Small black 'beads' in a horses lower eye - looks like caviar

[Fabforester]

Hi - one of the geldings we are looking after was having his back done yesterday and (as we were standing in the lovely sunshine) I was looking closely at his eyes. As he looked ahead in the bottom eyelid were a very small cluster of black shiny beads, really tiny, attached. The area around there is not inflamed, he showed no sign of discomfort, no discharge etc. His owner has never seen them before, and on checking, they are in both eyes. You cannot see them unless you pull his bottom eyelid down, and they are tiny, the easiest way to describe them is 'caviar'. Our vet has said they can come out tomoro mornong although they think it is corpora nigra but looking on the www that doesnt sound like the same thing. Will (being such a delicate area) ask another practice to come out tomoro but wondered if anyone knew what these sound like....................

 

[charlie76]

I think you will find this is normal.I think they are called Idiric Granules and are part of teh Iris

 

[Fabforester]

Hmm, thats what he also called them, apparently the same name, but, these are in the lower eyelids not on the actual eye - ie you cant actually see them until you gently pull the lower eyelid down or if he (as yesterday) was looking right ahead you could just spot them by his lower eyelashes, inside the eye, on the pinky area by the bottom of the eye ball. Is this the same. Literally, if someone said this was Cavair i would have said it looked identical.

 

[dieseldog]

Every horse has them and camel apparently - as way of reducing sun glare

CORPORA NIGRA
The iris acts as an aperture which reduces in size in bright light to control the amount of light passing to the retina. The iris is oval in shape and irregular in outline, due to black projections from the margins into the aperture. These projections (corpora nigra) may obstruct vision to a limited extent in bright light, when the pupil is constricted. The corpora nigra are thought to reduce the glare of bright light. In the camel, which is subject to much more glare, they are more developed.

 

[Fabforester]

But they're not near his iris. They are at the very bottom of eye ball, by lower eyelashes, inside.