Now that I have my beautiful new baby, I am paranoid about keeping him safe. Since he will be primarily living outside, I am concerned about Lyme disease. Is Frontline or a similar product safe for foals? I have heard about both the spray and spot on being used in adult horses.
Anything else I need to be concerned about other than Lyme? Although he will be living outside, he will be attended to daily.
Thanks!!
I have no idea of Frontline is safe for foals, but IMHO, it is pretty ineffective against ticks, at least in my part of the world. My dogs treated with Frontline get lots of ticks, so I have switched to other products.
I see you are in NC. We have Ehrlichiosis as well that is tick transmitted and is much more common (having said that my mare got Lyme’s disease last year). Frontline spray is water based so will wash off in the rain, etc. I am not sure how you would dose Frontline spot-on for a foal. However, I agree with Clint that Frontline is no longer a first line product as a flea/ tick preventative, and the new generics are even worse.
My friend’s property is a tick haven and she uses Equispot, which seems to work well for her. Not sure what the safety data is for a foal.
Use Equi Spot on foals 12 weeks of age or older. Works great!
I’ve done well with the springtime garlic. I got it years ago as supposedly it was a natural fly repellant. It didn’t do a thing for the flies , but did work well on the ticks, so I continue to use it during the summer months .
I use equispot on my horse. He’s not a foal, even though he naps like one. lol.
I’ve found it to be very effective against ticks. Found a tick on him one day. Applied equispot the next day and the day after that I found a tick on him, but it had died. Never found any ticks on him after that and I do check pretty thoroughly.
Edited to add: I reapplied equispot last week and then my horse got a bath after his training session when my trainer rode.
Do you think the equispot would need to be reapplied? Or would 24 hours be enough for it to do whatever it does as far as binding to the hair or however that stuff works? I didn’t notice anything on the directions about this sort of thing.
Thank you all for the wonderful replies. You are helping me learn a great deal!
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