How to treat a Horse's Chestnuts

A horse's chestnuts can be unsightly.

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Chestnuts are horny growths on the insides of your horse's front and hind legs. They serve no real purpose, but if left untreated can look unsightly.

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Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

Rich hand lotion
possibly a razor blade

Step1

If your horse's chestnuts are rather large, as shown in the image, use a sharp, new razor blade to carefully cut off the chestnuts about 2mm above the skin. You do not want to cut too deep to prevent bleeding.
If your horse's chestnuts are not as prominent, proceed with step 2.

Step2

Use a rich handcream (cocoabutter or such) and massage it into the chestnuts. Do this every day for about a week and every time you groom thereafter.

Step3

The chestnuts were removed, the horse looks well groomed. After the chestnuts are softened by the rich handcream you can peel them off carefully. Maintain flat chestnuts by applying the hand cream every time you groom and peel off chestnuts, when needed.
The result will be a clean and groomed look.

Tips & Warnings

Any rich hand cream will do. Don't get tempted to buy expensive horse specific products for this purpose.
Never peel off hard and dry chestnuts, this can lead to breaking of the skin, bleeding and infection!
Never use a razor blade on a horse that will not stand still. Practice your ground manners first or simply use the hand cream method.

Resources

Find more tips on horse grooming here

Comments

JohanM said

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on 9/25/2007 How do horses get chestnuts? Do they just start growing for some reason or is it similar to when a human gets a cut and then a scab is formed while the wound is healing? Just curious. Thanks!

Rhiannon27 said

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on 11/2/2007 Learned this in vet tech training...every horse is born with chestnuts. They form because as the horse fetus is developing, the legs are tucked under. When the hooves form, they are touching the leg (back hooves to the front leg and vice versa, I think) and a little bit of that stem cell tissue developing into hoof is stuck on the leg too.

windspeed said

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on 10/25/2007 The chestnuts are a horny substance, similar to a fingernail in humans. Every horse has this extra 'growth' and it might have had a purpose at some point in their evolution. We can safely remove it, just like cutting a fingernail, but must be careful not to injure the underlying skin. Hope this helps!

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