Anti Aging Skin Tips

horse rubbing his tail....starting to look bad?

My gelding is rubbing the top of his tail on something in the pasture (the run in shelter is my best guess). He's out 24/7 unless there is freezing rain or winter winds. The vet was out about a week ago, looked at a few things, did a fecal and cleaned his sheath. Nothing unusual was found. I don't want him to ruin his tail, the top is becoming frayed. Any suggestions on how to prevent this or at least decrease it? Thanks. He's up to date on deworming/vaccinations

Public Comments

1. o i bet he has worms!! deworm him! lol, every horse at our stables was rubbing their butts raw until we dewormed them all, and now they are itch free. deworm as soon as possible
2. My first answer was to clean his sheath but you got that one done. Sometimes a horse can get an irritation on his dock and this leads to tail rubbing. I clean my guy with an antifungal solution and finish with a baby-oil massage of the underside of his dock. Seems to do the trick for him. Good luck
3. I have riden horse practically my whole life. I ride all around the country in hunter/ jumpers. I had a horse that once did that and it ended up that he had worms. If the vet went out there and said it was fine then you are okay. My suggestion is that you wrap its tail up with an ace bandage or polo to keep it from rubbing off! :]
4. go to www.horse.com and go to the "boot/sheet/wrap" catagory and the sub titile "wraps and sweats" there are a lot of tail wraps that you can buy to prevent your horse from doing.......also find out why he's doing it.....does he have worms? does he have some kind of infection thats making him itch? or is he just bored?
5. My (and obviously not only my) first guess would be worms, so try to deworm your horse, another possibility might be a bacterial skin infection, wash the dock with a surgical scrub, contains betadine, do that every other day for a week, that might help it
6. Have you checked his tail for ticks? Rub his tailbone all over with your fingers to feel for ticks. They especially like the very tip of the tailbone, but could be anywhere. At my house, the ticks are really bad right now but they tend to wind up on the horses' chests or under their jawbone.
7. I would recommend MTG (Mane, Tail, Groom). It helps to kill bacterial infections and regrow hair. It is fabulous for treating rain rot and scratches as well. You can find it at most tack shops and they sell it online at many locations. All you do is pour a little bit on and rub it into the skin about once a day. If you horse has extremely sensitive skin you might want to use caution. I had a friend who has a horse with one white foot and it irritated it, but we have use it on dozens of other horses and have had no problems with it.
8. MTG would be the next thing I would try. I really think this stuff is great.
9. That area of the tail is very hard to clean . I would wash it really well and really get down into the skin . Make sure you rinse it very well . Get some good moisturizer on it, brush it using some good pressure to make sure you are getting all the way down. This has worked on my horses. As long as the fecal was negative to worms, this may be your best bet.
10. you might try looking for pin worms,ticks or fleas.any one of these can cause tail rubbing.another clue is if he is rubbing along his neck or along the mane.if its fleas use a good flea powder ticks also,wormer will take care of most pin worms but always rotate your wormer so your worms dont get imune to them.
11. my paint gelding does this too it was dry skin i used infusium the leave in conditioner on it every day and he stopped rubbing but as soon as I stop using it he rubs again so we now have to buy shares in the leave in conditioner companies
12. It sounds like a worm burden. Treat him for worms with a quality drench, if that doesn't solve the problem then you could try an anti bacterial wash. In the mean time, bandage up his tail, but it is a sure sign of worms.
13. maybe he has 'sweet-itch'. causing them to rub manes and tail. this is usually caused by midges. its abit like a virus and doesn't just stop when theres no bitting insects about. lts mainly their tails that suffer, and they will rub untill they are red raw sometimes. or he could have rubbed initially just to releave an itch and something in or on the wood has aggravated his skin. ask your vet or local horse store about sweet-itch remedies. l used to feed garlic to repel the flies an midges and rub calamine lotion onto the rubbed areas. worked well for me! or should l say my horse.
14. You've ruled out worms, cleaned the sheath and the vet was out and gave a clean bill of health. This could be as simple as dry skin, or a habit. To rule out the dry skin, clean the tail really well by washing it several times and conditioning it with mane and tail then rinsing it out. I would use a medicated shampoo which helps fight itch (use an equine one, human shampoos dry out the skin further). Wash it weekly with the shampoo, condition it then rinse. See if this stops the rubbing. If this does not work, then you've narrowed it down to a habit - in which case there is not a whole lot you can do other than keep the tail in a neoprene wrap. Good Luck!
15. Use the original brown listerine mouth wash and put it in a spray bottle and spray the dock of the tail once a day then rub it in. Many horses get a fungus that resembles dandruff and it is especially common when they are out 24/7. The listerine will not sting and it kills fungus. As long as you have cleaned his sheath and ruled out pin worms and he does not have rainscald or rainrot or a fungal ringworm infection the listerine should work.
16. Deworm him again with something for Pinworms. I had a similar problem with my old gelding, and moving him to a new facility (not because of the itching, but for other reasons) and deworming him again took care of it. Basically pinworms come out and lay their eggs around the anus. The eggs and the sticky trails the worms leave itch the horse and cause them to rub the base of their tails. I had good luck with a daily dewormer that kept his parasite burdon relatively low all year round. I used Strongid C2X, but there are other brands that do the same thing. These products keep a low level of medication in their system at all times and help keep them from having "flares" between wormings like some horses do on quarterly worming schedules. Is he pastured by himself? If not, I would check that everyone else is worming as well. If one horse isn't worming in that pasture, he or she is spreading parasites around and all the rest of the horses are going to be infected, regardless of their schedule. If that doesn't work, I would suggest having a chiropractic exam. Sometimes pain can manifest itself in reactions like that, as though he was trying to "pop" his tail back in place. Start with the wormer though.
17. Try baging it - otherwise I am not sure, its hard to cover their tail up and keep it covered - By best bet would be to try a braid-in tail bag and put in some infusium to help it grow back and condition the frayed areas- try it and if that doesnt work, try changing paddocks possibly.
18. my horse did the same thing. and the vet came out too. I think it is just a habit or out of being bored. i bought SWAT, and i rubbed it on his tail everyday, and it started growing back. you could also get MTG, but my horse acted like it was burning him, so he may not like it. but those things worked the best. you could also get a tail protector. they go on the dock of his tail and prevents him from rubbing the hair out. they have them at jeffers.com
19. put ointment on his tail where it itches... ointment to help the itch go away, of course! put a fly sheet on, and keep his tail covered.
20. If he is itching themselves, than it probably means that he needs to be wormed. Look for him to begin losing weight and possibly even getting a little colicky. He could also have a fungal problem.
21. sounds like worms
22. Deworm him! Look at this:! Tail rubbing, commonly known as rat tail, broken hair, or matted tail, most often can be a symptom of pin worm infestation. Tail rubbing is a condition resulting from the horse's rubbing back and forth on an object--such as a fence post, feed buckets, or water buckets--in order to relieve the itching, or pruritis, which might be caused by the eggs of pinworms that are laid around a horse's anal area. The horse literally can take the hair off its tail by the amount of rubbing it does. The guilty culprit in some cases of tail rubbing is the pinworm (Oxyuris equi); this is not always the case. Other reasons horses rub the hair off their tails include the following: insect hypersensitivity, food allergy, pediculosis (lice infestation), mange, or in rare cases a behavioral vice much like cribbing. For this article, we will concentrate on pinworms as the cause. According to E. T. Lyons, PhD, of the Gluck Equine Research Center in Lexington, Ky., the worm itself is not really the cause of the itching; the cause is the microscopic eggs the females lay at the horse's tail area around the anus. It is believed that most of what causes the horse discomfort is the result of the gelatinous agent that surrounds the eggs of the pinworms. Also, the pinworms, because of their fragile nature, might rupture when they are around the anal region and contribute to the irritation. Normally, you will not see the pinworms themselves if you examine your horse's anus area because the female worms come out of the anus at night to lay eggs. To test for pinworms, your veterinarian will use clear tape and adhere it to the perianal area to take a sample to determine if pinworm eggs are present. The samples the tape picks up will be observed under a microscope by your veterinarian to determine if pinworms are the source of irritation. Any age horse can be infected with pinworms. However, mature pinworms usually are found only in younger animals. Immature forms can be present in all ages of horses, but tail rubbing caused by pinworms only involves adult pinworms. The reason for this is that the life cycle of a pinworm is five months, so the worms themselves have not matured until the horse is at least five months of age. Tail rubbing occurs in all regions and climates of the United States, although the problem is seen most often in warm and humid areas. This probably is true because warm, humid climates have more insects, and the tail rubbing could be a hypersensitivity to insects. Treatment for tail rubbing due to pinworms is simple--institute a regular deworming program. A regular deworming program will nearly always rid your horse of the parasites that cause tail rubbing. Dewormers such as ivermectin, benzimidazoles, moxidectin, or pyrantel pamoate are available and will eradicate these parasites. If an active deworming program is already in place, then you will need to look at alternate causes of your horse's tail rubbing. Sometimes after the horse already has been wormed and eradication of the pinworms was successful, your veterinarian will need to treat the horse with antibiotics and antifungals to aid in the healing process of the tail. Some horses might even have bits and pieces of debris from fences, or other objects they have rubbed against, embedded in their tail. Have your veterinarian check and remove this material. Treatment in the form of deworming is very effective at stopping tail rubbing caused by adult pinworm infection. Keep in mind that after your horse stops rubbing its tail, it will take a month or two for the hair to grow back. There usually are no long-term complications associated with tail rubbing. Once the pinworms have been eradicated, the horse should recover to his normal condition. My recommendation to prevent this problem from occurring is to initiate a continuous deworming program that incorporates good management practices. Pinworms are transmitted from fecal material by oral ingestion. Many times if one horse is affected by pinworms, the whole herd will become infected unless the horses are involved in a deworming program. This happens since the horse often is rubbing its tail on community feed buckets and water troughs and in the process depositing pinworm eggs, which hatch into larvae and are ingested by other horses. Horses fed off the ground are more at risk of ingesting the pinworm larvae because the larvae can fall off the infected horse to the ground. If your horse is rubbing its tail, have your veterinarian check the horse as soon as possible. Also keep in mind that horses infected with pinworms might experience complications other than tail rubbing. There is no definite proof of digestive disturbances being caused by pinworm infection, although larvae might denude the mucosa of the colon. Possibly, there might be some digestive-related problems due to "stress" from tail rubbing.