These ingredients are safe and non-toxic for your horses and pets, your skin and your kids. Shake the bottle before each use to make sure the oils are well distributed, and use daily. Add 10 drops of Lemon Essential Oil (stimulates the immune system).Add 20 drops of Tea Tree Essential Oil (disinfecting and anti-microbial). Add 20 drops of Lavender Essential Oil (calming and cleansing).Fill a sturdy one-liter spray bottle with a 50/50 mix of plain water and cheap white vinegar.Here’s the Recipe for my Funky Hoof Spray: If possible let the hoof dry, and then apply my Funky Hoof Spray. Treating a Mild Thrush Infection with my Homemade Remedyįor a hoof that’s just a little funky, scrub the foot with Dawn dish soap and rinse thoroughly. This homemade hoof spray is the key to my natural thrush treatment and prevention program for all my horses! Thirdly, after cleaning the hoof, use my Daily Funky Hoof Spray (recipe below). Daily picking and an occasional scrub with Dawn dish soap is doable, right? Keeping the hoof clean is the best way to get oxygen to the hoof tissues, but not practical 24/7, I know. The second cheap and easy part of prevention is simple, regular hoof care: Thrush is an anaerobic infection, so oxygen will kill it. Aaaaand, if you can’t get it from your local feed store, you can order from her website and they’ll deliver it promptly! Sally went full-geek on learning about equine nutrition, so we don’t have to! Her product is formulated to balance out the deficiencies in so much of our soils in North America – not just in California. I also feed a balanced mineral and probiotic supplement called California Trace Plus – it’s formulated by a hoof care professional named Sally Hugg. Both should be available at your regular feed store. My horses get free choice plain and Redmond salt (I use a combo of salt block and loose salt) and free choice kelp meal. There’s a whole LOT of info and research to do to learn what exactly your horse needs, but if you don’t want to become your own equine nutritionist, you can cheat and just do what I do: Prevention really is the best medicine! The first thing to do is make sure you are feeding your horse adequate and balanced minerals to optimize hoof health. I also advise you to avoid using a strong anti-microbial product daily, as overuse can cause antibiotic resistant strains of microbes to evolve that will be resistant to future treatment! They are too strong, and can kill damaged or healing tissue and cause pain and delayed healing. *CAUTION: Recent research has revealed that products containing Gentian Violet (the purple stuff in Thrush Buster) may increase the risk of cancer, so I strongly recommend you read the ingredients on every product you have in your first aid or grooming kit and stop using anything with gentian violet!ĭo NOT use: bleach, formaldehyde, or undiluted hydrogen peroxide on your horses hooves. However, they are both very strong, can dry out the hoof and will stain anything they touch, including your skin, clothing and horse hair. Both can be effective in eradicating mild cases of thrush when used correctly – daily on a clean and dry hoof. Kopertox and Thrush Buster* are two of the products I’ve seen most often used to treat thrush. There are tons of products on the market to treat thrush, I’m sure you’ve seen and used many of them! But they usually have pretty strong or even toxic ingredients, and if you know me, you already know that I don’t like to use anything on my animals that has warnings in fine print. Typical Products used for Treating Hoof Thrush Moist or damp or dirty footing and bedding can make thrush more likely, but it can occur in dry environments as well – especially the deeper infections, which can be sneaky to diagnose and difficult to treat.ĭon’t worry, I won’t let thrush get you down… keep reading to learn all about my homemade thrush treatment for horses, my Funky Hoof Spray recipe, and my top tips for prevention! Thrush is an infection of the hoof is usually around the frog, but it can affect the sole and deeper tissues too. But, when allowed to build up in a hoof they create a stinky thrush infection that can eat into the hoof tissue and cause damage, pain and lameness that can become severe if left untreated. These little organisms are everywhere in our environment, and generally cause no problems. It’s a combination of micro-organisms like bacteria, yeast and fungi that thrive in a wet, warm, anaerobic environment. It’s a sticky, stinky infection that creates black gunk that builds up in a horse’s foot underneath packed in mud and muck. If you are the rare horse-person that has never experienced thrush, let me explain it to you.
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