Rain Rot

STEVE: Rain rot is another type of dermatitis and it’s mainly a bacterium that gets into the base of the hair follicles, creates an exudation and essentially creates an area where that hair follicle falls out. As we found, you can work on it topically and kill it with antibacterial shampoo and antibacterial as in iodine-based or chlorhexidine-based, or there is the odd case when it gets really, really bad then we’ll go ahead and put it on some penicillin or a systemic antibiotic in order to treat it.

More times than not, it’s a situation where you got ahead and, it’s more commonly associated with a bacterium known as Dermatophilus, and we can manage it more properly just by a good clean environment and by keeping the horse clean and keeping their coat clean and a good grooming. But, there are the times when we go ahead and treat it systemically as well.