My OTTB gelding lives outside 24/7, and for the past 2 summers he has developed pretty severe scratches from his heel bulbs to his fetlocks. All four feet, worse behind. Last year, he developed cellulitis behind as well.
Is there anything topical I could start using now that might help stop it from developing? I’m out there a minimum of 3x per week to reapply.
I’ve had beautiful results with adding copper and zinc to the diet when scratches are a problem. Topicals never quite did it…fixing the diet did, though.
I would feed a multi vitamin and especially vitamin A
My horse needed vitamin E added to his diet.
Zinc ointment would be the first thing I’d try topically.
If you do end up with scratches, we have home remedy that works great (at least in our area). Knocks scratches on its knees.
1lb jar of Furasin
1lb jar of generic Desitin (we use Walmart brand)
1 tube of triple anti-biotic 1oz size (we use Walmart brand)
1 tube of anti-fungal 1oz size (we use Walmart brand)
Mix all the ingredients together
Return contents to the Furasin and Desitin jars and relabel.
When scratches appear, apply liberally daily
It works great for us. The key is to apply daily and not pick at the scabs
This and a good omega 3 supplement like flax. His immune system needs a boost.
I do something similar but don’t do the furacin, but instead add dexamethasone. Haven’t had trouble with scratches in years though.
It works great and also agree DON’T pick the scabs… this drives me crazy. When you break the skin you’re just inviting infection. I hear people telling to scrub the scabs off and make them bleed and it hurts my ears.
Flax, msm, keep the legs clipped and use a zinc ointment.
Copper and zinc supplementation here also… we are in red clay country, high iron soil. Tremendous help clearing chronic thrush on my warmblood and scratches on my Shire, both of which were gone within about a month of adding Uckele copper & zinc. They were already on a good Vit/mineral supplement from Uckele, but just needed the added Au/Zn
Your best defense comes from providing excellent nutrition (this does not happen overnight, it takes many months of excellent feeding) not just a seasonal top up of something random. Good quality hay, vitamin and mineral supplement according to your geographical location, addressing nutritional deficits. Hard feed, should be assessed as part of a whole program. Know what you are feeding, and what you need to add. Are protein needs being met?
I bought a mare with a long history of scratches. The first summer, we battled all summer. Second year, no scratches, and they have not returned. Can’t beat that long term good nutrition. Start now for next year.
Yep, most cases of scratches and rain rot is dietary in origin - usually copper and zinc because most forage in the US is much too high in iron, sometimes also needing Vit A. And no, feeding a ration balancer, or normal amounts of most fortified feeds, still doesn’t make up the imbalance in the ratios of iron to copper and zinc, because they’re adding iron themselves 
Mine is very similar, but I use cortisone ointment/cream as the steroid component, it’s easy to get and doesn’t have the same risk of irritating the leg like dex can.
Agreed on the scabs - a mix like this will soften things and start allowing healing, so they will start to fall off. Just wipe the old stuff off as best you can, and apply the new.
But truly, address the diet.
No experience with scratches here, but my mare got cellulitis last summer. She is on a mostly forage diet, gets multivitamin, flax, msm and extra Vit E supp. When she recovered from cellulitis I went online to vet or university websites to see what kind of immunity booster existed for horses. What I read is that her infection was not because her immunity was low, but that it was HIGH! Her system over-reacted to a bacteria that caused cellulitis. That’s why dex is often administered, along with antibiotics, so the horse will reduce such an acute reaction and displaying all the swelling, fever, etc. Hope that helps.
Apple cider vinegar with the “mother” helped my mare and really good nutrition as stated by others.
I’ve used Desitin in the past as a prophylactic. I agree on fixing the diet as the best was to prevent it.
I made my own mix similar to the one above but used 1% cortisone cream, Desitin, Triple antibiotic, and a tube of Monistat when treating active disease.
I did a CleanTrax soak for WLD and haven’t seen a case of scratches since, however, nutrition was being addressed at the same time so I can’t pinpoint which was the effective treatment or maybe it was the combination of diet and the CleanTrax. The soak to kill the bacteria that were present at the time and the diet change to boost his general health and immune function.
Edited to add: I love this stuff: https://store.mccauleybros.com/McCauley-s-BIOTIME-p/21435.htm
Don’t disagree at all that long term good nutrition is important, but it won’t necessarily take a year to see results–when I added copper and zinc, the stubborn scratches I’d been battling for months cleared up nearly overnight. It maybe took a week for the skin to heal up all the way. It was amazing how quickly it happened.
This is SUPER interesting – I hadn’t even thought about the dietary aspect. It makes sense though – he was not thriving in general last summer when he got scratches and cellulitis. I changed his diet last fall to a higher quality hay and added Omega Horseshine, and he came through the tough Chicago winter in GREAT form. So I’ll be anxious to see if the scratches issue is better this year.
I took on a horse that battled them and yes nutrition turned him around. He was still sensitive but I had great success at keeping them away with a preventative dusting on a weekly basis with no thrush, same idea as the keratex powder someone posted above.
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