Loosing mane under the mane & patches of hair missing also. Advice -- Please Help!!

[TheresaC413]

My 14 yo Mare has a great mane & tail, but this morning I lifted up her mane to spray some homemade fly spray on her neck (which I have done all summer with the same U.S.F.S recipe). I noticed the underneath part of her mane is missing & about half the length of her mane. I do not see any mites or lice, but I’m not real familiar with horse skin issues either. She is a little sensitive to insect bites & gets welps more than previous horses I’ve had, but I’ve never seen anything like this before

She also has several patches all sizes of missing hair. Most look like she just scratched on a tree. There is one big spot, about baseball size, near her nail that is scabed over. None of these spots seem to hurt her or bother her when we were messing with them.

My gelding has similar situation too, just not as bad as hers. Some of his mane is gone underneath as well.

Any thoughts on what this could be & what we can do to stop this from getting worse? Do we need to visit the vet? Thanks in advance!! I’m trying to figure out how to upload pictures, but having trouble.

[SaratogaTB]

It may well be a fungal thing going on. I recommend Equiderma lotion rubbed on those areas for a few days and see what happens. When my OTTB gets patches like that it clears it up quicky. They may well be itchy and rubbing their necks.

[TWH_Girl]

This is happening to my 13 yr old gelding…the normal culprits appear to be: rubbing of the mane, skin issues/fungal infections, or a nutritional deficiency (too much or too little) and too much selenium seems to be a biggie. I reduced the selenium amount for my guy and am giving it a while to see if that helps. I couldn’t find obvious skin or rubbing issues.

[saffire_100]

Following. My horse that I’ve only had since November has about 10 inches of almost no mane hair on the underside of his mane. I didn’t notice until I flipped it over one day while grooming him. I’ve tried all sorts of things on a nothing seems to change.

[TWH_Girl]

[QUOTE=saffire_100;8270685]
Following. My horse that I’ve only had since November has about 10 inches of almost no mane hair on the underside of his mane. I didn’t notice until I flipped it over one day while grooming him. I’ve tried all sorts of things on a nothing seems to change.[/QUOTE]

Curious as to what you’ve tried…please share, maybe we can help each other rule out things.

This is what I did:

• Removed horse from Triple Crown Lite (had over 2ppm of selenium) and he was getting about 3 lbs so perhaps waay too much. Also confirmed his supplements do not have selenium.
• Using tea tree oil shampoo to wash mane a few times per week in case its skin/fungal issue
• Using MTG 3x per week (stinky!!! his knickname is “The Baconator” after use cuz it smells like bacon.
• He was dewormed by barn manager

[walkers]

Search the Forum as I posted this 2014 or 2013 ,same problem. Losing the mane hair but underneath the mane not all the hair so it took me awhile to notice. My Horse also had had lovely very long flaxen mane . There are serveral things to rule first ,mites or fungus but if the hair loss is as I described than it can be Selenium being to high. Selenium is a problem in parts of the country but not in my area and we traced it to his feed.
I even had him at NCState vet school and they were puzzled but because I have 3 horse and all were fed different feeds it must have been the feed and his blood sample plus hair sample showed elevated Selenium levels. Vet school said suddenly they were having cases like this and had not seen it before.

I switched feeds and hair lose stopped. Of course the feed company denied it was their problem but when I discovered how they made his feed its easy to see that that could happen.His was a special feed and they made it by combining two of their feeds. I m convinced Someone at the mill wasn’t doing it right.
So try looking for bugs and make sure your state isn’t one that has high selenium in its grasses, easy then to try a different feed from a different company.
It worked for me,hair loss stopped but sadly has not grown back.
FYI i was given this advice from a fellow COTHer so I told the vet to test it and he was surprised at the blood test results.
Yea COTH

[walkers]

Search the Forum as I posted this 2014 or 2013 ,same problem. Losing the mane hair but underneath the mane not all the hair so it took me awhile to notice. My Horse also had had lovely very long flaxen mane . There are serveral things to rule first ,mites or fungus but if the hair loss is as I described than it can be Selenium being to high. Selenium is a problem in parts of the country but not in my area and we traced it to his feed.
I even had him at NCState vet school and they were puzzled but because I have 3 horse and all were fed different feeds it must have been the feed and his blood sample plus hair sample showed elevated Selenium levels. Vet school said suddenly they were having cases like this and had not seen it before.

I switched feeds and hair lose stopped. Of course the feed company denied it was their problem but when I discovered how they made his feed its easy to see that that could happen.His was a special feed and they made it by combining two of their feeds. I m convinced Someone at the mill wasn’t doing it right.
So try looking for bugs and make sure your state isn’t one that has high selenium in its grasses, easy then to try a different feed from a different company.
It worked for me,hair loss stopped but sadly has not grown back.
FYI i was given this advice from a fellow COTHer so I told the vet to test it and he was surprised at the blood test results.
Yea COTH

[TheresaC413]

We have very easy keepers, and only feed them about 2x a week… 3 at the most. We feed the mare a mixture of: 1/2 qt complete horse pellets, 1/2 qt Standlee timothy grass pellets, 1/2 qt shredded beet pulp, 1/2 qt oats, 2 oz CocoSoya Oil, & 1 oz Red Cell.

My gelding gets the same items, just only 1/4 qt of each & 1 oz of each oil/supplement.

We have been feeding this since about June this year. Previously we were just feeding complete horse pellets & Red Cell supplement. Does anyone think the feed mixture might be part of the problem? It did come to mind, although I was originally thinking if it was a food allergy it would have started soon after feeding it (not 2 months later). I am having trouble finding if any of these items are high in selenium.

I would love to attach a picture, but I guess I am not allowed. Anyone know how I can attach a pic? Thanks!

[TheresaC413]

So I just found a link on COTH, to a chart for USGS showing selenium levels in the soil for the entire US. My county has maximum level of 0.197 ppm, and that thread says “optimal levels” are 2 mg/1,000#. If you convert ppm to mg that’s only 0.00013 mg. So based on this USGS chart, our grass shouldn’t be elevating their selenium levels.

Here is that link: http://mrdata.usgs.gov/geochem/doc/averages/se/usa.html

[Belmont]

How is your horses tail?

I’m wondering if I’m in the same boat as you. I keep finding ‘scratches’ on my horse, but I can’t find anywhere he would be able to schlep hair off! Part of one side of his mane (under) is missing. Head of tail is thin and itchy…

It’s been the past month and a half, and I’m so baffled to what it is! I even just posted a new thread about what could possibly be doing this to his tail.

[TheresaC413]

The tails seem normal and untouched. No scratches or thin spots.

So is your horses situation the worst on his tail?

[cai]

There are lots of threads on COTH about neck threadworms (onchocerca), which can make for very itchy necks with welts and belly sores/sweet itch. Worth running a search here and/or googling to see if that might be the case!

[walkers]

Sounds like your soil is not the problem , if you are graining him than consider that your feed may be the problem and if you feed supplements that can make this tricky to figure out.
However as other posters suggested the way your horse is losing mane is a exact description of too much selenium. Have you looked at his hooves ? Any changes there would mean you are having big problems as it takes a long time for overload of selenium to affect the hooves.
Remember the Polo ponies in Fl. I think they died from the overdose of selenium .
For me although I did spend money on testing and Vet school the cheapest and quickest thing that helped was changing feed and feed companies.

[TheresaC413]

Thanks for everyone’s comments & suggestions. Just wanted to give a quick update. We have restricted feed, to only complete horse pellets & red cell (only 2x week). We shampoo’d with Equiderma & have been using the Equiderma lotion every other day for the last 2 weeks. We noticed a difference almost immediately after using the Equiderma shampoo & lotion! The hair on the body has almost completely grown back in, and the mane hair seems to be coming back slowly. Thanks again to everyone!! We’ve ordered more Equiderma lotion, that stuff is amazing!