Allergies - please help

J

JenCherry

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I have a rig who has bumps all over his body. He has had them since he was castrated. I have tried changing his feed, bedding, rugs etc and nothing has made a difference. There are times when they disappear completely and then suddenly and for no apparent reason they will reappear. I have noticed that they appear to get worse with stress and insufficient movement. I have consulted a number of vets who all say he has an allergy but no-one can tell me to what and the only suggestion is to keep him on hydro-cortisone tablets which I don't want to do. If the bumps get too bad, fluid begins to leak from them. I have recently heard of rigs that were allergic to their own testosterone or collagen. Does anyone have any suggestions or tips that I might be able to try?
 
Your vet should be able to send a blood sample away to test for raised antibodies. Although it wont test for everything including testosterone and collagen it will test for common grasse, weed and tree pollens as well as foods, moulds, mites etc. Might be worth chatting to your vet.
 
I have the same problem, but with a mare.
She's had an allergic reaction to something for two years - and chronic urticaria with some serum leakage.
My vets have been pretty useless, tbh, and have treated her as though she has an acute problem - with courses of Prednisolone. It does work, but as soon as the dose diminishes, her bumps reappear.
I am now thinking about trying an antihistamine called cetrizine as some studies suggest it works in horses, and doesn't have the sedative effect of older antihistamines.
I'm also thinking of having her allergy tested, but have a friend on here (LS where are you?) who did it and it wasn't a great success.
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I'm assuming of course, that you have tried to eliminate other causes of the allergy, such as feed, rug proof chemicals, etc.
S
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My horse has an allergy which makes her eyes either swell up or lose their pigmentation around them, vet has no idea what the allergy is though and says it is probably one of the tress in her field (loads of them) says allergy testing is hit and miss if you find what it is or not.

Shilasdair ; can the antihistamine you suggest be bought or is it prescription only ? thankyou. sorry for hijacking post.
 
The mare we had who had intolerances to sugar and cereals used to get these lumps if she had the foods she couldn't eat. The problem is that the intolerances/allergies can also be to environmental factors. We had a problem with two of our mares coughing badly last summer, we think it was in reaction to some form of particulant being blown our way when the wind was in a particuar direction. If they are sensetised to one thing it can lead to other reactions and it then gets very difficult to sort out. Good luck with it, both of you.
Re the anti-histamine just be aware that it can cause some odd psychiatric responses in people, have no info about this in horses.
 
Thanks for all your comments. I have considered allergy testing, but even the vet admits it is hit and miss. I have ruled out everything that I think might cause it but they always come back. Shilasdair, all my old vet has done is give my horse courses of Prednisolone too, but while they do disappear every time you reduce the dose they reappear. I have now have a homeopathic vet and am trying various medicines he puts together for me. I must admit I haven't heard about cetrizine, but I will look into it. Would be very interested in the results if you do try it.
 
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Shilasdair ; can the antihistamine you suggest be bought or is it prescription only ? thankyou. sorry for hijacking post.

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It is branded as 'Zirtek' I believe, and is non POM.
I bought 9 boxes of 30 online for 29p each (9 being the upper limit they would sell me).
I did a bit of research on it, and a Swedish study which induced skin wheals in horses, then tried a range of antihistamines to treat them seemed to find it was effective at 0.2 - 0.4mg/kg daily, but divided into two lots and given every 12hrs.
I asked my vet and she didn't seem to think there would be any safety issues.
Disclaimer - of course you should always ask your vet before trying any medication on your horse, whether prescription or over-the-counter.
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S
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Mine used to be like and I had allergy testing done.
They found 15 triggers but the most useful thing was that we took him up to the vet college for the testing and the lumps went overnight.

You can have desensitisation done but not for as many as 15.

From there they said it definitely wasn't food but environmental as anything he ate would still be in the gut so even though various grasses came up eating them wouldn't be the issue.

I moved yards and the lumps vanished. We haven't done a full year at the new yard but this time last year was when he went to be tested.

We tried antihistimines (ucerax or atavax) and it didn't help.
 
Antihistimes do work. I have used cetrizine hydrochloride (my vet prescribes a lot of these, and out of the 15 chemical types of antihistimes he say's cetrizine seems to work the best) on my mare for yrs, for her dust and pollen allergies, with great sucess. She lives on them all yr round, but I change the dosage to what she needs through the yr.
I considered PTS a few times in the yrs pre antihistimes as she literally couldnt walk from her stable to field without nearly collapsing due to the lack of oxygen. But with these pills she can be ridden all yr round, without any problems, up to 15 miles mid summer
I've also used them for hives, mild sweet itch etc.

You can buy them online cheaply, but my far they are cheaper from your vets. I pay £36 for 3000 tablets! that lasts me anywhere from 2-5 months. My girl weighs 500kg, and has been prescribed up to 50 tablets a day by my vet
If anyone wants more info feel free to pm me
 
we have had a good experience of alergy testing on our WB (had a number of triggers, mainly dust mites but also things like cat hair!). Ours was managed by changing his envionment (had to move yards unfortunatly to be away from straw bedding) and carefully managing his diet. As people have already mentioned you can still get "flare ups" from pollutants entering their environment and when it becomes difficult to manage (e.g. stuck in stables for long periods during bad weather always seems to cause a minor "outbreak"). However we have, so far, been able to manage him without any drug treatment. When the alergies first presented we went through a nightmare period of time trying to identify what it was (whilst feeding copious amounts of anti-histimines). Interestingly we found that maintaining our boy on a quality food balancer all the time really helps his skin resist reactions (if not my bank balance) and yet it was one of the things which we "cut out" during the process of trying to work out what it was - in the end it was the allergy testing which gave us a definitive list of "things to avoid" and enabled us to deal with it - and really dont have to worry about it any more luckily.

Good luck - fingers crossed for you that you can resolve it quickly,

mosspe
 
mosspe
Interesting what you say about stabling mine really started when he was on Box rest though is stayed after he starting going out again.

I had the opposite with bedding as they found several wood triggers so he is better on straw.
 
Sorry to resurrect this post, but I was searching for allergies and it popped up!

I have had 18 monmths of my mare having problem after problem, minor colics, lumps, unresolved infections, coughing, wheezing. Has been horrendous. After a recent acute breathing problem my vet suggested an allergy panel which we did.

To say it was enlightening is an understatement. She is properly allergic to 20 odd things, the worst being Wheat, Soya and Timothy.

For my own interest I sat back and worked out a time line of her problems but being aware now of the allergies.

She was originally kept on dry hay and barley straw with no problem, my feed merchant then delivered wheat straw as that's all he had. That was the first day she started heaving and coughing. I put it down to a dusty bale of straw, that she might have eaten a bit of! Changed to shavings and Haylage (Timothy!) to try and sort the problem. Her cough then turned into a really horrible wheezing wet cought with purulent discharge which was treated aggressively as an infection. Antibiotics didn't fix it and a swab was taken but nothing could be grown it eventually seemed to get gradually better and in hindsight this was a t the time we changed from Horsehage Timothy to mediujm bale haylage.

I could honestly go on and on, but since that test EVERYTHING makes sense!

I am so grateful that my vet spotted what was possibly going wrong.

Veruy interested in the Cetrizine, that's worth a go, although my vet didn't seem to think that antihistamines are terribly effective in horses, but that a steroid inhakler is the way to go.

So cut a long story short, I would recommend allergy testing to any one. It has given me my horse back, and a much happier horse at that :)
 
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