Sweet Itch - prevention/cure?

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silversox

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My friend has a seven year old grey Shire mare which suffers badly every year from sweet-itch. At least, she did three years ago, and then they bought her a huge Boett rug which is specially designed to keep the midges off and it seemed to work well for the past two years.

However, it would be great if she didn't have to wear the rug all summer and I wondered if anyone out there knew of a good prevention and/or cure - there must be something on the market which does the trick by now.

I read on another post that Frontline is good for feather mites - has anyone tried this for sweet-itch? Some years ago I used Nuvan-top, (similar to Frontline) on a mare's itchy tail and that did the trick. I've also heard that there may be a vaccine out now ....... ?

Any suggestions would be very welcome.

PS They've tried all the usual older products and added garlic to the feed, without success.
 
vaccine will be available next year.

appart from the vaccine the only one ive found that works is the boett.
 
Its either cover up or get sweet itch I'm afraid, sweet itch is a delayed hypersensitivity to certain insect bites and with over a 1000 little buggars flying about in the UK several of them cause a vigorous response in horses immune system which then causes the sudden break out of itching on everything in sight.

Only thing you an do before using a for instance a boet rug is either anti-histamines or corticosteroid injections which your friends vet will be able to advice her on hopefully.

Using a really good insecticide on them to repel the flys, I certainly would recomend Coopers Fly Repellant Plus to be really good, it stinks, controls mites/lice/itching and sweet itch.
 
I tried all of the usual thing on my mare who had really bad sweetitch and the best thing to help (didn't cure it) was baby oil. I think it helped by stopping the skin drying out too much (she went really scaly on her crest and tail) but also as she 'slid' across everything she tried to rub herself on she didn't do much damage! J&J do baby oil gel with camomile which is good.
There wer no fly rugs around when I had her so just had to try and manage it - she had access to her stable so used to bring herself in a lot!
 
I have owned a pony with sweet itch and had some long conversations with the vet - the advice was to use as many flysprays with different ingredients (including front line) as possible, a mug full of linseed oil a day, Avon Skin so soft washs, benzole benzoate for itchy skin and a boett rug. One bite and the allergy starts up.

There has been some work with injections to reduce the allergic response but they have to be given over a long period of time regularly and don't always work.
 
Basically, Sweet Itch is an allergy, therefore, there is no cure or prevention, all you can do is careful management in order to control the symptoms. This will change depending on the horse. If the Boett rug works, then personally I would stick with that rather than trying to change it and risking her getting itchy again
 
Boett IMO is the best prevention for SI. The vaccine will be availible next year so that should work too, but to what extent I dont know. Avon skin so soft is great for keeping midges off, put it in a big squirt instaed of spray botle as the oil texture helps to stop midges landing as well as the smell.
 
I have had my pony on the vaccine last year, there was a slight improvement but not as much as i would've liked.
Ive only been sent the capsules this year as they arent doing the initial three injections. Hes been on them since middle of february, one capule every ten days, fingers crossed theres more improvment this year
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Sweet itch is basically an over active immune system, its a reaction from the saliva of the calicoid midge when it feeds from the horse. The boet is a must really ive used loads of lotions and potions, they help to minimize the effects but no where as good as the boet.
I would also reccomend the horse wears it from the end of March, before the midges come out, till the end of October. Its not advisable to remove it, when you ride smother in fly repellent. Id love to turn my boy out without his boet but i know he'l rub himself raw if i was to.

Good luck
Debs x

PS The sweet itch society are very helpfull if you want to give them a call for any advice
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Hiya, we've got 2 welshies that suffer from sweet itch and are slowly working our way through suppliments, lotions and cover-up options!
Last year we used a combination of fly rug, spray and ointment (NEX-TEX ITCH STOP SALVE is fab!) and feb teeburb from Indian Herbs Equine which left them with lovely coats but not sure of its itch stopping properties!

This year i have invested in a snuggy hood and we are feeding Think Fly... this is available in granules or a lick for those who live out. We've been feeding it since late feb and i am quietly confident that its gonna help... to date there has been no itching which had already started this time last year.
so fingers crossed... anything and everything is worth a try as far as i'm concerned!
 
Hi everyone,
I was surfing info about sweet itch, and I saw that you had mentioned the Nex-Tex itch salve. I'm in the US and haven't found it in searching online...can you tell me where to get it? Thanks!!!!!!!!!
 
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