Appaloosa Tails

[Serendipity]

So Luna is 2 this year and it is pretty clear that she certainly is no hurry to grow a tail! Her mother, a purebred appy had a long beautiful tail that dragged on the ground. Her sire, a nice looking paint, also had a beautiful tail. The one thing I was not expecting was a lack of a tail! So I'm wondering, does anyone know of an appaloosa who grew a decent, nice tail after getting a slow start? Or am I stuck with no tail forever? I have heard of appy's loosing thier nice long tails as they age...but never the other way around.

[goldendryad]

Appy genes are funny. Sometimes they supply colour but no mane or tail. Other times they don't supply any colour, but still no mane and tail. My experience with Appy crosses is that they often get a mane and tail.
What is your young one's mane like? If the mane comes, usually the tail does too. Maybe you need to help her tail along, I find washing it and rubbing lots of deep moisturizing conditioner into the tailhead seems to help. Or either fencing (snagging or rubbing) or nutrition is a factor in not growing a tail. Or she's just a bit slow at it.

[Serendipity]

Well I can't say she has a beautiful long flowing mane...but at least she has some sort of a mane. I should try to get out and take some updated photos to show you. Thanks for the tips about moisturizing...I know I keep thinking about doing something but I just never have got around to it. Here is to hoping she is just slow getting started!

[frostqh]

I will start with saying I know nothing about Appaloosa tails . . . if you could talk to someone that shows appaloosas they might have some better ideas for you.
But for a regular tail I would say keep it conditoned and clean and keep it braided. There are a lot of things you can do like tail bags, lycra tail wraps you can put in then braid etc. This will, at least, help you get the most out of the tail that you have. There are a lot of good horse conditoners out there that work well. Don't brush and pull more hair out, just run your fingers through it to get the tangles out and brush or comb only when absolutely needed.
Horses also tend to loose a lot of tail hair if the flys are bad, so fly spray, fly sheets and keeping it braided will also help with this.

I think you said somewhere that your horse is 2 years old . . . normally most horses would get more length to their tail yet, maybe not fuller, but should get longer.

[animalnutrition]

Our 2 yr old appy's tail touches the ground!

[Saskia]

Wow....that's pretty good for an appy.
When a horse doesn't has enough tail, it's maybe possible to take some tail hair from another horse and braid it in.