My five year old solid brown mare is getting tiny white spots on her neck, face, and ears. No pattern, just here and there, clusters of few white hairs. Scars from insect bites perhaps? but there are no scabs that I notice. Nor are there many biting insects around right now, temps are mostly cool, the houseflies are barely out -- but the mosquitos have been burgeoning. Have not noticed any mosquitos out in the pasture though.
Sounds like what my sisters' horse has, called bird catcher spots. Just markings. Look up photos of those and compare to your horse. Their just random spots that pop up here and there on the horses' coats.
This is my chestnut horse's chestnut dam - AQHA, nothing but chestnuts with limited white in the pedigree but she has lots of "bird catcher spots." My horse is 5 and has one pea sized white spot that appeared when he shed out this year, one golf ball sized white spot that showed up last year, and small patches of random gray hairs in a few areas.
The procedure is actually quite different, not just a little.
Thank you soooo much!
Ignore the dirt and flies . . . there are more spots now than when I took these. There's one in her mane that has turned a few of her mane hairs white.
I can see the chest spots really clear. Sure looks like Birdcatcher Spots
FWIW, in the WLking Horse World --- waaaaay back I. The beginning there was a Foundation Stallion named Roan Allen. He passes that roaning on to a lot of sorrels, as they age.
Rusty is one of them. Rusty was a pure sorrel with a flaxen mane/tail, until maybe five years ago, when I noticed Rusty getting old age white hairs on his face.
Pretty soon those hairs were all over him. While he is not a legitimate roan, the roaning is obvious as he's become older. Thank you Roan Allen, lol.
The same heritage is true of the Birdcatcher Spots
My mare had these every summer for years. Vet said fly bites; farrier said bird catcher spots. I put her on spirulina and they went away. Took her off and they came back. The two seem to be correlated; she's back on the spirulina this season; so far, no spots.
Hmm. I read about spirulina online -- always hard to separate out the woo from the facts with supplements, but it does seem to have immune system boosting qualities. So if the spots are from an allergic reaction to some insect bite, it might diminish that reaction?
I use the wafers. She gets 10/day. It absolutely helps with her allergies (eyes and coughing) so if the white hairs were an allergic reaction, that could by why it helped.
I'm going to try the spirulina powder and mix it with applesauce. Because she already has the spots, even if they are allergy-to-bite scars I'm guessing they won't go away until next spring, am I right? But she won't get any new ones if it works.
My horse had quite a few that never seemed to go away. After using the spirulina for an entire summer, by fall they were almost gone. By the following spring, they were gone for sure.
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