Skin Diseases of the Horse

The Horse Skin

1. Those in which congestion and inflammation are the most marked features,
2. Skin diseases in which there are only deranged sensations of itching, heat, tenderness, etc.
3. Skin diseased growths, such as warts, callosities, horny growths, cancer, etc.
4. Skin diseases from parasites, animal and vegetable.
5. Skin diseases connected with a specific poison, such as horsebox, erysipelas, anthrax or farcy.
6. Physical injuries, like wounds, burns or scalds.

Some Common Horse Skin Diseases

• Boils: This horse skin disease may appear on any part of the skin but is especially common on the lower parts of the limbs and on the shoulders and back where the skin is irritated by accumulated secretion and chafing with the harness. In other cases, the cause is constitutional or attended with unwholesome diet and overwork with loss of general health and condition.
  
  
• Congestion: This is a congested or slightly inflamed condition of the skin, unattended with any eruption. The part is slightly swollen, hot, tender or itchy and dry, and if the skin is white there is redness. Chafing is a common cause and is especially liable to affect the fat horse between the thighs, by the side of the sheath or scrotum, on the inner side of the elbow or where the harness chafes on the poll, shoulder, back, breastbone and under the tail.
  
  
• Inflammation with Pustules: In this skin disease, the individual elevations on the inflamed skin show in the center a small sac of white, creamy pus, in place of the clear liquid of a blister. They vary in size from a millet seed to a hazelnut. Pustules, like eczema, are especially liable to result from unwholesome feed and indigestion and from a sudden change of feed from dry to green.
  
  
• Nervous Irritation of the Skin: This is seen in horses fed to excess on grain and hay, kept in close stables and worked irregularly. Though most common in summer, it is often severe in hot, close stables in winter. Pimples, vesicles and abrasions may result, but as the itching is quite as severe on other parts of the skin, these may be the result of scratching merely. It is especially common about the roots of the mane and tail.
  
  
• Scaly Skin Disease: This disease is characterized by an excessive production and detachment of dry scales from the surface of the skin (dandruff). It is usually dependent on some fault in digestion and an imperfect secretion from the sebaceous glands and is most common in old horses.
  
  
• Warts: This skin disease is essentially a morbid overgrowth of the superficial layer of the skin. They are mostly seen in young horses, about the lips, eyelids, cheeks, ears, beneath the belly and on the sheath but may develop anywhere.

Parasites of the Skin

• fleas
• flies
• grubs
• larvae
• lice
• mites
• ticks.

Resources