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[RC] Thrush prevention? - shermanTitle: MessageOnce it starts
raining in the foothills near Grass Valley, the ground can stay wet for months,
from Nov/Dec and sometimes (hopefully) thru April/May especially in highly used
areas around the entrances to stalls, paddocks, and especially where the horses
congregate to watch for humans to come and feed them. As long as it's not
raining I feed them all around the 4 acres so they don't have to stand in the
mud, but it is wet everywhere. Stalls are dry and covered with mats but only two
horses have stalls, the other two have covered pipe stalls that eventually get
muddy near the entrance, inside and out. The horses run together during the day
and really make the problem worse, but I'd rather deal with the mud so they can
be a herd as they move around and play more when they are together.
I don't have a big
problem with thrush, but I do smell it occasionally when I clean hooves, which
is when I ride. I'll then spray with with a Lysol solution daily until there is
no more smell. I think I've had to treat 3 of the 5 horses once this season,
each for about a week even though the smell was gone within a few days. We had
our first big storm in late October I think, and the thrush appeared shortly
after that, even though the mud hadn't really developed yet. Now that we've
had several more inches of rain, the muddy spots are here to stay for awhile,
but right now it is very soupy and doesn't stick to the hooves, so no problems.
Last spring, I had
worse problems, maybe because the mud was stickier, I don't know. But then I had
three horses that I did a few days of soaking with a solution of
Oxine, which is similar to White Lightening, but is not a gas, so I could use
home made (from inner tubes) soaking boots, and soak all four hooves at one
time.
Kathy
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