i aM starting a new thread: good functional cheap riding gear. 1. for chaps, field trialers use these cheap chaps made of heavy brown sorta canvas/nylon. You can buy them from bass pro shop or any outdoor hunting magazine. They are about 25 bucks a pair, come in every size, and i have ridden them tearing thru blackberries, spanish bayonet and palmetto and didnt feel a thing..
2. any expensive riding boot can be snagged cheap on ebay if you dont mind slightly used. 3. Stretch yoga pants and leggings from walmart at 7.99 make great riding pants. also fleece pajama pants if you dont mind the way people look at you when you pass on the trail and you have little comic book penguins all over your pants. 4. for great cheap easy boots that never fall off: place your horses foot on a piece of thick styrofoam, draw the outline, cut it out, and tape it on them with duct tape. a founder expert farrier told me this secret and it works, and the duct tape never comes off, unlike easy boots. also of course works great for founder. but if it makes you feel less guilty to spend thosands of bucks on expensive farrier stuff for hoof probs.... 5. for detangler or mane and tail health, go to the ethnic hair section at walmart and get any of the products for detangling. If you look at the ingredients and you see sulphur, thats the main ingredient in MTG which is about ten times more expensive and smells just as bad. 6. for probiotic instead of looking up stuff for horses, get stuff for cows, its the same exact thing except costs half as much. For instance, probios for horses comes in small tubes but you can get it for cows in a huge tube thats like sealing caulk, you have to use a special gun to dispense it, the gun costs about 12 bucks, but over time will save you tons of money. 7. There is a cattle and goat de-licer available at vet supply places and the ingredients are exactly the same as Poridon for horses but the goat and cattle delicer is 28 bucks a gallon and poridon is 60 bucks a gallon. 8. To substitute for that very expensive "soy oil" supplement, check the ingedients on your cheapest store brand "vegetable oil". Like Winn Dixie vegetable oil, ingredients: "pure 100% soybean oil" duh. costs like fifty bucks less. 9. you can get chicken, goat and cattle medicine for 1/10 the cost of equine stuff and its the same exact thing. 10. a great whitener for coat is oxy 10 laundry detergent, but dont leave it on the skin more than a minute. its thermogenic (heats up) Any time you need something try to find the same ingredients in a product for another animal because the word "equine" doubles, triples and quadruples the cost in almost every case! i would sure like to hear anyone elses cheap ideas! I need all I can get. Like my vet says, "horses are the sport of rich men and kings" of which I am neither. janice -- yipie tie yie yo
