Well, citronella oil was the go-to fly spray before the modern formulations.
There are a lot of threads on here about home made fly sprays. In general, no they aren’t as effective in heavy fly conditions, and they don’t last as long. On the other hand, folks often report insects that don’t respect any spray on the market.
However, you want to check the toxicity of the essential oils as well. I am not finding any vet statements on toxicity to horses, and since horses don’t lick themselves as intensively as cats and dogs, there might be less risk. I found this vet website for cats and dogs:
As I said before, lots of plant compounds have topical effects and are part of commercial formulas that we could also replicate at home, if we had confidence in the strength and contents of the plant extracts we were using.
But I don’t think aromatherapy per se is going to work on horse like it does on people.
Agree with much of the above statements. Topically, I love essential oils for my horse (and myself). But there are MANY ways to use them correctly and incorrectly.You have to do your own research on proper dilutions, photosensitivity, toxicity, quality, etc. I use them in my homemade coat conditioners, fly sprays and treatments.
My horse also loves the smell of peppermint and lavender, she gets all kissy and cuddly (more so than she already is lol) so I will usually put some on my neck or wrists when I am working with her, for no real reason other than she likes the smell and it’s cute to see her act like a cuddly baby.
All that being said, for the benefits of true aromatherapy (lavender for calming, for example) for horses isn’t the same as it is for people. And they CANNOT heal medical issues. Please, if your horse has ulcers or whatever issue the essential oil is saying it can fix, get a vet out. Rubbing an essential oil on their tummy is not going to heal them. Also, do not use them internally on any animal.
I recommend learning how you can incorporate essential oils into your grooming products (perhaps a couple drops of cedarwood in your coat conditioner, etc.) and using them for yourself if you like them.
I also believe some oils will test positive on drug tests! I know up in Canada, peppermint and I believe lavender are big no no’s (plus whatever’s in the veteolin lineaments)
Just give me the drugs my vet prescribes. If you want to use essential oils, use them in conjunction with prescription drugs. There is no substitute for Bute and Banamine, the 2 drugs everyone should have on hand.
One of my horses had to have a stint on dilaudid last fall! Show me an essential oil that is as powerful as that for pain.
They are ALL loaded with chemicals - natural and otherwise. You and I are made entirely of chemicals. Chemicals make up everything around us. Whether a product works or not, or is safe or not has no correlation to whether it is natural or not. So when I see someone selling a product that says it is safe because it is natural, I wonder what other claims they are lying about.
Yes I have used EOs on my horses… if you would like to learn more about how to use the oils for yourself, your horses, your dogs, cats and yes even chicken there are plenty of Facebook groups that you can join that would be willing to help you…and teach you all the ways that you can use essential oils.
And they will also happily sell you those same oils. Please be careful and do a google search for some information from sources that are not selling EO. There are known toxicities to domestic animals with many of the oils.
Some of the claims made for essential oils by people who lack a basic understanding of human anatomy and physiology are breath taking.
Now I assume most use of essential oils in humans is at bottom aromatherapy and works on an emotional level. Scent is a very primal emotional trigger. This is fine because many many human ailments have a strong emotional component or are psychosomatic. This doesn’t mean imaginary. It means symptoms caused by mental state.
If you find a scent that is personally calming absolutely it can help symptoms associated with stress or anxiety such as head ache back spasms stomach problems. Scents can also block other odors you find distressing like your neighbors cooking. Scents make many people feel clean. Also private to the extent you are cocooned in your own scent bubble. Combined, these can create a feeling of being safe and being in control of your immediate environment which are powerfully positive emotional states. But obviously you don’t need essential oils for this. You could spray the curtains with Chanel No. 5 if that was something that you had a strong positive connection with. Or put a load of bread in the oven. Etc.
I would hope that humans using perfume to relax would of course be alert enough to go to ER if the symptoms got out of control and wouldn’t sit home with meningitis or appendicitis or gallstones etc.
The limits to using aromatherapy tailored to horses is that first, they rely on their noses to understand the world. Second, their noses are so sensitive that they could be overloaded. Third, horses do have a bundle of anxiety disorders like cribbing but what calms them most is the sight sound smell and presence of other horses. Horses want to smell their neighbors, don’t want privacy, and don’t care about being clean.
Fourth, some oils are toxic if ingested or caustic in their pure form and may be fine to dribble on light bulbs but not to apply to an animal.
Finally and really important, if you think you can use magic perfume to cure a serious acute illness of unknown cause like colic you are risking killing your horse. The horse cannot say: this is starting to feel really serious, get me to ER.
I have to say I loved essential oils, scented candles, and incense in my 20s. I associated incense with relaxing and doing something nice for myself, and I wore various hippy head shop oils. I didn’t think anything was curative though.
But for a long time now I’ve preferred to smell the natural world around me whether that’s spring air or clean sheets or horses.
I expect that essential oils mass marketed are doing some of the job of air fresheners in a culture that loves fake smells. You get to impose an artificial one note odor and call it natural.
We’ve used an equine massage therapist who uses them as part of her program. I’ve used massage therapists before that didn’t. The results from each were about the same. So from my perspective there was no benefit and no harm. Being a neutral, I won’t pay for them. Nor will I demand they not be used.
Citronella, cedarwood, lavender, peppermint, eucalyptus, and lemongrass, are common EOs used in natural/homemade fly sprays. They do tend to be pretty effective, but how effective depends on their carrier (needs to be an oil, both for staying power, and to hold the EOs), and the concentration. Even commercial synthetic chemical fly sprays that are water-based don’t last as long as those that are oil-based.
It also depends on what the native bugs have adapted to. They can definitely become immune to the effects of a given product if that’s used exclusively on a frequent enough basis (ie exclusive and multiple times a day, vs exclusive but just a few times a week)
As for their use with horses - IMHO any positive effect from most of them will come from olfactory sensory input. There is too much hair, and too thick skin, for most topical applications of any cost effectiveness to have any impact. The ones that will have the most impact are heating or otherwise tingle-inducing. And depending on what you believe and have experienced yourself with EOs on your own skin, most of them require regular use to have any appreciable impact, because they are not drugs, they do not have an immediate effect.
And even then, there is no guaranteed response to any EO, no matter how much you love or believe in them. I do use them, for myself. One thing I use them for is sleep assistance. For a long time I played around with different combinations that always included lavender (because that’s the long-touted sleep EO, right?) I used others like cedarwood. orange, chamomile, and some others. Adding cedarwood guaranteed worse sleep, borne out over trials of adding it and removing it and doing my best to wish it into being effective. But so many say with cedarwood they are out like a light. Not me.
However, when I REMOVED lavender, and added cedarwood back in, the difference was significant.
I’d never discount the ability of quality EOs to impact (good or bad) a horse who smells it. Olfactory senses are sharp and sensitive, but there are variances in every individual. Among our cats, there is one who can smell lavender or just-applied perfume on you a mile away and runs like she’s been stung. But another one could sniff the bottle and not blink twice (no, I don’t allow that, but she couldn’t care less about strong odors). Same with people, and same with horses.
And don’t negate the placebo effect Nothing wrong with that at all.
To the OP yes like with anything else that we put in front of our horses do your research, I know DoTerra is one of the top oils out there - I have used Lavender on Scout to keep him calm while the farrier does his feet - I have also used Peppermint as a cooling mist after a heavy work out, I have used Deep Blue on one of my horses stifle - yes there are some oils that you don’t want your horses or any of your pets to ingest - cats are very sensitive to some oils like ones that have citruses… but that’s where research comes in and where the groups on Facebook comes in handy - and yes they will try to get you to maybe buy the oils but anybody selling SOMETHING is going to want you to buy their product… all i am saying is yes EO can be used on animals…
I would try to find something more credible than FB groups. Like a vetbsite. The amount of false information that gets passed around on fb is beyond belief.
Just because it’s “natural” doesn’t make it safe. Poison ivy is “all natural”, doesn’t mean I’m going to put it in a salad and eat it. Chemicals are all around you. They are neither good nor bad. It all depends on the use and the dose. Keep in mind that some essential oils are toxic.
Personally I like the way many essential oils smell so I have a few different ones around the house. None at the barn though.
My previous horse was a wild hare. Once my trainer took him to a holistic vet, and he (my horse) was going ballistic. The vet took a vial of some sort of oil and rubbed it on his face, and within moments, my horse was like he was sedated.
I bought a vial of the oil and it never worked like that for me. Even though I observed it, I have no idea what happened and couldn’t replicate it.
I use a salve from Young Living Oils called Animal Scents, and it’s really quite good. I use it on myself as well as on my horses.
I use an essential oil fly spray called Flicks. I don’t know if it actually deters flies, but I use it as a skin conditioner, mainly on the tailbone, and it works really well.
I love love love Flick’s. It does work really well here, including against deer flies, but like pretty much everything “natural”, it’s short-lived. But I use fly predators, so aside from the deerflies and the B-52 Bombers, there really isn’t a big fly problem here. I tend to only spray while working someone, and later in the Summer when the botflies come out, and the regular flies start to get what I call “big dumb and stupid” as they near the end of their life and aren’t shoo’d away for nothin’!
I think you shouldn’t apply pure essential oils topically or orally to your horse because these oils can be dangerous (especially tea tree oil) and there’s not enough evidence that they’re effective.
I think you shouldn’t apply pure essential oils topically or orally to your animal because these oils can be dangerous (especially tea tree oil) and there’s not enough evidence that they’re effective.
