Beelzebug and Itching

IItching is a problem that affects tens of thousands of horses, ponies and donkeys around the world and almost all breeds and types can be affected. Itching is known around the world by a variety of names, some medical, and some colloquial. Itching is an allergy reaction caused by the saliva of biting flies. This saliva, which can be very acidic, can cause such an overreaction by the animal's immune system that some of its own skin cells are attacked in the process. The resulting cell damage causes the symptoms known as itching. These symptoms include severe itching, hair loss, thickening skin and flaky dandruff. Weeping sores may sometimes occur and without attention these can become subject to secondary infection.

In Britain and most of Europe itching is caused by midges/flies of the culicoides family. It can also be caused by simulium equinum, a member of the black fly family. Culicoides tend to be body feeders, whereas simulium tend to be ear feeders.

Culicoides locate their prey primarily by sight, which is why horses with lighter markings tend to get bitten more heavily than darker horses. The reason that these midges bite is that, soon after hatching, the females mate and require a blood meal to mature their eggs. Itching used to be much more of a seasonal complaint generally occurring in Spring, Summer and early Autumn. However, with advent of global warming and with periods of warm, damp weather now occurring throughout the year, itching has become a year round problem. Because the winters are much less hard, with shorter and less severe periods of frost and snow, midges and flies are surviving throughout the year and breeding continually. Accordingly, their numbers are dramatically up in the last couple of years and fly strike, coupled with itching is becoming a real problem for horse owners.

The signs usually first appear around the mane and tail, then spreads down the neck, withers, ears and forehead. In severe cases this spreads along the spine, around the mid-line of the belly, the sides of the head, the sheath or udder and around the legs. The animal may swish its tail vigorously, roll frequently and scratch on anything available. It may pace endlessly and seek excessive grooming. Even behind an electric fence with nothing to rub on, sufferers often scratch out their mane with their hind feet and bite their flanks, tail and heels. In severe cases they drag themselves along the ground to scratch their belly or sit doggy fashion and pull themselves around the ground to scratch the top of their tail. It can be so irritating as to completely change a horse's temperament making them particularly agitated when flying insects are present.

The best way to avoid itching is to keep your horse away from midges and flies. However, this is always difficult, especially on a crowded island such as ours and so the second best way is to prevent the flies and midges from biting it. A wide variety of very effective chemically-based products have been developed in recent years. These all usually work very well to keep your horse clear of flies but a good number are known to be skin irritants and may well do more harm than good in the long run. Manufacturers of some of these products warn against using them without gloves or on ponies which are being handled by children, since they can cause eye irritation and so forth. For example DEET, a widely used chemical fly repellent, is absorbed through the skin and passes into the blood. The Medical Sciences Bulletin, published by Pharmaceutical Information Associates Ltd. reports, "Up to 56% of DEET applied topically penetrates intact human skin and 17% is absorbed into the bloodstream."  1  On balance, then, it would seem that these are not a very good solution to itching because of the existence of (unpleasant) side-effects.

Then there is a range of rugs and blankets which in effect keep the horse in question wrapped up and therefore largely unavailable for the flies and midges to bite. In high Summer this is a bit like wearing an overcoat to avoid becoming sunburnt, but some people swear by these blankets, whereas others swear at them! They are expensive, time consuming to put on and take off and have proved very irritating to some horses who do everything they can to get them off.

Ultimately, there are a range of products which are oil or grease based and which may contain substances such as oils of eucalyptus, citronella, tea tree and/or various chemical repellents. The purpose of mixing these with an oil base is that flies and midges dislike contact with a film of oil and will tend to avoid it. However, the only problem with these is that they're made up usually using mineral oil, because it's cheap, along with a natural oil (e.g. tea tree oil, etc.) the combination of which can itself cause allergic reactions in some animals. Place almost any naturally occurring oil in a predominantly mineral oil mix and you will always get some precipitation of fatty acid compounds at different temperatures. Therefore these are not good for the skin and in any event they are relatively unpleasant to use.

Finally, there is a completely new approach to the control of itching. This is a product known as Beelzebug which has been developed by Taylors Hill. Beelzebug is a blend of naturally occurring plant oils, which prevent flies and other biting insects from feeding. These resinous oils are produced by plants in nature to prevent insects from infesting and feeding upon them. They work by blocking the flies biting mechanism preventing it from feeding. As a consequence of this the insects usually die of starvation or go elsewhere in search of a meal! As in all things, Nature's way is ultimately the best way, so if you can't move your horse away from the flies, move the flies away from the horse - by using Beelzebug!

¹ Dr J Dunn - www.healthandgoodness.com