Sweet-Itch Management

Sweet- Itch is a severe autoimmune over reaction. It is caused by Midges biting the horse and the horse having an excessive allergic reaction to the saliva. This causes intolerable itching.

The poor horse or pony is driven demented as their skin must feel as if it’s on fire!

•           The neck along the mane
•           The top of the tail
•           Along the spine
•           Under the belly
•           Under the chest
•           Around the pasterns & fetlocks
•           Round the eyes on some unfortunate ones, as well as
•           The muzzle and in some very severe cases the whole body.
•  

Management

Management consists mostly of providing a physical barrier to stop the midge being able to bite the horse; with some cases this can be done by the use of specific products containing D.E.E.T. which will repel midges, and they need to be long lasting for maximum protection, for instance

“Itch Stop Salve Complete”made by Nettex and supplied & used by myself.

“Itch Stop Salve Complete” is formulated to be used once a week, unless it rains heavily or the horse sweats excessively, then you need to re-apply it.

To start with, a weekly bath is essential, before the cream is applied, preferably with a surgical shampoo to sterilise the skin. The skin must be kept clean.  
Do AVOID strong shampoos as they will irritate the already sore skin further. Tea Tree can be very irritating.

For severe cases, a specialist blanket that is midge proof may be necessary. Ordinary fly rugs won't do the job because the holes are too large and the midges can bit through the material. The Boett Blanket is excellent.

For others, like my pony, I need to use a combination of“Itch Stop Salve Complete” and a Boett Blanket as the blanket covers most of her, but she also gets very sore round the top of her coronets, fetlocks, nose, and eyes, just about everywhere! so I use the cream on the exposed bits.

It took a very long time, about a year in fact, to get her comfortable, but now she is, she’s a lot easier to manage and she is now a very happy pony!

Please be very patient with them, believe me, they will love you for your care and reward you ten times over!

I hope this has been helpful to you; for more advice visit the sweet itch help line at

  
http://www.sweet-itch.co.uk/

back to “Itch Stop Salve Complete”

 
Sweet-Itch pony showing full mane      













                             

 Sweet itch pony with full mane & tail

 


 











Much Repaired Boett Blanket!

 















Positive Feed back from an "Itch stop" user

Hello
 
Just wanted to say thank you for producing Itch Stop - something that actually works! 
 
I have a native pony (Titch) which used to have lots of feather until I chopped it off in desperation because she foot-stamped relentlessly - much to both her and my distress. 
 
The vet injected her with Dectomax then a friend recommended Derbac M, neither of which made a scrap of difference. 
 
Then I stumbled across an old tub of Itch Stop that I used to use on my Clydesdale X before he died.  I had forgotten that Itch Stop worked really well on him, and the tub lid must have had an inch of dust on it!  But sure enough, after two treatments on all 4 pasterns, the silence emanating from Titch's stable is deafening.  What a huge relief! 
 
So a very big thank you for supplying a product that saves both horses and their owners a great deal of distress.