MochaDun
Well-Known Member
After a swab being taken, my gelding was found to have a profuse amount of a nasty bacteria in his sheath which has now been treated. Most likely transmission vet thinks from it being splashed up from contaminated water or ground and then finding a lovely warm moist environment to get going in I guess. I'm assuming it's from the field as it's been awash all winter as you can imagine.
I feel bad as put it down to him always coming in with it all smeared in mud as he's not that high and I assumed the mudfever bacteria would be causing it to be uncomfortable as if it got itchy it seemed to correlate to when mudfever scabs appeared again on his feet so just kept it as clean as I could. But also he's had mites and I assumed mites had maybe been lurking in that belly area too. I hadn't really heard of many bacterial infections like this in the sheath, is it quite common? Good in a way to find out the hard way about such things as you're aware for the next time though I'm hoping for his sake it's been a one-off unfortunate thing as no other horses in the same field have had this problem.
I feel bad as put it down to him always coming in with it all smeared in mud as he's not that high and I assumed the mudfever bacteria would be causing it to be uncomfortable as if it got itchy it seemed to correlate to when mudfever scabs appeared again on his feet so just kept it as clean as I could. But also he's had mites and I assumed mites had maybe been lurking in that belly area too. I hadn't really heard of many bacterial infections like this in the sheath, is it quite common? Good in a way to find out the hard way about such things as you're aware for the next time though I'm hoping for his sake it's been a one-off unfortunate thing as no other horses in the same field have had this problem.