Sweet itch...any experts on it?!

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Holloa

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Going to look at a prospective new horse on sunday, but owners have said that he has had mild sweet itch. I've never come across it before, none of my horses has had it, owner says she controls it with a boett rug.
I would appreciate any advice, and is this something that would be a hassle for me and should i be wary? Or is it nothing to worry about?
Many thanks!
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It really depends on the individual horse.
Mine has it and he has a huge huge variety of rugs and literally can't got more than 2 mins without being covered up or he gets demented with it. Also electric fencing off around all the things he can itch on helps (sounds cruel but if I can stop him itching in the first place then he forgets his habit)
I have to consider where i livery him based on whether it's near water, muck heap location, trees, a good breeze etc...
Lots of appliction of lotions, homeopathy and feeding of marmite too.
You would never know for a moment that he has sweet itch because it is so well controlled but if you don't catch it before the season starts it can be a nightmare to manage all season.
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My cob had mild sweet itch. He was rugged March to October which kept it under control. I would say that if you really like the horse and the sweet itch has demonstrably been under control with the Boett then it's not much of a worry. I really do think that prevention is better than treatment so would defintely advise use of a rug from early on in the season.
 
Well if its anything like mine:
- Will need to live out 24/7 in fully electric fenced paddock.
- Will rub on anything (you walls, trailer etc)
- You'll need to dress them in the boett pyjamas from March until november
- They will need a lot of rugs

That said mine (homebred) is worth his weight in gold. Its a pain to look after, but it also keeps him incredibly clean.
 
It depends on what they class as mild. YO's pony has it v badly and the poor thing would be bald if he wasn't permanently rugged up. At the other end of the scale I used to ride a cob that had it in his tail - his owner used to wrap a pillow case round his tail then bandage it every day and it was fine.
 
Yeah basically what Law said.

My friends horse has it. Sweet itch rug on through summer avoid warm humid areas by trees water etc. Dont let them near anything they can rub against bless em otherwise the hair is gone. My friends horse has started with the warm weather rubbed tail alreay.

Garlic and Marmie at feeding and lotions to help them.

Woth a look. Depends how bad they mean by slight!
 
The culicoides midge particularly loves woodlands, damp rotting wood areas, and ponds. If you plan to keep him in a boggy field next to a piece of old woodland, then you will have one itchy unhappy horse. But if your field is not a complete midge-magnet, then a boett will keep everything much more manageable. If he ticks all the other boxes, then I would probably go ahead and buy him.
 
I had a horse with mild ish sweet itch and the boett worked a treat. Would definately recommend sweet itch horses (provided you like them and OK otherwise obviously!) to anyone.... unfortunately anyone who doesn't live where I am and the midges are so bad my boy wouldn't have stood a chance with the boett off for even 5 mins.

Elec fencing is a must, and consider your circumstances - muck heap, trees & vegitation, standing water, rotting vegetation all don't help the cause. Open breezy fields are good!

Boetts are expensive but worth it IMHO, if yours is into rough and tumble play you need to make sure you can afford a new one once a year or two years (when you have a second rug its easier to take one off and wash, mend etc) - Boett are very helpful about how to repair your boett, they provide patches and you don't have to be a sewer!
 
Worth it if it's controlled ... my old boy, who I have had for 17 years, came with it, although the original owners stated he did not suffer from it, when my brilliant Vet noticed the tell tell signs when he was Vetted at the end of the winter, when everything had grown back
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He was for sale at £1,350 and I paid £999 for him due to this condition .... and absolute bargain
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I have got through gallons of Benzyl Benzoate though, but not £350 worth, I don't think
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At least they are being honest
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Thanks everyone. Sounds like its not the end of the world to have it. Will take all your advice on board, already use electric fencing, but will ask how badly he gets it etc.
My vets recommended a really good fly repellant, Deosect deosan. Anyone used it? Might try that as well, to deter the midges....! Thanks
 
One of ours no longer had sweet itch when we had eliminated sugar and molasses from her diet. Makes you wonder what the namers of the condition knew!
 
YorksG. if by removeing molasses and sugar from her diet you got rid of the symptoms then yours didnt have sweet itch in the first place. It had a food allergy. Sweet itch is an allergy to midge bites, no amount of changing feeds will prevent the allergic reaction.
However food allergys can present with similar symptoms to sweet itch.

I have one pony who came to me with mild sweet itch and dispite being in a fairly midge free area (top of a very windy welsh hill) his sweet itch got worse rapidly. I fought it for years with the pony often reduced to a bleeding mess when he ripped his boett. vet allergy tested him after i reasearched it and nagged the vet for a while and it came back that he was allergic to both midges and a cereal. by process of elimination (ie feeding him each cereal individualy and watching his reaction) we found that his food allergy was barley. we cut out all barley from his diet and he went back to haveing mild sweet itch which the sweet itch vaccine trials now seem to have cured.
 
I am well aware that she had feed alergies, what is to say that this animal does not also have them? The midge bites presumably made matters worse, as this reaction only occured during the months when the midges were active. This was over twenty years ago, long before vets acknowledged the problem.
 
Did you get blood spots from where the midges bit your horse?

Mine is definitely not a feed allergy as he is good in the winter and you can see where the little suckers are biting him on his sheath!
 
Depends on the horse TBH.

I was also going to say that it may not always be SI and could be an allergy. But I guess you wouldnt find that out unless you had testing done which is pricey on top of a a pre-purchase vetting. People always assume an itchy horse is SI when sometimes it isnt. I thought one of my horses had SI for 3 years until I had him tested, he's allergic to several things it turns out!
 
I'm not an expert but I have some experience. A horse on my old yard used to have sweet itch and they used to rub Benzyl Benzoate into the affected areas and she was fed yeast extract (marmite).

She also used to have to go out in a full fly rug to prevent her itching, and it bothering her.

All the best.
 
There has also been some reasearch that shows that garlic isnt good for sweetitch ponies as it is an immune system booster so as sweet itch is an over reactive immune system problem, garlic can make it worse
 
One of my boys has it..... has a sweet itch rug on normally from end of March (been lucky so far) and is treated with homeopathic remedies..... and the odd dab of Benzyl benzoate ( when you cna actually get it!)
Not a major issue!
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My TB has sweet itch and she has to wear a boett, which does help. I would personally NOT buy a horse that I knew had sweet itch. It is a bloody nuisance. No amount of expensive potions or feed additives make any difference. I have had her allergy tested at £700 and the vets told me the jabs were a waste of money and not to bother with them. She wears an expensive rug boett £180. The FAL one with silver in it, is also a waste of money.

I would love to be able to put her out in the field on a sunny day with no rug, but within minutes she is very upset. If she did not wear a rug or come into her stable, her belly and chest would be a mass of sores.

In the summer the only place she wants to be, is in her stable.

I love her and would never ever sell her, but I wish she did not have this problem.
 
I'm no expert, but if it can be controlled with the Boett which you will be able to tell immediately you see this horse, then you ought to be OK providing you have nice open grazing etc etc.

I also think like Yorks G that what you feed may well have some impact on the condition. My mare is on a low sugar diet due to her predecessor having sugar intolerance. From January when we got her and her mane and tail were looking a bit pitiful and she was dandruffy and scabby, she is looking great, scabs and dandruff are diminishing rather than increasing, and whilst I am watching her like a hawk for signs of rubbing, she is doing great and the Boett remains on standby...

I bought her because she ticked all the other boxes of our requirements and I don't regret it for a moment. Even if she does start itching and the Boett needs to go on.

If you wade back through the posts, I started one in early January asking "would you buy a horse with Sweet itch" or something like that, to which I got lots of helpful and constructive replies.
 
I bought my young Arab knowing he had mild sweet-itch. He lives in a Rambo Sweet-itch Hoody from end March to end September (not a Boett - I hate them) and that, together with liberal applications of Avon Skin So Soft on exposed bits and being fed NAF D-Itch, means he has a full mane and tail and rarely rubs. We live in a heavily-midgy area with lots of water and trees.
 
Out of interest which avonskin so soft? the green one? Which product? Lol people give varying reports, I have always used to green spray oil but a friend uses the pink one. Little blighters round here are immune to everything I think.

There are lots of alternatives to boett out, I think they have all got better in recent years. Only other one apart from boett I have experience of is the snuggy hoods ones, which rubbed 3 tails out last summer (the rug, not the flies I am 100% certain).

And yes, I believe YorksG is right, SI or at least a very similar condition can be triggered or agravated by diet. I also suspect things like personality and stress come into it, but thats just my gut feel.
 
Personally I wouldn't touch a sweetitch sufferer with a bargepole, but that's because both my last horses suffered from it, and it drove me MAD!

Both had moderate sweetitch. Both had to be rugged non stop from probably April 'til October in a Boett type rug. Said rug was shredded on a regular basis, so plenty of work for me in sewing it back up. Both would rub on anything in sight - walls, doors, me, etc, they couldn't be stabled from April to October as their manes and tails ended up in bits. Rides were a nightmare as they were so irritated by the flies, only the strongest of fly sprays gave them any relief and they wore off in no time. Manes and tails got very scurfy, and I had to wash them out every few weeks as the more it built up, the itchier they got. On occasion they still came in with open sores on their necks from where they had rubbed and rubbed, and manes and tails were still sparse.

Managing sweetitch properly is hard, and it doesn't always work. If it is truly mild then you shouldn't have too much of a problem, but beware in case they are underestimating the problem.
 
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Out of interest which avonskin so soft? the green one? Which product? Lol people give varying reports, I have always used to green spray oil but a friend uses the pink one. Little blighters round here are immune to everything I think.


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The green one (?something Pine) - I use the bath oil diluted at a ratio of about 1 part oil to 2 parts water. It seems to work - I use it on his head (he doesn't wear the Hoody part of his rug as it rubs him), and legs.
 
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