How to prevent rain rot on horses?

Question by CrimsonRun: How to prevent rain rot on horses?
In the late summer of 2011, my fiance and I moved from Wisconsin to Tennessee to pursue his degrees. Naturally, we brought our five horses with us (two paints and three thoroughbreds). With the climate being so different than what we were used to up north, we had a bit of adjusting to do. The biggest challenge that we are still working on trying to over come are the winters here. It stays so wet and will rain for three days straight at times. Even when it wasn't raining, the air would still be quite damp.

(A few notes before I get too into this.)
With our current situation, we are renting a house and a small 15 acre farm in the town where the school is. Regrettably, the farm we're renting does not have a barn so we are unable to put them up. (When my fiance graduates next spring, we will be buying our own farm with better accommodations for the horses, but for now we need to make due with what we have.) They do have access to shelter, but being horses, they would rather graze than stand in a shed, even with hay in there to keep the busy. The paints are very hardy, and we thus far have not had any issues with either of them concerning rain rot. It's with the TBs that we've been having such a struggle.

Last year, we were concerned about rain rot so we blanketed the horses with water proof blankets. However, with the constant rain, the blankets would soak through or would trap the moisture under the blankets and the horses would end up with hot spots. We would try to rotate the blankets as best we could putting them on when the temps dropped, over night on cold nights, or if it was raining. If it wasn't raining, and especially on sunny days, we would make sure the blankets were off so they could "air out". Even still, they would get rain rot. We have been using anti-fungal sprays on them to help clear up the rain rot.

This year, I decided to forgo the blankets all together. In the spring, I had put them on a new, custom made forge-based feed that has extra oils and protein in to help them out with the coats. It's done wonders for all of them. They've been in great weight, very healthy, and hardly had any sun-bleaching over the summer. This winter, the paints are still great with no coat issues whatsoever, as well as one of the TBs. The other two are doing better than last winter, but they are still getting rain rot.

Is there anything else I can try to prevent the rain rot of starting in the first place? I've looked into adding Flax or BOSS to their feed to give extra Omega-3s to help their skin and coat, but I'm not sure if that will actually aid in preventing the rain rot. Any advice is much appreciated!


Best answer:

Answer by gallop
You are right to leave the blankets off which will maximize exposure of skin to air. Blankets are rain rot's best friend.
Rain rot is a bacterial infection (not a fungus) by dermatophilus congolensis. The bacteria are anaerobes that thrive in dark, damp, airless environments, and live dormant in skin. Any horse who has been infected in the past has the bacteria present and ready to activate and multiply at the first chance they get.

Anything that compromises skin integrity or immune functions can allow the bacteria to colonize and develop active infection. Continual exposure to dampness for 12 hours compromises skin integrity sufficiently for infection to develop. Anything you can do to get the skin dried out periodically to prevent that kind of continual dampness will help to keep infection at bay.

Good parasite control and maintaining healthy digestion assures absorption of nutrients. A mostly forage diet goes far to aid digestive tract health and functions and maintain optimum digestion. It doesn't do any good to provide a well balanced diet if maldigestion or malabsorption from the digestive tract prevents nutrients from reaching body cells to be utilized.

I have fed Enreco's Omega Horseshine as a supplement with excellent results in the past when I was showing my horses. It is a linseed oil meal made from flax that is well stabilized and formulated and my horses always loved it.

MSM is an organic sulfur that may also benefit your horse's skin integrity and other connective tissues if it is deficient, and supplementing it could be of help. it is often given to improve joint tissues in degenerative joint disease and could also benefit your horse's joint health.

I recommend avoiding use of chemical disinfectants or doing anything that could abrade the skin, and just very gently soak the scabs with sterile 0.9% saline solution until they easily loosen. I use cotton makeup removal pads to carefully lift off the scabs and pus, and then saline-soaked pads to clean the lesions, and dry pads to absorb all moisture. The scabs are laden with bacteria and harbor bacteria beneath them. The bacteria can survive for a year in the scabs after they are removed, so dispose of them in sealed containers. Be careful, since the d. congolensis bacteria also infect humans, so take precautions. Once you get the scabs and pus removed and thoroughly dry the lesions, any remaining bacteria die off and healing can take place. You can just leave the sores exposed to air, or you can apply a thin layer of EMT collagen gel to the sores to seal out insects, absorb exudate, block pain and itch sensations, and rapidly heal them.
You can buy isotonic saline at a drugstore or make it at home by dissolving 3/4 of a teaspoon of non-iodized table salt into one pint of boiled water. This makes sterile isotonic saline solution which is balanced with body fluids so it won't harm healthy tissue cells or irritate skin, and is also the best flush for any open wounds.

Sometimes the infection invades deeper layers of tissue, in which case you may need your vet to administer appropriate systemic antibiotic injections to get this under control, since topical treatment can't reach deeper tissues.
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ETA.............. I should add that when the sebaceous oils of the skin and coating the hairs is intact, rain is wicked away from the skin by the slick, waterproof hairs, and the skin oil acts as a water repellant to keep it dry even if water makes it past the hair coat. When a horse sweats, the dampness forms beneath the skin oils and hairs and deteriorates the sebaceous protection from skin oils. By leaving the blankets off, even in rainy weather, the skin integrity is more likely to remain intact.

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