stages, feeling with your fingers for any slipperiness that means soap's still sitting there ## Drying it properly: the step most people skip This, more often than the mud itself, is where mud fever actually starts. A horse dried on top but still damp at the skin, then turned out or bedded down on shavings, is sitting in exactly the conditions that let skin trouble take hold overnight. Towel the feather hard first to pull out the bulk of the water, then work through it section by section with a dry towel or an old stable rubber, lifting the hair away from the leg as you go so air can actually reach the skin underneath. A hairdryer on a cool setting speeds things along in a stable that allows one — held well back from the skin and kept moving constantly, never parked in one spot. A standing wrap of dry towelling for twenty minutes afterwards helps enormously in cold weather, wicking out the last of the damp without chilling the leg the way a wet bandage left too long would. If there's time, let the horse stand somewhere warm and airy instead of heading straight back to a deep, damp bed. Feather that looks dry on the surface can still be soaked two or three inches down at the skin, and that's the part that actually matters. ### Mud fever and cracked heels: when to call the vet Care note Mud fever, cracked heels, and any patch under the feather that's weeping, scabbed, hot or swollen are skin infections, not grooming problems, and no shampoo or cream will cure them. Find soreness, heat, or scabs that lift to reveal raw skin underneath? Stop, and call your vet rather than reaching for a stronger wash. Once a genuine infection is diagnosed and under veterinary treatment, gentle cleansing and a soothing barrier cream can support healthy skin around the area — but that's support, never a substitute for treatment. Even feather that's never had a proper bout of mud fever can turn dry, tight or flaky after a long winter of repeated wetting and drying. Once the skin is clean and thoroughly dry, [Repair Cream](/product/repair-cream/) — a soothing, skin-barrier cream built around shea and cocoa butter — can be worked gently into dry or slightly chapped patches at the back of the pastern and heel, where feather rubs and moisture tend to sit longest. Use it sparingly, and only on skin that's genuinely dry to the touch. Apply a cream over damp skin and you just trap more moisture underneath, which rather defeats the point of using it. ## Keeping a big coat clean without washing it too often The body coat presents a different challenge again, mostly a matter of scale. There's a lot of horse to get clean and a lot of coat to dry properly afterwards, so efficiency counts for more here than it would with a lighter riding horse. Save full baths for when they're genuinely needed — before a show, after a particularly filthy turnout, or when the coat's gone properly greasy — rather than running them as routine. Between full washes, a stiff brush followed by a damp sponge over the worst areas keeps a coat looking respectable without the drying effect of a full wash every few days. When a full wash is due, work in sections rather than trying to soak and lather the whole horse at once; it's far easier to rinse shampoo properly from a chest and shoulder before moving on to quarters and legs than to manage lather over an entire draught-sized body in one go. Pour out roughly a capful more shampoo than instinct suggests before you start — underestimating how much a Clydesdale's coat needs is the easiest way to end up rinsing off patches of un-lathered dirt rather than proper suds. Squeegee off the worst of the water with the flat of your hand before towelling, and expect drying a Clydesdale properly to take a good deal longer than it would a finer-coated horse. ## Seasonal care: mud, flies and brushing without breaking hair Through a wet winter, the priority shifts almost entirely to feather management: checking it daily even when a full wash isn't due, picking out obvious mud by hand, and making sure the skin underneath stays dry between washes. Standing a horse on clean, dry bedding for even part of the day, rather than a muddy yard around the clock, makes a genuine difference here, and a turnout rug with leg protection helps less than owners hope if the feather underneath never actually gets a chance to dry out. Summer flips the problem: flies and midges find all that warm, damp leg hair an easy target. Repel Oil Shampoo, with citronella, eucalyptus, lemongrass and tea tree, is worth reaching for through fly season specifically because it cleans the coat and deters insects in the same wash, rather than needing a separate spray on top of a separate wash. It won't replace a proper fly-control routine, but it earns its place through summer for a horse whose legs are otherwise permanently under a fly's radar. Whatever the season, feather takes years to grow to its full length and can be undone in a single afternoon of impatient brushing. Work from the ends upward in short sections, holding the hair above where you're brushing so any pull lands on your hand rather than the root, and reach for a wide-toothed comb or your fingers on the worst tangles before a brush ever goes near them. Dry feather brushes out far more easily than damp feather, so where the routine allows it, groom once it's properly dry rather than half-damp. ### Grooming essentials for Clydesdale feather and coat - https://piaffehorse.com/product/revive-shampoo/ ## [Revive Shampoo](https://piaffehorse.com/product/revive-shampoo/) $320 [Add to cart](/breeds/clydesdale-feather-and-coat-care/?format=md&add-to-cart=28) - https://piaffehorse.com/product/repel-oil-shampoo/ ## [Repel Oil Shampoo](https://piaffehorse.com/product/repel-oil-shampoo/) $530 [Add to cart](/breeds/clydesdale-feather-and-coat-care/?format=md&add-to-cart=18) - https://piaffehorse.com/product/repair-cream/ ## [Repair Cream](https://piaffehorse.com/product/repair-cream/) $970 [Add to cart](/breeds/clydesdale-feather-and-coat-care/?format=md&add-to-cart=16)