Urticaria (poss feed related)

Fiona

Fiona

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I have put this in vet forum as well, but just in case any of you don't go in there, I would be grateful for any advice...

Sophie is a 10yo grey mare, we have owned her for 7 years (6 kept at home in the same yard) and suddenly 10 days ago she began to be lumpy on the back of her jaw/top of neck. She rubbed these and made a bit of a mess, so called vet on the Monday and she had steroid injection and penicillin. The lumps basically disappeared in 12-24 hours. However unfortunately they began to recur after ~7 days again on her neck/tummy and jaw, so vet back again today.

She has had a long lasting steroid (14 days) but he thinks it is feed related, and advised to use the next fortnight to cut back her feed to try and establish what the problem is.

She is fed at present on pegus cool mix, readigrass, happy hoof chaff, with benevit, joint and farriers formula supplements.

Nothing in her management has changed, she is out on grass ~8 hours per day (field has ash, birch and willow trees surrounding but was in this field this time last year with no probs). Neither feed or hay have recently been changed (still on last season's hay). Was clipped about a fortnight ago.

She is kept with my other TB mare, who is 100% with no bumps at all.

Tonight I gave her just damped readigrass with chopped carrot for her tea, she was eating this OK, but not the most exciting diet in the world. Should I add something ie unmolassed SB or perhaps fibre nuts or one of the cereal intolerance mixes, or just try to persevere with the readigrass in the hope that her lumps stay away, and I can gradually re-introduce her other feedstuffs and perhaps find out where the problem is arising.

I haven't changed her mix (pegus cool mix), but vet suggested that the feed company could possibly have just changed from last season to new season cereals. I can investigate this further with the feed company as they are fairly local to me.

I would be grateful for any thoughts at all on this problem as I really only have the next fortnight to sort it out. I see long term steroids as a very last resort in terms of their side effects, and really need to get sorted before then..

HELP!!

Fiona
 
I haven't a clue, she's been fed it for about 4 years though, and been fine. Just had a problem in the last ten days. OH is going to retrieve the feed bag tag with the batch no etc from the bin so I can hopefully speak to the feed cpy though.

Fiona
 
Thats interesting CR, do you know how it was triggered (ie were there any changes in feed etc), or completely out of the blue??
Who makes grass nuts? are they similar to fibre nuts (I am a bit dim about feed because I have never had to change it).

Fiona
 
ANy other into N??

My 'Veterinary notes for horse owners' is useless, had one small page of waffle and that was it. This is all completely new to me, as nothing in their management had changed I was baffled, I didn't know horse could become suddenly allergic without a change/trigger.

Many thanks

F
 
I had something similar in the summer with my TB.
He had urticaria over, the lumps didn't seem to bother him and weren't itchy but earned him the nickname Lumpy.
I thought it was something in the environment as it seemed to come and go with the weather.
I asked the vet (not my usual vet) to take a look and he was 100% sure it was feed related and pointed the finger at Alfa A as the most likely suspect.
Well, we spent the the 2 months doing food elimination.
In the end we took him back to just hay and still the lumps came and went.
In the end I spoke to my regular vet and we agreed we may as well start reintroducing foods as there was no point in starving the poor horse when he was still reacting.
So I slowly introduced each food one at a time. Feeding for at least a week before introducing something new.
There were a couple of times when I introduced something and he came out in lumps, I stopped until the lumps went and then brought it back but no lumps.
Now he is back on all the feed and supplements he was on and has remained lumpless for about 8 weeks.
So we now think it was something in the environment and we will have to see if the same thing happens next year.

2 weeks isn't very long to identify the allergen but you can make a start.

I would keep her on the chopped readigrass for at least a week then introduce one more thing, maybe the chaff.
When you are sure she is not reacting to these start introducing the supplements one by one.
I would leave the mix till last to reintroduce as being a mix it has lots of possible culprits.

Good luck - allergies can be a nightmare to pin down.
 
I'm sure the grass nuts in last post won't be available over here (we get spillers, baileys and allen & page and v little else) but gives me an idea anyway, and thanks for info about your friend's horse.

Everyone - thanks a lot, and any other ideas please let me know!!!

Fiona
 
Criso - my other mare (a TB) is v like this (summers only), and we narrowed it down eventually to midges. Lots of fly spray, and turnout at night improved ehr situation greatly, but other mare has never been lumpy before now, thats why we think it IS the feed this time.

Fiona
 
Hi Divasmum - v interested to hear about the allergy to clipper oil, as this has been mentioned in my other post on the vet forum. Can you give me any more details please.

There is barley in the feed (checked the label), stil waiting to hear from the feed company whether the formulation has recently changed.

Many thanks

Fiona
 
Thanks Fiona - interesting about the midges - will bear that in mind next summer.

Good luck with working out what it is - took us about 3 months in the end to work out it wasn't the food.


My vet also left me a large supply of antihistimines ( Ucerax) that I could give as soon as he started to get an attack if it bothered him.
Made him go very woozy though so we didn't use them as his reaction was fairly mild.
 
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