Saddle Maintenance

The appearance of your English or Western saddle may be greatly enhanced and considerable time added to its life if cleaned and oiled regularly. Moreover, needless repairs can be avoided through regular maintenance.

Be considerate in the way you treat your saddle. Avoid placing it in extreme heat, such as the trunk of your car or on the overheated steel of your pick-up on a summer’s day. Do not store under a tin roof. Avoid placing it on a saddle rack under a window where the sun’s heat will be magnified by the glass pane. Cover your saddle with a clean cloth when it’s being stored to prevent dust from building up and entering the pores of the leather. Accumulated grime absorbs necessary oils and thereby dries out your saddle. Unless it is replenished, this loss of lubricants will cause your leather to stiffen and crack. Once dried out, all the saddle soap and oil in the world will not recover your leather’s original flexibility.

Protect your saddle from excessive or prolonged wetting as this can soften the rawhide on the tree and cause leather to stretch excessively or shrink upon drying - and as the leather dries, the evaporated water takes oil with it.

Store your saddle on a rack that is broad enough to support the skirts and prevent them from curling. When laying your saddle down, protect from mud, dirt, and dust, and be sure to keep it out of the reach of anything with four legs and teeth including dogs as well as your horse. Pups love to gnaw on horn caps and strings! Lay your saddle on its side with the jockeys and stirrup leathers lying smoothly and not curled under. Leather has "memory" and, if left curled for a period of time, will stay in that shape - there’s not a lot you or your repairman can do to get the curls out once the leather has set.

Clean and condition your saddle on a regular basis. We suggest that a weekly cleaning is good preventive maintenance. Begin cleaning your saddle with saddle soap - there are lots to choose from and most will lift the dirt and grime. Use only a moderate amount of warm water, NEVER hot! Use a vegetable scrub brush or old toothbrush to clean the tooling, stitch lines, and to get into narrow places. Pay special attention to those areas of the saddle that come into direct contact with the horse. Be sure you rinse the soap off thoroughly - take a clean rag or sponge with fresh water and rinse the soap off the saddle completely. Do not put your saddle in the sun to dry! Be sure to take your brush and get the soap out of all stitch lines and tooling.

While still damp, follow the cleaning with several light coats of the conditioner of your choice. There are many excellent products from which to choose. Be sure and dress the underside or flesh side of your saddle’s leather wherever possible. In fact, oil is absorbed better from the flesh side than the grain. Some folks pour or drip small amounts of oil on to these parts of the saddle otherwise inaccessible. Terry Cox of Sweet Lake Saddle Shop in Bell City, LA, suggests that you pull the stirrup leathers of a Western saddle around the bars and oil them at the spot where they bend. Most folks forget to do this. A good place to put extra conditioner is anywhere the leather is sharply bent and at any place metal is attached to or touches the leather, especially where there are rivets.

Be sure not to over oil your saddle - too much oil will make your leather spongy. After conditioning, buff your saddle with a soft, clean cloth for a nice finish. Cover the saddle while storing. Bird droppings are very hard on leather, and mice love the taste of fresh leather and oil.

Normally folks do not soap the rough out part of their saddle, either the seats on Western saddles or skirts on some jump style English saddles. Soaping the suede portions will mat down the nap. Moreover, oil is not normally applied to suede. A good, hard brushing will clean the nap and give it a fresh look.

Frequent cleaning is advisable for areas which come in direct contact with the horse since moisture carries the sweat from the horse into the leather. When the moisture evaporates, salt crystals remain. The salt, in turn, absorbs essential moisture and oil from the leather, causing the leather to dry out! Before you put your equipment away, be particularly careful to clean these areas.

Watch for minor repairs, loose stitches, and worn areas. Repair these immediately before they become larger, more expensive, problems. This will insure your safety as well as the longevity of your equipment.