Holly has allergies, but they only seem to crop up when she moves - When
she came home to live with me from Oklahoma in late June she broke out in a
rash, last spring she went to the trainers and when she came home to a pasture
full of grass she broke out again (again in early June)...guess she's allergic
to June?? This will be her first year of being home for spring, so we'll
see how it goes. In the past two years the rash pretty much clears up
after a few washings with shampoo from the vet. I also got a bad batch of
hay this year that made her cough but now that that hay is delegated to the
chickens and she has her 'good' hay from our regular hay man she's no longer
coughing.
She got some kind of ear yuck this Fall, tho. White scrunge in her
ears, crusty and they would crack and ooze a little, too. Had the vet out
to check them out twice, got two different medicines for it, the first she
hated, the second that actually worked (hmm, because she loved it and let me get
it in there or ?) she would put her head down and wait for me to rub it in
there, LOL. Now she's got small lumps that then drain a little when she
scrubs them on the trees on her face and a couple on her neck...makes me want to
cut down all trees, but I know she'd find another place to rub still...
One of our horses has a problem with allergies. He has been
tested by an equine allergist and by our regular vet. The
allergist used skin tests and the regular vet used a blood test. He
is allergic to everything! At least it seems that way. We live in
western Washington and once the rains come the allergies get worse.
Today we took him out on the trail for a couple of hours. (He
has hives.) We used a Dixie Midnight pad under the booties on his
usual OF saddle. My husband was riding him and the horse, Rico,
would stop and my husband said it felt like Rico was trying to turn himself
inside out. Finally we stopped and took the pad off. When riding him
with just the booties he was much better. No stopping, etc. Has
anyone else experienced this or have an allergic horse. Rico was born
on our place and we have his mom who has no allergies. The stud's
owner tells me he has no allergies and she knows of no other of his get
with this problem. We tried various herbal remedies before taking him to
the equine allergist and not much improvement there. The allergy
tests were taken about a year ago and he is on allergy shots plus
antihistamines. The allergies were trigered by a load of hay we got
that was 10% alfalfa. He is now fed straight grass hay and beet pulp.
This colt is out of our extremely smooth and fast paso fino mare and a nice
paso fino largo stallion. Rico does pretty well during our dry
season. Two questions. Has anyone
experienced this problem with the Dixie Midnight pads? Also any
suggestions would be welcome from anyone with a horse with allergic
problems. This horse was to be my husband's distance horse but
now . . . .who knows. Rico will be 5 in April. So far
he's only been ridden on our local trails but we'd sure like to be able to
get him out in the mountains this
summer.
