Mud fever!!

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pinkypug1

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My sport horse mare has one white sock & is prone to mud fever, she is out 24/7 & has developed very bad mud fever to the point were she has lost some small patches of hair & today the leg is swollen & she is obviously in pain when walking. I had been using pig oil & sulphur to prevent it & when it started to scab i used sudocrem but it been getting worse. Was i right to stop using pig oil when the scabs appeared?? or can i continue even though skin is broken & oozing?? I have no option to stable her as she has a foal at foot & other horse in the field will not stay out alone.

Vet gave me some derma cream to try today so will start that tomorrow. She didnt get it half as bad last winter but i had option of stabling so was able to wash & hibiscrub etc when it developed. Any advice much appreciated? Should i wash it even though she is out 24/7? someone suggested washing then applying cream & wrapping for the day removing at night until it clears up would this help?
 
Head for the chemist and buy a bottle of Nizoral shampoo - it is the most successful treatment for mudfever I've ever used.

Dilute in hand hot water and lather up well with a face cloth. Wash all over the area and well beyond too. Leave for 10 mins and then towel dry or leave to dry. You may have to repeat but often I find that one wash sorts it out.

Don't pick off the scabs as they will come off in their own good time, the Nizoral does seem to move them though.

Feed a good supplement that contains Copper and Zinc as both help to develop strong skin.
 
Evelyn said:
Head for the chemist and buy a bottle of Nizoral shampoo - it is the most successful treatment for mudfever I've ever used.

Dilute in hand hot water and lather up well with a face cloth. Wash all over the area and well beyond too. Leave for 10 mins and then towel dry or leave to dry. You may have to repeat but often I find that one wash sorts it out.

Don't pick off the scabs as they will come off in their own good time, the Nizoral does seem to move them though.

Feed a good supplement that contains Copper and Zinc as both help to develop strong skin.
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sorry to ask do you mean to leave the shampoo in?? sorry for asking stupid question? but sounds great thanks for the advice
 
I've tried all remedies with my boy, who has persistent mud fever/dermatitis on one leg. I woudl rather he were out as his leg does fill when in, but like you worry about the leg getting wet.

I've tried 2 custom made creams from the vet, both of which were most effective. One had an aqueous cream base, which also irritated the leg, the other had an udder cream base. It is made up by one of the local practices, is antibacterial, anti fungicidal and has steroids. If you ask your vet, they may have something similar.

The udder cream is good and gloopy and really adheres and protects the leg, I will always keep a pot of it now, I woudl use it as a first choice even without the additional properties.

None of the normal remedies worked, I tried sudocream, canasten, pig oil/suplhur, nizerol, fuciderm etc etc. Everyone seems to have a preferred remedy I suspect that different things work for different horses.
 
siennamum said:
I suspect that different things work for different horses.
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Very true! By asking here you'll not only get lots of advice, but half of it will contradict the rest! Best thing is try it all until you find something (be that management or a 'product') that works for you.

I have a TB with two pink skinned legs who lives out 24/7 over the winter. He gets it and I've found mud fever really is a 'management' condition rather than a 'treat and cure' one! So far I've found:

Hibiscrub is quite harsh and although kills the bacteria, can also damage this skin, not what you want when you're trying to heal damaged skin! There are many more 'kinder' alternatives. I use Malaseb (sp?) from the vet.

My horse can't tolerate the sulphur in Pig Oil and Sulphur, used pig oil and he was fine, used the added sulphur alternative and it peeled the skin! :eek: Have heard of other horses doing this too, so just make sure it's not irritating your horse's skin.

There are no shortcuts with mud fever. If there are scabs, the best thing to do is treat it to get on top of it while it's mild, if you turn out regardless in mud/wet it WILL get worse and take longer to heal.

This advice from my vet (when my boy had it quite moderately) worked very well:
-In the evening, wash with warm water and malaseb, massage in for 10 mins, try to gently soften and loosen scabs. (Emphasis on gently, ripping scabs off will only make skin sore and then you're back to square 1!)
-Dry VERY thoroughly and gently with towels. Tedious but necessary.
-Apply their 'mud fever' cream, it's made by them at the practise, I'm sure your vet will have similar.
-Cover/wrap area with a strip of gamgee and then clingfilm the top of it, before bandaging with vetwrap. This keeps the cream on overnight to soak in, keeps it clean and the clingfilm is very effective at 'sweating' off the scabs and softening them further.
-In the morning, take it all off and I *think* either leave to air for the day or rewash with malaseb and then leave to air. Constantly wetting the skin is not good as this is what weakens it in the first place. Depends what you think is needed. I think I sometimes applied sudocrem during the day.

Obviously the horse has to be in during this, but although I found it a lot of work, it was very effective and the longest my horse ever stayed in was a week. :)
 
Dear ALL - please give the Nizoral a try - any of you who's horses suffer from mudfever.

I've been using it for several years on numerous horses, working in a racing stable with up to a hundred horses in training we get quite a bit of it.

I used to go the whole hog with washing and bandaging and poulticing and sweating and applying cream daily/twice daily for weeks at a time.

With Nizoral usually one good wash will kill it all and the skin will recover really fast. It really, really works, quickly and painlessly and fast!
 
I'm very frustrated that Nizerol didn't work with my boy Evelyn. I really hoped it would.

I forgot that I also started using Malaseb - I really wouldn't wash them with Hibiscrub regularly. I think the more treatments I used, the more my boy's skin was getting oversensitive. This is esecially true of the steroid creams which have made his skin very delicate. I'm leaving well alone at the moment in hte hope that it won't come back as badly as it has previously.
 
I have found tea tree oil to be very effective - I apply it neat to the area on a bit of cotton wool, wait for it to dry & pick the scab(s) off. Once the scabs are off & you can see the new skin apply the tea tree oil neat again & the sores should heal.
 
siennamum said:
I'm very frustrated that Nizerol didn't work with my boy Evelyn. I really hoped it would.

I forgot that I also started using Malaseb - I really wouldn't wash them with Hibiscrub regularly. I think the more treatments I used, the more my boy's skin was getting oversensitive. This is esecially true of the steroid creams which have made his skin very delicate. I'm leaving well alone at the moment in hte hope that it won't come back as badly as it has previously.
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That is a real shame - you're the first that has had a negative result with it.

Try feeding a supplement that contains copper & zinc as both help strengthen skin.
 
There is also the possibility that if mud fever is not responding to standard treatment, it's not actually mud fever. If you search on here for Pastern leukocytoclastic vasculitis there are a couple of threads on it.

Interestingly, the horse I mention on those threads has now been turned away for other reasons. Initially his vasculitis returned in spades and I had to grit my teeth not to return him to a stabled situation immediately, although I did decided if it was still bad by winter I would have to, if only to prevent secondary infection. Interestingly, it affected the legs almost in rotation, starting behind then in front. He even got similar lesions on his nose!

I washed the lesions with a surgical mouthwash, mostly to help guard against secondary infection as it has an antibacterial and antifingual component but it quite mild, and used coconut oil to soothe and hopefully protect the skin. To be honest, I don't know if it made any difference at all BUT the lesions have pretty much healed up completely! They healed in the same order they started, and from the inside out, so he had sort of "donuts" of scab by the end. I really wish I still had the photos (damn lost phone) as it was completely counter to what one would expect and what the vets have told me during his other bouts.

Now, we are also getting less sun, which seems to be a factor, but that hasn't stopped it cropping up in the winter before and in fact it's always been more likely to appear in wet weather.

Also, he in now not eating ANY processed food at all. Someone else told me they thought this was a factor with a similarly afflicted horse which also made a miraculous recovery.

And there is definitely an immune component, at least with this horse. I have no doubt the stress of moving was a factor and I don't think it's a fluke it's now improved, as he's probably more settled in his new home than he has ever been previously.

Sorry, that got a bit long and off topic. The original point was that even the vets diagnosed him originally as having "mudfever" and all sorts of people gave me all sorts of advice re lotions and potions, most of which actually made HIS situation worse. The first bout he had, we ended up going back to the old standby of iodine wash, Furacin and good nursing (he tested for increasing sensitivity to Sudocreme and Hibiscrub so we really were making him worse!) although now I wonder if nursing alone wouldn't have done just as well.
 
I have always thought that my youngster's issue is more complex than mudfever. He had a traumatic move to my yard as a 3 year old then he went on old pasture which gives all new horses a bout of MF if they are at all compromised.

I've had 4 vets and he's had 3 courses of antibiotics. All the while I've thought, this is more an issue with his immune system overreacting and potentially made worse by lots of creams and potions. I found Sudocreme, sulphur and hibiscrub all made it worse, which would make sense.

Last vet visit he was going to prescribe full blown course of steroids, which I really want to avoid, he thought it might be some obscure dermatitis which only arabs get, but I really don't think this horse has any arab in him. Thankfully the latest cream seems to be managing it, currently there are no symptoms, apart from his leg filling and getting sore when he is stabled. That may go in time, so we shall see. V frustrating though, especially as he is a tit to have his feet handled (by the farrier) and is now paranoid about this particular leg.
 
Echo Evelyn! She advised me to use it on my mare, who came to me with very bad mudfever on all 4 legs! It worked a treat. I did have to use it twice though but the mudfever was very bad to begin with. Cleared up a treat and will 100% use in the future. I got mine from Asda pharmacy by the way, it was very cheap.
 
for future heres an idea to prevent it (we use it on our old TB) get some equi-chaps turnout boots and then on the inside put lincoln muddy buddy powder. Sorry dont know anyway to cure it, we've never had to!!!
 
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