Orvus Paste Shampoo UK | Just Equine

Orvus Paste Shampoo

Orvus Paste Shampoo has been around for years. Used by professional horsemen and women around the world, Orvus paste shampoo continues to be sort after in the showing world.

If you’ve been around horses long enough, you’ve surely seen one of these big cubical white tubs of Orvus Paste/Shampoo. They last FOREVER, so you might have seen the same one for years and years.

It is a shampoo that gets the job done, especially for white horses that are so hard to get clean. There are no ‘flavours’ to choose from–it only comes in the ‘original’ shampoo form. But as generations of horse, cattle, sheep, goat, dog, etc. owners will tell you, it WORKS.

The first and main thing you need to know about Orvus is that it is concentrated. A little goes a long way. A cap full can do a whole horse.

The contents of the shampoo are sodium lauryl sulfate, lauryl alcohol, sodium sulfate, and water. Sounds really artificial and loaded with chemicals, but this is actually recommended by preservationists for use in cleaning historical linens, quilts, and other fine natural fabrics. It is made for cleaning rugs, upholstery, hand washing delicate fabrics, and, oh yeah, washing livestock too (seems rather odd–delicate fabrics and 1500 pound cattle). If you check the quilting websites, the quilters swear by this stuff. They sell it as “quilt paste” and then put (an equine shampoo) beside the name to describe what it is. Funny.

It can’t be too harsh if it is recommended as a preservative for historic fabrics, and it isn’t. Horses come out nice and clean and shiny. It is great for getting green grass stains and manure stains out of horse hair, and it just picks up the dirt and washes it away (it is a surfactant, like the dish soap Dawn – takes grease out of your way). It rinses clean quickly (especially if you don’t put 60 times too much on the horse).

In the winter, the shampoo becomes more like a paste–white and thick. In the summer, it is more syrup-y and yellow, but in either form it works just fine (it’s just easier to work with in the summer).