Anyone used them? I’ve heard a lot of good things about the wafers, but never tried them myself, and never tried the pellets either. My mare doesn’t have respiratory allergies/issues, but she definitely has allergies to other things (like insect bites)…think it could work on something like that? Or does it tend to work just for respiratory type allergies?
SmartPak has it for such a good price for less than $30 a month I may just need to give it a try and see what it does! 
I just ordered Smartpak’s Spirulina pellets but too early to notice if it is doing anything. My picked eater approved.
Hmmmm, somebody just posted an article from Horse.com from late 2016 about algae causing some horse related liver toxicity. What condition are you feeding it for?
oh interesting…the only reason I would potentially be using it would be in an attempt to calm her body’s overreaction to insect bites. we had her allergy tested years ago and one of her main allergies was to certain insects’ bites. when she gets bitten, she gets a giant welt that then oftentimes eventually becomes a collagen granuloma and then if it gets rubbed by the saddle pad or girth (depending on where it is), the hair can fall out and sometimes it doesn’t grow back. In the worst cases I’ve had to have a welt removed before. She goes out with a fly sheet/hood and we use fly spray but it’s of course not 100% guaranteed protection from the little “no see ums” for example, which she’s especially allergic to unfortunately.
I’m guessing this was the article you saw. And while I can’t say it with 100% certainty, I’m fairly sure that the spirulina supplement is made from one of the blue-green algae types that don’t produce toxins…
http://www.thehorse.com/articles/29469/blue-green-algae-poisoning-in-horses
Collagen granuloma! I hadn’t heard the term before, but Googled it, and I think I’ve seen these. When an insect bite turns into a hard lump that takes forever to go away. My horse gets them very rarely, and they have always resolved on their own, but I didn’t have a name for them or know what was going on physically in there. My horse chiro just calls them “bug bites that have gone hard” 
Always good to have a new word!
Yes scribbler! When I first got my mare and she was getting those randomly, we biopsied them because the vets were scratching their heads on what they were from. Both times we biopsied they came back as hypersensitivity to insect saliva. That’s when we allergy tested her, then we did an injection series to try to desensitize her body to the allergens. It worked for some of them (molasses for example), but it never got rid of the bug bite reactions sadly. Some of them eventually go away on their own, but for my mare more often than not they end up under the tack and get rubbed and then they end up irritated. Some recent ones even crusted over and then the hair and skin fell off 
they’re healed now but I’m praying the hair grows back. It’s so lovely having a black-skinned buckskin who’s super light colored with black spots all over her from bug bite scars! :mad:
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