Yes though my vet refers to it as a “sensitivity prep” 
I feel for you. It’s the damnest thing. My guy was always the only one in the barn with it. And the vet bills are enormous. My $1600 bill just arrived not to mention the countless hours medicating and dressing his legs and shoving meds down his throat.
Right. The daily grind of fussing over the scratches is tiresome and the vet bills are painful.
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Well I go to the barn today and we are almost back to square 1. His legs were covered and starting to swell. Called the vet for a phone consult. He was on a week of twice a day SMZ’s, bute and gastroguard but he never seemed to quite get rid of it. A week off antibiotics and he is blowing up again. His legs are wrapped and smeared in nitrofurazone, he’s back on SMZ’s and bute. This has been the worst ever.
Omg how awful
If it is gentamicin-sensitive, have you tried any of the gentamicin/betamethasone topical sprays that are labeled for superficial pyoderma in dogs? I’ve had some luck with those in chronic scratches cases.
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I have not but thank you for the tip. I will ask vet this week about that. Vet is part of a general practice so maybe they can get it easily if they don’t have it on hand.
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Hum. That sounds like it might be helpful. I’ll ask my vet.
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Premier Equine makes a mud fever turn out boot which I think we will give a try. Anyone else heard of such a thing?
If you have to go IV antibiotics, you may be able to have the vet place a catheter and show you how to flush and use it. A bit easier than finding the vein IMO though you can’t leave it in too long.
If we do IV gentamicin again vet wants him to stay on it until the scratches fully resolve. Thinking 30 days. Ugh. I really don’t want to do it.
I have tried a couple of different types of boots including the sleeves and didn’t have much luck. I did not try Permier Equine - let us know if they work!
I wonder if blue light therapy would be effective here, it is used on chronically infected wounds and on biofilms to good effect.With H2O2 it is effective against resistant MRSA…
Will you have an IV in the whole time?
Most likely not.
So probably not feasible in many cases, but you may need to think about moving the horse to a new environment/barn.
I think certain horses get sensitized to the organisms in a particular environment. My boarding barn is known for having cases of cellulitis and many chestnuts battle skin issues. It’s a converted dairy farm (last cows were on it probably 20+ years ago). My older chestnut always battled low-levels of scratches that could easily explode out of control plus a few occurrences of cellulitis (most notably once in January in WI - literally nothing is alive in the soil and it’s covered in snow that time of year, so how???).
I moved him about 45 minutes away for retirement and left his legs alone and fingers crossed, his skin is fine.
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My chronic pastern dermatitis case study (one horse, 16 years duration) has lived three different places during that time, and none of the moves made a significant difference to the crud. However, all the locations are within a roughly ten mile radius.
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My vet said it is not a husbandry issue, it’s a horse issue. There is a weakness in the horses system.
My horse has had scratches at 3 barns. The first and third (current) are about 60 miles apart and different soil types and different styles of horse keeping.
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We have an appointment with another vet tomorrow. We are barely treading water but I did realize the shampoos I was using (4% chlorhexadene, ketokonazole, etc) were irritating his legs so tonight is baby shampoo and 1% hydrocortisone cream and nothing else.
