Product Review: Noble Outfitters All-Purpose Stall Wash

More than meets the eye!

The Noble Outfitters All-Purpose Stall Wash.

I’m going to lift the veil here for a moment and confess that when the bottle of All-Purpose Stall Wash arrived on my doorstep in a box from Noble Outfitters, I originally wrote the stuff off — it looked like great stuff if I was on the road a lot with my horses, but my humble pasture puffs rarely leave the property and never show. The All-Purpose Stall Wash, to judge by the label alone, appeared to be designed for show barns and competitors who were at a different show grounds every weekend, moving their horses in and out of temporary stalls before hitting the road for the next big weekend. And that’s simply not what I do at this stage of my equestrian life.

I voiced these thoughts to Noble Outfitters, concerned that I frankly couldn’t give this product a fair shake, because I didn’t think I was the target consumer. I supposed I could give all the water troughs on the farm a good scrub-out, but it was going to be hard to really “test” the product and know if it was working.

“Don’t worry!” my contact sent back. “Here’s a list of some of the ways you can use the Stall Wash.” I’ll just sample a few of those uses here for you:

• Cleaner/disinfectant: stall walls, stall mats, girths, boots, buckets, feed and water bowls, etc.
• Fight pathogens: including EHV-1, H1N1, Listeria, Staph and Salmonella, among others
• Wound care: post-surgical sites, rain rot, thrush, scratches, ringworm, etc.
• Facilities: including horse barns, veterinary facilities, show barns, cattle and dairy facilities
• And a myriad of other miscellaneous uses, such as increasing the efficacy of fly spray when added, disinfecting the trailer, cleaning wash racks, deodorizing skunk odor (!) and many more.

Whoa. Could one product really handle all of that? Okay, maybe this stuff was something that even I, the stay-at-home recreational rider, could find a use for.

Red investigates.

And soon I got the opportunity. My blissfully ignorant Red, rather than stay out of the rain under shelter on a recent drencher of a weekend, stood happily out in the downpour, got himself soaked to the skin through his thickening coat and picked up a lovely case of rain rot. I had gone the “traditional” route, getting some SMZ from the farm vet and scrubbing him daily with a Betadine solution. Despite my careful attentions, Red didn’t seem to be getting any better.

With nothing to lose, I diluted the Stall Wash in a big bucket according to the label directions — 2.5 ounces of Stall Wash into one gallon of water. The wash made a nice sudsy solution, and I noticed that the solution lacked that potent, almost burning, odor of strong disinfectant. I grabbed a scrubber and got to work, letting the solution sit and soak on the horse for ten minutes before rinsing him off and letting him dry in the sun.

Sudsy! And not unpleasant-smelling, unlike a lot of sanitizers or disinfectants.

After my week-long battle with daily Betadine scrubs, imagine my delight to find Red’s rain rot about 98% cleared up after just two scrubbings. The wash didn’t dry out his skin or coat; he was just as shiny and happy as ever. My only regret is that I didn’t use the All-Purpose Stall Wash a little sooner — I could have saved both of us plenty of discomfort and hassle!

Even better, I uses the same formula to disinfect the brushes and equipment I used on Red to make sure the rain rot is truly beaten and never to return; I also put some in a spray bottle to easily disinfect his saddle pads and tack. How cool is it that I can use just one product for all of these needs?

A happy, rain-rot-free Red makes for a happy owner.

Since my horses are living on a beef cattle operation, there are also just as many uses for the Noble Outfitters All-Purpose Stall Wash on the cow side of the farm as well: we’ll be diluting down the solution into a big sprayer to disinfect barn areas, chutes and the stock trailer as we start to buy and sell cattle over the winter. The Stall Wash, of course, can also be used directly on the animals if we get any of the common cattle diseases on the farm.

Noble Outfitters offers a full line of animal care products, all formulated to be non-toxic and food-grade safe, and made in the USA.

• Stall washes, formulated for both large animal facilities and small animal kennels
• Wound care, formulated for both large and small animals, available in sprays and foams

The All-Purpose Stall Wash that I tested was the 32-ounce concentrate, which retails from Noble Outfitters for $34.99. (One bottle will dilute to 12 gallons of solution.)

As the Noble Outfitters website states, the Stall Wash “will change the way you think about cleaning your livestock and their surroundings.” Consider me converted: the All-Purpose Stall Wash has a place in my medicine cabinet forever!