After NO horses with cellulitis in 20+ years of horse keeping, I’ve had one last year and one just popped this morning. No surprise…it’s been raining buckets all week and yesterday was super sticky. I should have expected it.
What preventative measures do you take in weather like this?
My mare is prone to lymphangitis and cellulitis. I feed apple cider vinegar with mother all year round and am anal about any kind of tiny nicks or hair out of place on her legs and immediately wash with hibitane soap and then spray with something like vetericyn. I also do more detailed blood work a couple times per year to check minerals etc.
Can you help a Clueless One out? All this is meant to keep any cuts uber clean and the rest-- feeding and bloodwork-- is about making sure your mare’s immune system is top drawer?
I ask because I am deeply opposed to cellulitis and I am not an expert at preventing it. I had a horse who I’d describe as a “skin sissy”-- this was the horse who might get some of that if he got any scratches at all. And I was careful about making those minor case go away then, as they popped up. But I don’t remember what my vets had me do. They were pretty off-hand about it.
I have met horses who got permanent problems from it, so I live in the land of Not Casual About Cellulitis and Lymph Stuff.
Thank you.
If there is mud + open skin wounds on the lower limbs, the wounds get covered with a nonstick pad and wrapped with elastikon.
If it looks like there was some exposure to dirt, etc., I may do 3-5 days of SMZs (I talked to the vet and he wasn’t opposed to this after the multiple cellulitis flares we’ve dealt with). In my area, it seems like March-June is the time of year cellulitis most likely to occur, so that’s when I’d be the most likely to do the SMZs.
mvp, yes to both. I don’t think there is a lot the vets can do until there is an actual episode of lymphangitis or cellulitis so for me, prevention is key. And I mean I wash with the hibitane every day until whatever was there is gone completely. The hibitane scrub from the vet seems to work the best for her. Betadine/prepodyne washes, even diluted etc were too harsh and not as effective.
If she has a tiny scab somewhere on her leg that she can pick at, she will so I have to keep it covered during turn out and in her stall until gone.
I also use the BOT quick wraps every night with her to keep things moving and because she’s a kicker. She is an amateurs dream horse, hahahhaa!
If she is a bit stocked up I have used a 50% rubbing alcohol and 50% absorbine liniment mix and normal wraps. That has worked really well too.
Unfortunately the horse with cellulitis this time has this stuff so she always has dings. I got them to heal last summer with about 12 WEEKS solid of medical honey and wrapping, but they just came right back in the winter. No doubt that those scabby things + this incredibly wet, humid, hot weather is why she looks the way she does today. Scrubbing her legs every day isn’t realistic, and I can’t keep her on a low smz dose all summer. This is the first time she’s had cellulitis, and she’s had the scabbies since I bought her in 2012.
But given that, I’ve got to do SOMETHING. Is there anything topical I can use that would help? Equiderma? Something else?
Darn! That sounds like a recipe for cellulitis.
I like clorhexidine ointment for little lower leg nicks that I’m worried might lead to a blowup. Work sometimes keeps me from getting to the barn every day but my horse is prone to cellulitis in muddy conditions. I wash well with antiseptic shampoo at the first sign of puffiness, keep ointment on any nicks and scabs, and try to re-wash at least every couple of days.
Good luck keeping it at bay in that humid climate!
No kidding, right? When I saw her this morning, it was really a “DUH” moment. I should have know better.
I do have some chlorhexidine ointment, I’ll try that.
I’ve been intrigued with the literature on using copper oxide for skin problems, and would love to try a copper oxide ointment. But can’t find one. Seems like it should be easy? But nope. Doesn’t it sounds like it might be a good fit for this sort of thing?
You have no idea how glad I am to be in an arid climate again! I still have to keep an eye out for cellulitis in that winter/spring season when we can go right from huge snowstorms to summery (and muddy) weather but luckily we don’t have to worry as much here the rest of the time.
It sounds like the copper oxide in the linked study was embedded in various textile products. Probably not enough financial incentive to bring those types of products to market given the already approved treatment options?
I have some idea! :lol: :lol:
Horse is brighter and less lame tonight although maaaaaan is her leg crazy fat. She’s got fluid up into her udder. :eek:
Last horse that did this took a solid 48 hours of antibiotics to improve, so not overly concerned yet but wow is it impressive. Glad to see her feeling better at least.
Yikes! Where do you have this Flamingly Alive Toxic Mud? As I understand it, the gnarly microbes that cause scratches live in the soil. All you can do is help the horse protect himself from them. You sure are working hard to stay safe from dirt, lol.
Sounds like you’ve never had a horse who goes from teeny tiny little nick to fat, hot, painful, non-weight bearing leg in a matter of hours. Lucky you! But the cellulitis struggle is all too real.
@Simkie, fingers crossed that the improvement continues. Fluid all the way up to the udder sounds like a pretty severe bout of it!
Thanks! And yikes, you think? Last time I went through this, the vet came out, said yep, that’s cellulitis, yep, give smzs, sweat wrap, cold hose. It was nice to have the confirmation I was doing the right thing, but that’s really all it was. I’ve not called for this one and am just doing the same stuff. Figure if she doesn’t start looking better with 48 hours of antibiotics on board, I’ll get in touch with the vet. Horse last year was filled up into his sheath, iirc :-/
And can I tell you how terribly awesome it is that this blew up the morning of my PRP injection? :no: My hip is soooooo pissed. I’m non weight bearing and on stall rest :lol:
I have a working pet theory that east coast, high horse density areas have some “super microbes” that have become endemic.
Since moving back east, it seems like my horses have been more prone to stuff like cellulitis, thrush, general skin reactions, even minor illness.
Although my other working theory is that my horses were slightly immuno-stressed from boarding for the past year. I’m curious to see if their sensitivity decreases now that they are back home.
Shoot! That’s some bad timing!
I’ve never had it go all the way up to the udder … mine usually gets it up to mid-gaskin, or if I’m lucky and catch it early just to the hock. But you’re right that the treatment is pretty much SMZs, wrap, cold hose. If you’ve got meds on hand and it’s not oozing you might as watch it over the weekend. Hope you have someone to help with the wrapping and hosing!
I’m in WI and it seemed like 3 years ago, there were multiple local barns with multiple horses coming down with cellulitis. I think the bacteria must flourish under specific conditions - like 3 years ago we had little snow in late winter with a very warm early spring.
So for those who’s standard treatment is SMZs, my vet is very aggressive (maybe because my horse gets cellulitis in the front legs) and we have always done IV gentamicin once daily for 3-4 days and IM penicillin twice daily for 5 days and then we switch to SMZs. I’ve also seen other vets do injections of Exceed for cellulitis and then switch to oral antibiotics. When we start a treatment course, my vet says that we should look for improvement within 2 days (reduction in fever, halting the spread of the infection, less lame and painful…) and significant improvements within 3 days. If not, you need to switch antibiotics because you don’t have the right class for the bacteria present in the infection.
I like the equifit silver wash for legs. I don’t wash legs every day, but several times per week. I coat hooves in Effol hoof dressing before i wash which creates a moisture barrier to preserve them from the washing. I have a couple skin sensitive ones. while i was busy trying to find the cheapest equifit price for 3 weeks and using palmolive to wash legs, my big guy got cellulitis. Since i had started using that leg wash he hadn’t had it, except for that 3 weeks that I was being cheap. which of course resulting in vet fees. . .so. . .
i also like vetasan which is a chlorhex ointment. good for scratches and random skin funk. can mix with zinc and smz paste as well as miconidazole cream to get a fully comprehensive scratches paste, but I digress.
Wow! That is aggressive, @theresak! I’d believe the “super microbe” thing.
Thankfully, this horse was sound after the first dose of antibiotics and her swelling finally started to reduce yesterday. Still a ways to go, but progress! Yay!
I’ve been using the chlorhexidine ointment on her scabbies and they’re looking better. Hopefully can keep this from happening again!
Cellulitis is just plain a pain in the ass.
I’ve posted about my TB (also on that scabby thingy thread posted above). Interestingly, he got cellulitis in the same week (always the last few days of June) 4 years in a row. It’s always been in the driest part of the summer when he’s standing in the least possible amount of muck/mud. And that’s compared to the 9 months of spring/winter/fall when all of my horses are in actual mud almost 24/7 (or at least have access to mud all day/night). And then additionally, 2 of the 4 years we were at a horseshow where he was standing in a totally and completely clean stall when it struck.
And then the other 2 times were at home days before we left for the show. Again, no mud, no muck, nothing that you would typically think of as an irritant of any sort.
One of the times at the show the vet peeled off one of his scabby things, smelled it, and said, “yuck! There’s your source of infection!” So potentially the little scabby things were the entry point. But none of his scabbies were knocked or cracked or seemingly offering an actual entry point (and certainly not compared to when they’re softer in the winter and often knocked off). But then the year before my vet pointed to where a scab had recently been peeled off and said, “whelp, there’s your entry point!”
Oh and then one of the years at the show he got a lesser version of his cellulitis and then one of my other mares (she was 20yo at the time and had never in her life had cellulitis, and didn’t/doesn’t have the scabbies nor any scrapes/wounds of any kind on her leg) also got cellulitis that was far less aggressive and responded immediately to antibiotics. So in that case I wonder if it was some sort of a virus or pathogen at the facility or in the shavings or somehow related to where we were. Orrrr it was just a weird coincidence.
And then last year, after 4 years of cellulitis attacks in the last week of June, my guy had his “annual” 2017 attack in January. And then I’m still awaiting the 2018 episode.
So all of that to say that I don’t think there’s always rhyme or reason to cellulitis attacks. I don’t think you can “prevent” them when you’re battling something at least somewhat systemic. It might be a different story with a horse that gets cellulitis as an over-reaction to a wound. But I feel a little more hopeless about horses with the perma-scabbies.
I’ll add my data point to this:
My kinda Skin Sissy, but not too bad gelding got his $600 case of cellulitis at the Cornell U. Equestrian center. Rumor had it that they cleaned their paddocks but really never scraped them down. That person (I forget who, but they had been around for a long time) was the one that told me scratches just lived in the soil.
I recall plenty of discussions around Cornell about everyone’s favorite way to treat those. Not quite the same as cellulitis, but that problem often was a sequel to scratches of not caught early.
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