mud fever, and what to do if you've got it.

...this is a mud fever post...

........ a one-stop shop, let's beat it once and for all.

TCJ blog's most popular posts are all the mud fever ones (all year round), and ragwort advice. 

Tom and Henry are of course, in at night still, so they have hours with dry feet, this helps.

*It doesn't just happen in the muddy conditions of winter, Henry had it after a wet summer, as you can clearly see from the photo above. 

*don't be ashamed to ask for help, call your vet, I did, and my vet was brilliant, we couldn't have gotten through it without her help. your vet will give you pain killers and anti-biotics to fight it from the inside, whilst the creams fight it from the outside.

*ignore stupid advice from yard types who think they know everything, it's mostly passed along bad advice, and treatments have changed so significantly in the last few years your vet with have creams most people won't have even heard of.

*be super-vigilant, catch the small scabs and treat them before anything serious occurs.

*mud fever can cause terrible swelling resulting in incapacity, terrible lameness and pain.

*Wash the area thoroughly, use a diluted soloution of water/hibiscrub to pick the scabs completely off.  wear gloves, and disspose of them afterward.

 


*Without rinsing the hibiscrub away, dry the area completely.  The vet advised me to use throw-away blue paper roll to dry it, and not a towel as I had been using.  mud fever is contagious, and you need to be clean, work clean and throw everything away afterwards.

*Once dry, add a light coating of fuciderm cream, again wear gloves for this and throw them away after.  lay a dressing over the area, and hope your horse is as good as Henry here, not tied up, just standing and waiting for me to finish.

*Wrap the whole area in vetwrap, black is the correct colour for the season.  be careful not to make it too tight, your horse will need to move in it.

*Make a neat job, it'll be more comfortable that way.

*Slide the hoof-boot on.

*If your horse, like Henry, had secondary infection which casues the leg to swell, that's what your vet will give you equipalazone for, bandage the leg too.

*Fuciderm cream, it has a picture of a dog on the box, but trust me, it really works.  get it from your vet.

*Hoof-boots, very handy indeed.

*Above, after a week treatment, it's sore, but the vet told me to leave it alone unless a large amount of scabs returned, which they didn't. Henry was on anti-biotoics, bute and fuciderm cream. then after two weeks no cream, no anti-biotics, no bute.

 CHECKLIST:

• check the pasterns ever day, even the smallest scab can be very painful.
• clean the area with lots of water or if you can, stand your horses foot in a bucket of water to soften the scab.
• wear rubber gloves, the sort of thing you see at crime scenes on the telly.  mud fever is contagious, you don't want to spread it from one leg to another, or to another horse either. throw everything away afterwards.
• add a cap-full of pink hibiscrub to a 100 parts water, it's weak, that's what you want. wash the area, use this to help remove the scabs.
•  pick the scabs completely off, be gentle it'll hurt your horse.  be patient with him, he'll be in pain. if the scabs are many CALL THE VET.
• this part is important:  use disposable blue-roll to absolutely and completely dry the area.  you can throw it away. 
• give your horse an hug and a handful of well-deserved treats.
• once dry, put more gloves on and add a little cream from the vet to the area.
• add equipalazone or equibutazone to his dinner, alongside anti-biotics, and breakfast, usually for about three days. that's why calling the vet is important, it'll only last for weeks longer if you don't.
•  then, if your horse is going out, put a clean gauze over the area, with gamgee over that, held in place with vet wrap.
• and use hoof-boots, I promise you, once you get some, there'll be no going back, they're brilliant.  

LESSONS LEARNED:

• CALL THE VET, IT'LL SAVE YOU TIME AND YOUR HORSE PAIN IN THE LONG RUN, the mud fever infection will be treated from within with drugs, and without with cream and barrier methods.

Henry's pastern after three weeks:

 

Special Edition: Mud fever: Part Four

MUD FEVER FAILURE:
SOLUTION: CALL THE VET.

As you know, Henry has mud fever around his left fore pastern.  I have followed all advice, including my own, about how to tackle it, but all I have achieved is to move the sore patch further around toward his heel, and make him even more sore.  Henry's pastern is puffy (not warm), and has a combination of dry scabs which is the healthy healing skin where the infection began, and some thick mud fever crusts where it has shifted to.

 

I have washed the area in Hibiscrub, picked and dried, applied creams and potions, but this time I alone just couldn't shift it, and Henry was beginning to hate me too despite it taking at least a bag of treats each time I needed to work.

 

So, I called the vet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Henry had it before, you may remember back in February this year, the vet gave me equipalazone and a course of anti-biotics.  And I had concluded that this two-pronged attack was the only way I was ever going to get rid of this menace once and for all.  To tackle it from the outside with cleaning, de-scabbing etc. and with drugs tackling it from within.

 

Jess, the vet,  firstly sedated Henry a little. Remember:   Henry is allergic to the sedative so he can only have a 'donkey dose'. 

 

Then Jess washed the area using and already mixed Hibiscrub solution  of 1:100 parts pink:water, and pre-soaked swabs in a plastic container (only do this as you need it, you can't keep this mixed for a second time).  She rubbed the area gently whilst Henry pawed the air with his leg, and removed all the scabs with the Hibiscrub soaked swabs, it took about 5 minutes.  Henry's bare skin was salmon pink and clean.  Jess did all this wearing gloves too, because you must be very careful with mud fever, those spores of bacteria must not be allowed to spread or infect another part of the horse.  So everything gets destroyed afterwards, and hands are scrubbed.

Then the whole area, not soaking because Jess didn't use any water to soak the scabs like I did - just the swabs - was dried thoroughly using 'blue-roll'  the catering type of tough blue paper roll.  several sheets (all disposable) were used repeatedly until Henry was dried, and this seemed to dry Henry very well with marginally less fuss than a towel.

 

 

 

Next, Jess applied a cream to Henry's pastern, it's a must to wear gloves to do this, the cream contains steroids and prolonged contact with your skin could cause health problems...and you might notice from the box, there's a picture of a dog...this cream is for all animals, but not humans. Anyway, it obviously felt good because Henry stood perfectly still and shut his eyes and breathed a big sigh of relief.  The cream is a steroid and anti-bacterial, she has left me 2 tubes to apply once a day until it has gone.  Jess said I should only pick off the scabs if they return with a vengeance, otherwise, if it's just a little, just apply the cream and that should suffice.

 

Henry then was prescribed a course of bute (2 days worth only), and anti-biotics for 5 days.  This should sort him out!

 

 

 

Already he seams happier too.

 

Tom....well, he just looks on in his usual mildly amused fashion, calm and nonchalant.  Love those horses.

 

 

 

Henry was very good, he let Jess scrub his very sore area, made sore by me trying to rid him of the mud fever, and failing.

 

 

 

LESSON: don't let your stubbornness thinking you've got it handled stop you from calling for help, your horse will only have to suffer longer.  And actually watching a vet perform this sequence, and her technique varying form mine has taught me how to be more effective for my horse if ever it should happen again.

 

Henry is out now, wandering the grassy land with his best mate Tom, having eaten a second breakfast containing the drugs, as if this morning was just like any other.

 

I should have called the vet earlier, but being human means we can learn from our mistakes, and this 2 pronged strategy is what I shall be advising in future.

John, meanwhile, has already been on-line to order me a lifetime supply of all the dressings and swabs that Jess used, so I'll have everything to hand, he will also need to build me a larger first-aid cupboard, mine is already full....well you can't be too careful!

thank you Jess & John x