Horses - Incorrect diagnosis of sweet itch: The red bird mite
Many are familiar with the problem of summer eczema. No horse owner wants that. Sometimes, however, a wrong diagnosis is made. Not everything that looks like summer eczema is summer eczema. Itching, skin scabs? If your horse shows these symptoms, you should also have it checked for mites. The red poultry mite is also interested in horses as hosts.
The red poultry mite is to blame
Horse stables are often home to various small bird species, such as sparrows and swallows. And if the horse is next to a farm with a chicken coop, the red poultry mite is not far away either. It primarily makes itself comfortable on birds, but unfortunately, it takes what it can get. Perhaps even your horse or you. Especially in summer, the red poultry mite multiplies particularly strongly, then it urgently needs new hosts and is not picky.
The combination of symptoms and the summer season means that it is often mistaken for summer eczema.
How to recognize the poultry mite
The poultry mite likes blood. That's why it latches onto the horse. Your horse gets small bite wounds that become inflamed. The mite leaves saliva in the wound. This causes the itching, and the horse scratches itself.
The horse can even lose hair in those areas and develop nasty, crusted wounds. The red poultry mite is particularly tricky because it is active at night. So you don't see it during the day. This is another reason why it is often mistaken for summer eczema.
How to find out if your horse might not have eczema, but is infested with the red poultry mite
- You can have your vet perform a mite test.
- Or you can cover the entire open stable or your paddock box with light-colored blankets, a white tarp*, or something similar. It's important that it's very bright. If you find small black dots the next day, you'll know your horse has mites. Their feces will then be on the blanket. These are the small black dots.
