Lice?!?

[hillhavenmercedes]

Does anyone have any experience with and/or advice for treating lice in horses??

My senior mare appears like she might be suffering from these terrible little creatures. I (and my vet) had assumed her constant itching was just the result of her regular seasonal allergies but since it has progressed longer than usual I started looking into other causes and am thinking what I thought was dandruff may actually be lice…

She is groomed meticulously every day and up until this point (maybe the last month) has had a very healthy coat (now very dry and matted from constant rubbing and biting). The only thing I can say that may have prompted this (??) is that this year we switched from rotational deworming to doing fecals (that being said she will be dewormed with ivermectin today per vet instructions).

Any suggestions from anyone who’s gone through this before? Would you body clip (we are heading into winter so I’d like to avoid it but will do so if I have to)? Any good shampoos? I would just really love to stop the itching before she destroys her whole coat (and the whole barn)!

[mmeqcenter]

Could also be Sweet Itch from midges/gnats.

[Pennywell_Bay]

At the advice of my vet- who is very good and up on current practices- I had purchased something in powder form from TS. It took care of it.

mine was def lice (white buggers in the mane most obviously).

I also had it happen to an old goat and did the same thing w/ goat powder.

Mine was older. Vet said that sometimes the compromised immune system lets them get infected if exposed (in my case from hay that had been in a cow barn).

It cleared right up. Vet came out a few days later (it was not an emergency) and was thrilled.

Don’t share grooming supplies, I practically sterilized mine in hot water and bleach. Then I dried them in the sun, sprayed them with some insecticide and then used them.

[hillhavenmercedes]

@mmeqcenter

Could also be Sweet Itch from midges/gnats.

She suffers from hypersensitivity to bugs (of all kinds) which causes the “sweet itch” presentation along with hives and is treated with benadryl, fly sheet/mask, etc during the summer/fly season. This usually (for the past ten or so years) dissipates with the fly season ending and is typically gone by October. In keeping with this fashion those symptoms (meaning their specific itchy locations and the hives) have gone as normal but now with her winter coat has come severe itching in completely different spots (rib cage, withers, spine, hip and croup) with no visible bumps/sores/etc. When I curry the spots I get what I believed to be dandruff falling out but on closer investigation looks more yellowish in color which lead me to thinking lice…

[Scribbler]

When we were teens my sister’s horse got lice in his mane. She noticed because she caught them from him, hugging him all the time. As I recall these were clearly insects with a wiggle. Not like dandruff.

i believe a simple powder from the feed store cleared him up.

This was before kids got head lice in school. No idea where he got them, everyone else in barn was fine, none of our riding pals had them. Anyhow we knocked them out fast on horse and kid and have never seen any before or since.

[Bluey]

Most lice are species specific, they will infect others, but die in another species.

Long ago we had a horse come from a sketchy situation and we didn’t realize it, but he had horse lice on him.

Our then old horse started itching, we caught it was lice and then realized it was the new horse who also had them, except he was not itching and scratching.

Our vet gave us a carton of Coral powder, a cattle insecticide.
We doused all horses with that a few times and no more lice.

Except that for two more years, in the fall, the old horse would again have lice we treated him for.

Eventually wherever the lice were hiding they died off, but we never found where that was.

Today they have safer insecticides for lice in horses, ask your vet what to use.