Sweet Itch helpgroup??

ibot

ibot

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hi

so as those who have sweetitch know i am also going through it with my horse and i am feeling pretty down after today.

i have seen he was rubbing his tail and when i touched it a good bit of hair came away in my hand.

would love people to talk to in the same boat and maybe support each other as i am feeling very despondent today :mad:

well either write back on this or pm me


thank you

nicky
xx
 
my eldest has it shes 9 now and my 4 yr old shetland has very mild form of it as well. This summer so far we have lost half a highland mane, we have managed to pull the gate off its hinges tonight itching, belly is red at mo from her itching. She is in boett and gets washed once a week, has garlic in feed. Use avon skin so soft etc on her so this is the best she will be for the summer. Yet shetland cant even tell no fly rug or anything not itchy yet when i got her they said she def had bad sweet-itch.
 
i totally know how you feel. My mare is now in a field where there is nothing she can scratch on so she is using her feet to scratch her head and has numerous more bald sore patches.
im really hoping her snuggy hood rug arrives very quickly this week to see how that goes but i seriously thinking about buying cavalesse for her however I dont know if it works once the horse has started to scratch
 
My daughter's pony has it and has started to rub her mane. :( I find the best way of keeping it at bay is to wash her every two days in Head and Shoulders menthol and I swear by pig oil and sulpher, as well as Avon so soft, garlic and marmite. So far she hasn't touched her tail.
 
indiat - do you not find feeding her garlic makes her worse? i have been advised not to feed si sufferers garlic due to it making the problem worse?
 
Our cob has suffered ever since we got him, and he can never be left near anything he can rub on, so he does it on the ground. We control it by using a fly rug.

We now think my newest donkey has it:(

P1050337.jpg



It's not our garden wall!:eek:
 
_daisy_ said:
indiat - do you not find feeding her garlic makes her worse? i have been advised not to feed si sufferers garlic due to it making the problem worse?
Click to expand...

I can't say I have noticed a big difference in her - I didn't realise it could make them worse?
 
well paddy is on d itch and brewers yeast he has a fly rug when he goes out. my dr said to wash him once a week in a human shampoo bugger can't remember the name.
i also have neem oil for when it gets sore and benzo to stop the itching, was going to use avon skin so soft but have a black horse and don't want a dapple black lol :D

nicky
 
My 3 year old has it saying that he has been a lot better this year when i bought him a snuggy hood last year we had no mane left and head was cracking open this year he hardly ever itches tough wood, vet did say something about injection they can have but no idea how successful they are
 
welshied said:
My 3 year old has it saying that he has been a lot better this year when i bought him a snuggy hood last year we had no mane left and head was cracking open this year he hardly ever itches tough wood, vet did say something about injection they can have but no idea how successful they are
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Is that the steroid injection? I have heard mied views about that on the yard - some people say it worked, some claim it didn't and I know its not cheap.
 
Yeah its the steroid one she said the same successful in some cases not so in others suppose it depends on the severity
 
welshied said:
vet did say something about injection they can have but no idea how successful they are
Click to expand...

i was speaking to someone who has tried the injections and they havent made the slightest bit of difference and were quite exensive so its put me off them tbh.
my vet recommended malaseb (thinks that what he called it) shampoo and cavalesse if it turned out to be si which i think it is now :(
 
The steriod injection is ok short term but long term will damage liver and cause other issues. Garlic is what all the vets ive talked to including my ex say to feed sweet-itch ponies but not too over feed it as it helps boost their immune system so you dont want to over feed it.
 
_daisy_ said:
i was speaking to someone who has tried the injections and they havent made the slightest bit of difference and were quite exensive so its put me off them tbh.
my vet recommended malaseb (thinks that what he called it) shampoo and cavalesse if it turned out to be si which i think it is now :(
Click to expand...

Malaseb is good stuff, we had an itchy westie, he used to scratch himself raw with it and malaseb cooled his skin right down. I might give it a go as I am having to wash in H&S every two days.
 
when i got my mare in November she had scars and scabs left from the summers rubbing so ive bathed her in dermoline but ive just been looking online about malaseb and thinking of popping to the vets to get her some.
ive also tried tea tree shampoo that works well, never tried H&S - must be costing you a fortune
 
_daisy_ said:
when i got my mare in November she had scars and scabs left from the summers rubbing so ive bathed her in dermoline but ive just been looking online about malaseb and thinking of popping to the vets to get her some.
ive also tried tea tree shampoo that works well, never tried H&S - must be costing you a fortune
Click to expand...

I remember the malaseb wasn't cheap either!
 
_daisy_ said:
when i got my mare in November she had scars and scabs left from the summers rubbing so ive bathed her in dermoline but ive just been looking online about malaseb and thinking of popping to the vets to get her some.
ive also tried tea tree shampoo that works well, never tried H&S - must be costing you a fortune
Click to expand...

hey so this is your first summer with your horse :D mine too. i just hope we can come up with something. feel so sorry for them,

where does yours scratch? mine scratches in the stable what do i do about that? i mean yesterday i left him in the stable with benzo on him and tried to get some deet on him but he hates any fly sprays.
 
If your horse hates fly sprays fill up a spray bottle with water and teach him to be OK with them. Use approach and retreat, give hime about 3 or 4 ft of rope and allow him to move around you as you quietly spray (don't force him to stand still). As soon as he stands still take the spray away and let him stand and think. Maybe give him a treat. Then start again. Always quit on a good stand, you don't have to get him sprayed all over in the first session. You can start by spraying the air near him and work over to his body if need be.
I think a good fly spray is pretty essential with sweet itch ponies. Touch wood, I'm having some success with the home made one that includes Dettol. Just a little bit of rubbing starting, but not so much as before.
My boy isn't rugged. He has been on Global Herbs Fly Free since February. He has a really good spraying every time I see him. He has Net Tex pink cream on any bits he starts to rub.
The fly spray is half a small bottle of Dettol in a 500 ml spray bottle, 6 drops Tea Tree essential oil and top up with water. As well as spraying his body, I get up close to him and spray it through his mane, and put it on my hand to put it under his forelock and on his face.
 
The only thing I have found that works completly for my horse is her Boet Blanket. They are expensive to buy buy have found if I put it on early spring till winter I have no problems at all. Definately worth the money.
 
i'm really not sure if my guy has sweetitch or just likes itching as he doesn't try and rub all the time but rather finds something that means he can have a good itch and then gets carried away. When it is removed he seems to forget about itching that particular part.

so far this year he pushed a traffic cone away from the fence and rather liked itching his tum on that...now removed and no more itching there. There was a fence rail that was a bit longer than the fence and not securely fastened so he could get his neck under it and have a really good scratch of his mane through his fly rug....now removed and seems to have stopped itching that. He doesn't seem to be particulaly inclined to itch in the stable or have to amnicaly find something to itch on it is more like a game, he finds something new and waits to see how long before I find out what it is

We do though still have a somewhat scrawney looking lower mane and of course there is his face which he loves rubbing around the eye area. I am finding though that daily applications of gold label itchgon seem to stop that becoming worse and I can see hair starting to grow back though.

I am resigned to the fact that he likes itching, scratching and rubbing, he will always find something to have a good itch on and I might as well just give a big sigh and treat each area as he decides to rub it and have a ponio that looks a bit like a patchwork quilt in places.
 
Hi guys,
I joined the ranks of a serious SI case owner last year, when I bought a 9yo Exmoor mare. She came exceedingly cheap because of that and also her nervousness. Last year was a case of damage limitation, as I got her at the end of June, when she already had a bald dock, bald parts of her mane and sores. Due to her severe nervous nature, her only treatment up to me buying her was a fly rug. She was rubbing so severely there were holes upon holes and a new one was shredded on the first night. I had a lot of ‘what have I done?’ moments! It was going to be a LONG time before I could spray her, as she literally leapt in the air if anyone tried and I haven't found a decent spray, yet.

I began a research quest, partly based on what I knew about immunology (I’m a research scientist) and partly based on the facilities I have. The stable is IN the field and so it’s impossible to fence off everything - she rubbed on the stable doorway. I started off with the DEET fly gel, which was useless and then bought Benzyl Benzoate, which was great for intact skin, but she had lots of sores. These were sudocremed daily and together with the stitched rugs, that was how she stayed until October, when the flies died down a bit. In December, I re-stocked Benzyl Benzoate in bulk ready for this season, and also bought 25Kg sacks of brewer’s yeast and linseed.

I have purposefully stayed away from garlic, since it is a known gut irritant and is implicated in IBS/ulcerative colitis ( I know this because of work – I research Mucositis in the small intestine). As sweet itch has a dietary component (the neuronal cells of the gut are stimulated by irritants and set off a systemic immune response, including the itchiness that we see), the last thing you want to do is aggravate it more! I'm surprised some vets say to feed it, but IBS is still a new research field and so probably it hasn't filtered through to vet school, yet! An excess of sugar is also a factor, so Chloe is essentially treated as a laminitic, which is great, because my other Exmoor is a laminitis prone pony!! Since December, she has received a 50ml flat scoop of BY, increasing to a round scoop during March and she was receiving around 100g linseed daily during December to March, decreasing to 50g in April, due to the calorie content.
From the end of March, I started the ‘fly goo’ treatment, which consists of 100ml Neem Oil topped up to 500ml with Benzyl Benzoate. I was adding eucalyptus oil and citronella to this, but now don’t think it’s necessary and I’m wary of too many oils during hot weather, as these themselves might be irritants. I’ve also found that Neem Powder works just as well (but have to dilute the BB a little to make it manageable) and buy both from ‘Spices of India’. The oil is the Ashwin Pharma kind. Once made up, I simply brush it onto the prone bits, after a good rubbing with a rubber curry comb to remove loose scurf and moulting hair.

Oh and she's been restricted in grazing since the end of April.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that she hasn’t yet needed a fly rug this year. She’s had the odd rub, but only in a normal moulting-horse kind of way, not that agonising and incessant ‘break the wall/stable/fence’ way that is so painful to watch! She absolutely reeks, but I only need to apply it once every two days and if I leave it in the sun during the day, it’s nice and warm and goes further, as I pour it onto a soft grooming brush (wearing gloves to minimise self-stink!).

Obviously it’s not exactly a scientific study and she is the only SI pony I’ve ever had, but it was this time last year that I first met her and was horrified at the baldness of her dock and the nasty ridges on her mane and dock. She’d had steroid injections, was on piriton in her feed (10 tablets daily), but somehow I still wanted her! Now, she has a lovely thick mane and tail (well, almost – it’s getting there!) and all this without the fly rug tells me I have a bit of leeway if she does get bad during horse-fly time. She hasn’t had any piriton this year, which is a bummer, as I stocked up on that, too! She got it last year during bad flare ups and at a guess she was on it 50% of the time between June and October. Hope my little adventure of the past year helps someone here. The BY and linseed are from Charnwood and the BB is from Hyperdrug. You honestly cannot tell at the moment that she is a 'severe case' as it says on her passport!
 
Some good advice from fran surrey:)

Definately dont feed garlic- it stimulates the immune system, which is already working overtime in response to the midge saliva.

Linseed is excellent because it has anti-inflammatory properties as well as making the skin more oily/less dry

Brewers yeast is good because it helps the gut and also *possibly* deters midges because it makes the skin taste horrible.
 
Fran Surrey, that is SO interesting. I have my SI mare on no garlic, unmolassed feeds (basically alfalfa and u/m beet), linseed and brewers yeast, plus cider vinegar. She wears a Boett 24/7 changed weekly and in at night throughout the year. We get a bit of rubbing but not much, certainly not to baldness.

However, she went off to stud a couple of weeks ago, I bathed and deosected her in the hope she would be able to go rugless, but she did start rubbing, so they put on a flyrug which helped a lot. So for my mare, covering up is really important.

OP there is a SI help group forum thingy, http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/SweetItchHelpandAdvice/join
I just joined it yesterday, you never know what you might learn...
 
Fransurrey said:
Hi guys,
I joined the ranks of a serious SI case owner last year, when I bought a 9yo Exmoor mare. She came exceedingly cheap because of that and also her nervousness. Last year was a case of damage limitation, as I got her at the end of June, when she already had a bald dock, bald parts of her mane and sores. Due to her severe nervous nature, her only treatment up to me buying her was a fly rug. She was rubbing so severely there were holes upon holes and a new one was shredded on the first night. I had a lot of ‘what have I done?’ moments! It was going to be a LONG time before I could spray her, as she literally leapt in the air if anyone tried and I haven't found a decent spray, yet.

I began a research quest, partly based on what I knew about immunology (I’m a research scientist) and partly based on the facilities I have. The stable is IN the field and so it’s impossible to fence off everything - she rubbed on the stable doorway. I started off with the DEET fly gel, which was useless and then bought Benzyl Benzoate, which was great for intact skin, but she had lots of sores. These were sudocremed daily and together with the stitched rugs, that was how she stayed until October, when the flies died down a bit. In December, I re-stocked Benzyl Benzoate in bulk ready for this season, and also bought 25Kg sacks of brewer’s yeast and linseed.

I have purposefully stayed away from garlic, since it is a known gut irritant and is implicated in IBS/ulcerative colitis ( I know this because of work – I research Mucositis in the small intestine). As sweet itch has a dietary component (the neuronal cells of the gut are stimulated by irritants and set off a systemic immune response, including the itchiness that we see), the last thing you want to do is aggravate it more! I'm surprised some vets say to feed it, but IBS is still a new research field and so probably it hasn't filtered through to vet school, yet! An excess of sugar is also a factor, so Chloe is essentially treated as a laminitic, which is great, because my other Exmoor is a laminitis prone pony!! Since December, she has received a 50ml flat scoop of BY, increasing to a round scoop during March and she was receiving around 100g linseed daily during December to March, decreasing to 50g in April, due to the calorie content.
From the end of March, I started the ‘fly goo’ treatment, which consists of 100ml Neem Oil topped up to 500ml with Benzyl Benzoate. I was adding eucalyptus oil and citronella to this, but now don’t think it’s necessary and I’m wary of too many oils during hot weather, as these themselves might be irritants. I’ve also found that Neem Powder works just as well (but have to dilute the BB a little to make it manageable) and buy both from ‘Spices of India’. The oil is the Ashwin Pharma kind. Once made up, I simply brush it onto the prone bits, after a good rubbing with a rubber curry comb to remove loose scurf and moulting hair.

Oh and she's been restricted in grazing since the end of April.

I don’t think it’s coincidence that she hasn’t yet needed a fly rug this year. She’s had the odd rub, but only in a normal moulting-horse kind of way, not that agonising and incessant ‘break the wall/stable/fence’ way that is so painful to watch! She absolutely reeks, but I only need to apply it once every two days and if I leave it in the sun during the day, it’s nice and warm and goes further, as I pour it onto a soft grooming brush (wearing gloves to minimise self-stink!).

Obviously it’s not exactly a scientific study and she is the only SI pony I’ve ever had, but it was this time last year that I first met her and was horrified at the baldness of her dock and the nasty ridges on her mane and dock. She’d had steroid injections, was on piriton in her feed (10 tablets daily), but somehow I still wanted her! Now, she has a lovely thick mane and tail (well, almost – it’s getting there!) and all this without the fly rug tells me I have a bit of leeway if she does get bad during horse-fly time. She hasn’t had any piriton this year, which is a bummer, as I stocked up on that, too! She got it last year during bad flare ups and at a guess she was on it 50% of the time between June and October. Hope my little adventure of the past year helps someone here. The BY and linseed are from Charnwood and the BB is from Hyperdrug. You honestly cannot tell at the moment that she is a 'severe case' as it says on her passport!
Click to expand...

wow that is really useful i do have neem oil and i found some rubs on his mane today so fingers crossd.

maybe if we can keep this post going it might help get us all through summer. its only just gone june so long way to go :confused: :(:(

Nicky
 
Owned my mare for 8 years now. When I first bought her thought it was lice,vet said sweet-itch, so she has 2 Boett rugs plus a face mask. I now have a mare with mane and tail and a lot happier within herself, she use to rub her face raw and my vet said because of her immune system it can lead to other allergies, which it has she has pollen allergy,dust allergy. The only grip about the Boett is that it doesn't have leggings and that where they seem to be biting her at the moment.It's an on going problem that will last your animals life. go to the Sweet itch web, they helped me.:):):)
 
I bought my SI sufferer last year when summer was well underway and he had half a mane and a rubbed tail. This year he has been fully clipped (he has very thick hair), is on a fly free global herbs supplement and a home made fly spray (Theresa's recipe). He also has a rambo protector fly rug which he is borrowing from my mare who doesn't use it. I had toyed with the idea of a snuggie hood rug as these look really good but he sweats in the slightest heat and these seemed thick. So far he seems to be coping well (touch wood) and has only rubbed his mane a couple of times and his tail once that I can see. I keep monitoring it and am open to changing his routine is required but hasn't been as bad this year. I think it helps that he is kept on a very windy livery yard :)
 
In my experience, rule number one with sweetitch (and I'm on my second sweet itch horse, and first sweetitch donkey!) is no garlic. Sweetitch is the bodies overeaction to the midge bite, garlic speeds up the immune system, and so makes them a million times itchier. I tried last year a topical lotion with garlic, but it still managed to get into Fella's immune system and made him a hell of a lot itchier. I also avoid sugar beet as it seems to exacerbate it.
The second rule of sweetitch I have found is what works for one, doesn't always help another. It really is trial by error. I tried Benzyl Benzoate which lots of people swear by, and it didn't make a blind bit of difference!
And the third rule I have found is location, location, location. When I first got Fella, he was in a field that was in a dip, and had a woody area. Big error - he got bitten to bits! He is now kept in a field exposed to the wind on the top of the hill with much less foliage and it really does help so much.
Ideally the best situation is some sort of rug, but unfortunatly some horses just won't keep them on. Fella managed to break 2 boett rugs last season as he hated them. I make do with cheap fly rugs, and he has already broken the first of the year. But at least they are £30 odd quid to replace, not £130 odd!
I feed marmite and brewers yeast, and put on deet, avon skin so soft, dettol, black tea, Kevin Bacon active soap, d-itch ointment and coopers fly repellant. He is itching his tail, but everything else seems to be holding up pretty well so far.
 
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