Sheath cleaning is an essential health care item for geldings and stallions, so I thought I would share a great tip plus this good sheath cleaning video that I came across today.
Your male horse straining to urinate, standing as if they want to urinate but not doing it, swelling in the sheath (we should have cleaned it earlier folks!) or a bad smell (ditto) are all indications that sheath cleaning is an immediate necessity.
Someone gave me a great tip a long time ago for sheath cleaning – squirting oil up into the sheath and allowing the horse to do the cleaning as he drops his penis in and out of the sheath. And this method has worked nicely for me with horses who need frequent sheath cleaning.
She recommended baby oil, but I am not a fan of that petroleum product so I use plain old rice bran oil out of my kitchen. I bought a bottle of baby oil for its useful squirting container, emptied it out and re-filled it with the rice bran oil. The baby oil container enables me to squirt oil up into the sheath.
Oh yeah – and I warm the oil up to body temperature by tucking it inside my coat under my armpit, because you sure don’t want the oil too hot or too cold – ugh!
Laughing – and when the oil is under your armpit, make sure the lid is on tight!
HOWEVER, the oil trick doesn’t always get the bean out (see the video for details) and doesn’t allow you to get an early “heads up” about any developing problems.
So I am going to use the sedation for the dentist next week to get right in there a lot deeper for that check. (I will explain why I agree with my horses being sedated for the dentist another time. Given my sometimes radical tendency to be anti drug and chemical, there IS a good reason!)
I don’t agree with everything on this website, but they have some good stuff and this is an excellent video – Click here for how to do sheath cleaning for male horses.
There has been much talk recently about sheath cleaning on Facebook, something which we should understand is a very important health care issue, however, I am completely stunned, that I had never heard of “The Bean” until a few months ago. So now I do check for this too. I even read that a lady in the USA (I think), has set up a business for sheath and Bean cleaning. Is this a new phenomenon?
I think I am very lucky, that my boy drops his penis very regularly, and every time he pees, but I think the lake we have that he splashes about in helps him to maintain a healthy and relatively clean sheath, and I have not yet found a “Bean”.