An old truth says … “If there many solutions for a problem, then probably none work well”. True of mud fever, the painful skin condition of the lower legs and feet of some horses. Every old ‘bushie’ who has been with horses has his own potion. Sometimes this worked a couple of times for him but when someone else uses the same potion, it fails. It is a scabby leakage of serum from inflamed skin in spots or in whole areas most in the white skin of the lower legs.  It can be just a small area of scabby irritation or it can make the lower leg swell up beyond the white areas and cause a lot of pain. It will often cause lameness and in severe cases the horse will be unwell. It will resent having its feet picked up and will give the farrier a hard time. These painful memories of foot handling may stay for life. Let’s look at the things that are known.

White leg and foot areas are usually affected, or at least that’s where it starts. (Sun or light may be therefore be involved in the process).

More common in summer to autumn.

Not always associated with mud or wet conditions at all. (But they don’t help once it starts).

Scabby crusts are mixed in the hair (dried serum from inflamed skin leakage).

Horse resents you treating it, and trying to take the scabs off.

Lots of treatments don’t seem to work very well.

##Laboratory work on affected skin shows that it seems to be allergy related. This is the most important finding.##

This condition has certain visual similarities with white skin photosensitization of cattle and sheep. In these animals it is associated with plant toxins and liver insults from certain plants and fungi in the pasture or feed. There is a build-up of light sensitizing chemicals in the skin which causes sunburn of the white skin. So it is possible that a food component may be involved also in horses. Remember that I am extrapolating from cattle and sheep, and I’ve seen it in humans too but that idea is only my speculation. You can successfully treat cattle and sheep, if they are not pregnant with anti-allergy/anti-inflammatory injections (cortisones) plus antibiotics and keep them in the shade. This often also works for horses. The cortisone addresses the allergic aspect and the antibiotics the secondary infection of the damaged skin. Usually I treat for both bacteria and fungus and yeast, the latter needing skin applications due to cost. Unfortunately there is a small danger of causing founder with cortisone injections and some horses guts don’t take kindly to antibiotics. However both those reactions are rare.



Surface treatments will work very well too but if treating it yourself then you can put lotions and potions on the skin until the cows come home and it won’t always work. (It probably does work in the ones that I don’t see and that is why I don’t see them). The skin preparations are usually a combination of a softener such as cod liver oil, an antibiotic and anti-fungal and importantly a type of cortisone. One day I may compound my own but presently there are a couple of expensive proprietary ones on the market. Sometimes I add more cortisone to one of them before use.

Surface treatments MUST BE BANDAGED ON FOR A FEW DAYS. (If you don’t believe that then come and see me after the other way has failed and you’ve wasted a lot of medication). I don’t care how you bandage the medications on nor how cheaply you do so long as they are safe and stay on about 5 days. If you can’t get it to stay on that long then either come to us and learn to do it properly or change it daily. The bandages are the difference between success and failure. Why is this…I don’t know but I can take some guesses. One is that it moistens and softens the scabs allowing deeper penetration of the medication. Next it may be that the med is in contact in a moist active state for longer and last is that you are excluding light. Bandages are expensive but I’ve seen some cheap and effective use of “glad wrap, opened-up black garbage bags and electricians tape.

Sometimes one period of 5 days is enough, sometimes a second. This is followed by un-bandaged application of a sunblock cream with anti-bug chemicals in it. There is one such product and we stock it. You may have to keep applying it regularly for some time. I don’t give you the names of these things…well that’s because I also have bills to pay and a family to rise so I want you to buy them from me. 

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