How should I be treating this? Underneath the jaw, the hair is falling out, leaving skin that is weepy and raw. There were a few scabs there over the summer that I thought were just a weird one-off skin issue. I cleaned the area up and the scabs did go away, but it has now come back with a vengeance and the problem area has grown to approximately the size of a deck of cards. It is a closed herd of 2 and the other horse has no sign of a problem. My Googling suggests that it could be mites, but it seems like the other horse would have a problem also if it is mites…right?
Would it be at all possible that there is a tick there? My horse gets this sometimes if he gets a tick.
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That’s what I thought it might be at first too, so I didn’t worry about it. But now it has spread into a large, square patch so I don’t think it is caused by a tick now.
My horse gets it from ticks. he would lose patches of hair even though the tick was only in one part. in past years i’ve clipped the area down as these long hairs are how ticks can travel onto his body. and then if i found ticks in the area, i would put some sort of ointment on after taking the ticks off.
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It’s good to know that a tick could cause a reaction this size. I’ve just never seen this horse react like this before and I didn’t actually find any ticks, so it was a little alarming to me to pull away the loose hair and realize that such a big area was affected. We also have cold enough weather here that tick season has mostly been over since the end of November.
Honestly for skin stuff I usually give Equiderma a try. For me it has cleared up a lot of things. Obviously you may need a vet to come out and look at it, so I’m not trying to give veterinary advice at all. It is just something that I’ve used on several skin things successfully.
I agree with Casey09–call your vet. He or she might be able to recommend something just from your description of the lesion without a farm call. Or maybe you could take a picture and text it to the vet.
It sounds to me like this could be a superficial skin infection. You could try some betadine spray or even triple antibiotic ointment mixed with lamisil ointment or miconazole. I have a gentamicin/dexamethasone spray that is great for stubborn skin lesions like you describe, but it’s a prescription med so you would have to get it from your vet. The antibiotic will kill most skin pathogens, and the steroid calms the inflammation.
Just wanted to post an update in case anyone was curious. I trimmed the hair back and cleaned it with an iodine scrub a few times. It immediately went away and hasn’t caused problems since!
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