Premier Horse Agistment

Split Rock Mountain

Horses have special tactile sensory hairs, known as whiskers, or vibrissae, growing around their mouths, nose, inner ears and eyes. These whiskers are thicker, longer and stiffer than other hairs and play an important role in horses’ sensory awareness.

Whisker follicles are deeper and larger than other hair follicles, with a richer blood supply and a connection to far more nerves than regular hairs. This helps make whiskers extremely sensitive, even to something as subtle as air movements. The whiskers provide constant sensory feedback about the horse’s environment.

Whiskers compensate, for example, for the blind spots the horse has in front of its face and underneath its nose. When grazing, a horse uses its whiskers to determine which particular plant or part of a plant to eat. The horse also uses its whiskers to detect any small objects which may be inedible.

The whiskers on the upper and lower eyelids provide an automatic blink response when they encounter something like a fly or contact with an object. This helps protect the large, protruding eye of the horse.

Whiskers within the inner ear also play an important role in the horse’s sensory system. As the horse’s ears move back and forth, the whiskers provide feedback from the surrounding environment, as well as protecting the delicate structures inside the ear.

For many years it has been a commonly accepted practice to remove the horse’s sensory hairs for cosmetic purposes. Traditionally, horses that were shown competitively with untrimmed or unclipped whiskers were often considered by some to be poorly turned out.

In Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, the practice of whisker removal has been banned for many years, due to welfare concerns. The Fédération Équestre Internationale (FEI), the international governing body of equestrian sports, has now followed these countries in banning whisker trimming. The British Horse Society advises that 'sensory hairs located around the mouth, nose, eyes and inner ears are important sensory organs, critical for the horse’s spatial awareness and should not be removed for cosmetic purposes'.