23 year old Warmblood, recently suffered terrible allergic reaction to nooseeums from pasture turn out on sides of face and above eyes. Normally would wear fly mask, but overlooked with cool weather. Initial reaction, inflammation, scabby, eased with chlorhexidine wash, hydroxizine, then applied a wound resin, advertised to address skin issues. Horse developed inflammatory response,skin very scabby crusty, immediately stopped the skin dressing, but where the skin scabbed off. The skin is still quite pink and hair growing back white . Feel the skin wound resin too caustic, Anyone ever see this ?
Any time the hair follicles are too badly damaged, the hair will grow back white, and it’s permanent, unfortunately.
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@JB hit the nail on the head. When the follicle is damaged to a certain extent, the hair grows back white permanently.
Since hair follicles occur in several different layers of the skin, the damage/trauma can give you the white hairs, normally pigmented hairs with different texture, thinner hair, or no hair at all. It depends on the damage, how deep and how the wound heals.
The process of losing pigment via damage is exactly why freeze brands work. 
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My horse has a giant white lightning bolt on her leg that people assume was something dramatic but it was just a bad fungal infection that damaged the skin.
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Not sure if there is common, but my horse is 24 and the last few years he’s healed white from minor cuts (especially tick bites) that would have grown back normally in his younger years. Just wondering if your horse’s age has anything to do with the white from that type of skin issue.
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I definitely think so, I know as they age, their immune response is a little more compromised. I know this horse, at 23, is in very good health generally, however he has always had skin issues, dermatitis, when I brought him over there were some fungus spots which we have always tried to stay ahead of. This year in SoCal we had an unusually high amount of rain, pastures are very thick this year, and quite a bit more mugginess. ie; nooseums are quite bad. over a 2-day period his eyelids and sides of face became pretty inflamed. Although the wood resin dressing can be quite effective this was a bad episode and the dressing may very well have been too caustic, I am assuming. Needless to say he(face masked) is now covered 24 hrs a day, and pasture time is limited. So far so good. Skin has completely recovered with no new outbreaks, but his beautiful bay colored face looks like he is wearing white colored eyebrows.
Learning that if the infection is bad enough the cell damage (including melanocyte cells)it can be permanent.
yes, and this inflammatory reaction was on the thinnest facial skin unfortunately. Grateful
at least white hair grew in. although he looks like he is wearing white eyebrow pencil!
Try bacon grease on the area. It works wonders. If it doesn’t work, at least you had an excuse to make bacon.
