Hedgewitch Essentials

24/12/2025

Wishing you all a very Merry Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and lots of happy horse time!

We're about over the holidays so don't hesitate to get in touch, though I may be a little slower to respond than normalto 🎄🎁☃️

17/12/2025

CPL: THE SCIENCE BEHIND BREATHABLE BARRIER SUPPORT

Winter adds a significant challenge to skin that's already compromised. When you're formulating for horses with Chronic Progressive Lymphoedema, the rules change completely.

I've spent the past few months deep in the research on skin barrier function, transepidermal water loss, and what actually happens when lymph drainage fails. Let’s dig into what you need to know if you're caring for a horse with CPL.

The CPL skin barrier problem: CPL doesn't just cause swelling; it fundamentally impairs skin barrier function and compromises the skin's immune response.

Poor lymph flow means pathogens aren't cleared properly. The skin can't defend itself the way healthy skin does. Research shows that horses with CPL have measurably weakened barrier function, similar to humans with lymphoedema.

This matters because it changes what we need from a topical product.

First we need to understand transepidermal water loss (TEWL). This is a measure of how much water evaporates through the skin and is the gold standard for assessing barrier function. The higher it is, the more dysfunctional the skin barrier.

Healthy intact skin loses 4 to 9 grams of water per square metre per hour. Compromised skin? That jumps to 80 to 90 grams.

So very simply, higher TEWL signals barrier weakness. Lower TEWL suggests stronger barrier function. Occlusives help reduce this water loss.

The challenge with CPL is that whilst we need to reduce water loss, we can't seal the skin completely. The tissue needs to breathe.

That leads to the occlusive vs emollient question. Occlusive ingredients sit on top of the skin, creating a physical barrier that slows water loss. Think petroleum derivatives. They work brilliantly for reducing TEWL, but only whilst they're present. Remove them, and TEWL returns to baseline.

Emollient ingredients work differently. They fill spaces between skin cells, improve barrier function, and enhance membrane fluidity. They influence how the cells actually function, rather than just coating the surface.

For CPL, you need something that could provide barrier support without suffocating already compromised tissue. That’s a delicate balance.

If you're managing CPL, you need products that respect the complexity of compromised skin.

You need barrier support with a very low level of occlusion. Water retention without suffocation. Protection that doesn't interfere with the skin's own repair processes.

The science shows that 86% of CPL progression is influenced by husbandry, environment, feed, and parasite control. You have significant control here.

Choosing the right topical support is part of that picture. Understanding why ingredients matter helps you make better decisions for your horse.

CPL skin deserves formulation that understands what it actually needs. And you deserve to know exactly what’s inside the bottle and the genuine reasons why it can help.

14/12/2025

Bob is partially blind and sometimes gets bumps and bruises. One summer's day I found him with a huge haematoma on his chest. Me being me, I went straight to my box of essential oils! A zoopharmacognosy session later, Bob made his choices and a topical gel was made. I have never seen a haematoma disappear so quickly.

It's Bob's formulation that's behind our human cosmetic - Fade Away - to reduce the appearance and duration of bruising.

For the past year we've been testing Fade Away with a London doctor in his aesthetic practice and it's really helped clients who would normally bruise post-procedure.

But if you're more like me and more likely to have a horse stand on your foot than have a facial filler, Fade Away is a winner when it comes to losing the bruise!

11/12/2025

If you need help, just get in touch.

10/12/2025

SKIN REACTIONS: FINDING THE CULPRIT

Most of us don’t need a textbook to manage reactive skin, we need a few reliable clues that help us decide whether we’re dealing with irritation, allergy, or a perfect storm of timing, weather, and midges. We also need a routine that’s boring enough to be safe but smart enough to actually help.

Start with the simplest rule: the timeline matters. Irritation often shows up fast. It can sting, redden, or turn itchy within hours of using something too strong, too frequently, or on skin that was already compromised. That last one is where people are often caught out because they haven't realised the skin is already at its coping limit and easily tipped into a flare.

Allergy, on the other hand, often has a delayed and slightly sneaky feel. A horse might be fine with a product for a while and then suddenly flare later, because the immune system can take time to learn a trigger. That slow build is sensitisation in action, and it’s why we sometimes wonder what's happened because something used to be fine.

The pattern on the body matters too. Irritation often looks neat and literal. The reaction sits exactly where the product was applied or where rubbing and sweat have concentrated it. Allergy can also be contact-shaped, but it sometimes looks a bit more dramatic or persistent, especially if the skin is already in a fragile state. It’s not a perfect rule, but if the reaction is surgically aligned with your application area, irritation climbs higher on your suspects list.

Context matters more than we give it credit for. A product used on a warm, sweaty day under a rug is not the same experience as that same product used on cool, calm skin. Wet-dry cycles, mud, clipped patches, and friction from boots and tack all weaken the barrier. When the barrier is stressed, ingredients pe*****te more easily and the skin is simply more reactive, whether the trigger is an irritant or a true allergen. This means we have to use common sense and not apply products to help skin under contact areas. For example, your saddle has rubbed some hair at the back of the saddle and instead of calling your fitter, you've bought a skin tonic to help restore the hair. So you put it on and then ride, wham, you've now got an irritated patch. Not the product's fault, just a poorly timed application.

This brings us to the bit that often unlocks the whole puzzle: sensitised skin can become more reactive to other things. This is SO IMPORTANT to understand. Once a horse has had repeated inflammation, two shifts are common. The barrier is less robust than you think, and the immune system is more easily roused than it was before. That combination lowers the threshold for future trouble. It explains why some horses seem to move from occasionally sensitive to everything is now a problem. It means the skin is operating in a more sensitive state and needs you to simplify the environment while it resets.

If you want to avoid spiralling into guesswork, the fastest way back to clarity is a short reset. When a reaction occurs, stop the newest or most likely culprit and return to a plain, gentle baseline for a bit to give the skin a chance to calm so you have a clean slate for detective work. Then reintroduce one product at a time. This is unglamorous, but it’s how you actually identify a cause without driving yourself mad.

Essential oils get a fair bit of bad press when it comes to use on sensitive skin and this is where a lot of equine skincare conversations get unnecessarily polarised. Essential oils shouldn’t be labelled as risky across the board. They can be a thoughtful part of equine formulations when they’re treated with the respect their chemistry deserves. The real question isn’t “does this product contain essential oils?” It’s “who made it, how was it formulated, and how stable is it over time?” And let's not forget what is perhaps the most important question: "what's in it?".

Essential oils are natural complex substances. Their composition can vary by plant, harvest, and extraction method, which is why reputable sourcing and batch control are not fluffy marketing, they’re safety fundamentals. A good manufacturer understands the chemistry behind the scent, keeps inclusion rates conservative and purposeful, and builds blends that make sense for skin rather than just smell nice or a marketer has googled a description that sounds good on a website.

Many responsible formulators also lean on IFRA-style fragrance safety thinking as a benchmark for safe use inclusion levels for essential oils. As part of this approach, they will identify skin sensitisers on the product label. Although this framework is designed for human cosmetics, in a world where equine grooming labelling can be inconsistent, it’s a reassuring sign that someone has done real risk assessment rather than just mixing pretty things together.

Oxidation is the quiet superhero of this whole discussion. Some fragrance components become more allergenic after air exposure and aging. This is one of the biggest reasons that freshness, packaging, and storage belong in the safety conversation.

In the first article we touched on haptens. Essential oils contain many small aromatic molecules, some of which can act as haptens. The risk that these turn into sensitisers shifts with freshness and oxidation. In other words, a carefully formulated, well-stored essential-oil product may be comfortably tolerated, while an older, partly oxidised version could be more likely to tip a sensitised horse into a flare.

So there's a lot of trust in the process - trust that manufacturers are sourcing quality, trust that they're sourcing freshly distilled oils and storing them properly, trust that they'll tell you everything that's inside the bottle, trust they have more than fragrance-level knowledge about essential oils.

A well-made essential oil product should be designed and packaged to resist degradation, but owners can still support that stability by storing products properly and not keeping half-used bottles for years in the tack room.

Which leads neatly to the easiest to enact advice in this entire series: storage is a risk reducer you can control immediately. Keep products cool and out of direct sunlight, close lids properly, and be cautious with old, half-finished bottles, especially if they’re rich in aromatics. If something smells noticeably different from when you first opened it, that’s a small but meaningful signal that the chemistry has changed. It may still be fine, but for a reactive horse, it’s not the moment to take chances.

Good formulation and good storage also help you shop smarter. Horse grooming products don’t often follow the same labelling expectations you’d see in human cosmetics as there are no equine cosmetic regulations to set the standard, so transparency varies. That’s why it’s worth rewarding brands that voluntarily publish full ingredient lists and take a cosmetic-style approach to clarity. We set our formulation and labelling bar at this level from the get-go, and 10 years on, it's great to see there are other brands doing the same.

So what does a simple, confident routine look like? Introduce new products slowly, always patch testing for at least 24-hours before using more generally. Don’t trial three new things in the same week and then try to do a post-mortem when the skin complains. Don't assume that 'natural' or 'plant-based' means a reaction isn't possible. More importantly, avoid using anything new on an active flare, because you won’t get a truthful result. And treat irritation as a signal to ease off, not to push through.

This approach also protects you from the classic summer trap. When midges, horseflies and warm weather are already stirring the pot, the skin is primed to overreact. A fly spray may be a genuine contact trigger in some individuals (and there are those that contain known sensitisers such as citronella and lemon eucalyptus), but it can also be an innocent bystander applied to a horse whose skin was already overloaded. A strategic routine lets you see which is which.

Most reactions are simply a story about barrier strength, exposure dose, timing, and immune learning. It's a horrible thing to happen but learning to read this story can help reduce the risk of having a very uncomfortable horse.

Next time we'll look at what to do if you get a skin reaction and how to interpret labels that list naturally-occurring allergens.

09/12/2025

SKIN REACTIONS: WHAT'S REALLY GOING ON
A horse’s skin reaction can be one of those mysteries that can leave you scratching your head as to why it's happened. One day everything is fine, the next you’ve got a problem. It’s easy to jump straight to “this product is awful” or “my horse is allergic to life,” but most of the time the story is more logical than it looks at first glance.

A skin reaction is the skin showing visible inflammation and sending a clear message that something has tipped its balance. You might notice redness, warmth, itchiness, flaking, raised wheals, soreness, weeping, crusting, or localised hair loss. Sometimes it’s quick and dramatic, like hives appearing after a new spray. Sometimes it’s a slow burn, with a dull coat, persistent dandruff, and mild but constant rubbing that gradually escalates.

The reason these reactions can feel confusing is that the skin acts as both a barrier and a very busy communications hub. Its job is to keep moisture in, keep unwanted things out (microbes and allergens), and coordinate the body’s first line of defence.

When that system is healthy and calm, most everyday products and environmental exposures pass without fuss. When it’s stressed or already inflamed, the skin becomes more reactive and the threshold for problems becomes much lower.

It helps to picture the outer skin as a carefully built wall. If the wall is strong, it does a brilliant job of controlling what gets through. If it’s been weakened by wet-dry cycles, friction from rugs, boots or tack, clipping, over-washing, insect irritation, or existing dermatitis, it becomes leaky and substances can pe*****te the 'wall' more easily, causing the local immune system to flare.

This is why two horses can share a topical application and only one has skin that objects. It's also why a horse can tolerate a product for ages and then suddenly decide it’s not happy with it anymore - it all depends on the wider state of its skin.

In real-world terms, reactions usually fall into two broad categories. The first is irritation. This is the 'too much, too strong, too often, or wrong day response. It doesn’t require the immune system to develop a specific allergy. It’s more like the skin being overwhelmed.

Culprits may be a harsh cleanser used frequently, a medicated wash applied beyond what’s needed, or a product used on already sore or rubbed skin can lead to redness, dryness, heat, or itch. It can even been where a product has been applied before exercise and is under your tack This type of irritation often has a neat, tidy pattern; the problem sits exactly where the product was used or where sweat and friction have concentrated it.

The second category is allergy, where the immune system has decided that a specific substance is a genuine threat. A helpful way to understand this is through the idea of haptens (sometimes casually called haptagens).

In allergic contact dermatitis, the trigger is often a very small chemical that can slip into the skin but isn’t visible enough to the immune system on its own. Once this hapten binds to a skin protein, it forms a new complex that the immune system can recognise as foreign. This binding step is considered the first key event in the development of allergic contact dermatitis, and it helps explain why tiny amounts of certain ingredients can cause big reactions in sensitised individuals.

This allergy timeline is also where life gets a bit unfair. Allergic contact reactions may not show up the first time you use something on your horse. The immune system can take time to learn a trigger, so a horse might be exposed repeatedly without obvious trouble, then one day suddenly react. That delayed onset is why owners often say, with total honesty, that a product used to be fine. Sometimes the reaction can simply be to a substance that is chemically very similar so the immune system is triggered because it 'thinks' it's recognising an allergen.

Sometimes the trigger is a topical ingredient. Sometimes it’s something less obvious, like the material of a new boot, a rug lining, washing detergent, or even a plant the horse has been brushing through.

From the skin’s perspective, a fancy bottle and a humble stable change are equally capable of being irritating if they pose the wrong kind of challenge.

There’s another important layer to hold in mind before you blame the last thing you applied. Not all itching or inflammation is primarily product-driven. Horses sit at the intersection of multiple skin pressures. Insect bites can light up the immune system and cause intense rubbing. Mud and moisture can soften the barrier. Heat and sweat can make otherwise gentle products feel harsher. In those situations, a new spray might look guilty simply because it arrived during a flare-prone moment. The product may be part of the story, but not necessarily the main villain. Sometimes a skin reaction is because the skin was already irritated anyway.

The simplest, most useful explanation is this: a skin reaction happens when the balance between barrier strength, exposure, and immune response gets pushed too far. The skin is reacting because it is trying to protect the horse.

To reduce the chance of reactions, the goal is to support skin resilience. At the heart of this is to understand what you're putting on your horse's skin, and particularly the dangers essential oils can pose. And crucially, to recognise those early warning signs that your horse's skin may be struggling before a mild grumble turns into a full-scale protest.

Next in this series of posts, we'll get properly practical! We'll look at how to tell irritation from allergy, how sensitisation can develop over time, what good formulation and storage really mean, and how to build a simple, confident routine for horses who tend to be on the sensitive side when it comes to their skincare.

08/12/2025

For care of feathers and to support the special needs of cob's skin

05/12/2025

OMEGA 3 - WHY SOURCE MAY BE IMPORTANT
I'm just researching omega 3 and thought I'd share what I've found. You know how every supplement ad screams high in omega-3 which we know are anti-inflammatory, but like most things in life, it's not quite that simple. It may not help with your horse’s creaky joints, coughy lungs, CPL or mystery inflammation.

Not all omega-3s behave the same once they’re inside your horse, and the form found in most of the plant-based oils (like linseed and chia) isn’t necessarily the best choice when you’re actively trying to put an inflammatory fire out.

Most horses get their basic omega-3 from alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), the plant version that’s naturally in spring grass, linseed, chia, camelina and friends. Horses' wild diet was basically wall-to-wall ALA and they did just fine. Reviews of equine fatty acid metabolism describe ALA as the main omega-3 in forage, with virtually none of the other forms of omega-3 present. These are commonly known as EPA or DHA, short for eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid.

So why does the form of omega-3 matter? Yes, because some forms of omega-3 are more available than others. If ALA is the raw ingredient, to get really powerful anti-inflammatory effects the horse has to convert ALA into EPA and DHA (the long-chain omega-3s). That conversion uses a chain of enzymes that is naturally slow and inefficient and in many mammals, less than 10% of ALA ever makes it to EPA, and almost none becomes DHA.

Equine studies and reviews say the same thing: horses can convert some ALA, but not very well, and several trials have found that feeding ALA-rich oils didn’t meaningfully raise EPA/DHA in blood or plasma unless very specific conditions were met.

🧠 Nerd note: A 2014 review of omega-3 supplementation in horses concluded there is “limited conversion of alpha-linolenic acid to DHA” and that EPA and DHA generally need to be directly supplemented for those fatty acids to show up in tissues.

So what does ALA actually do? Quite a lot, just not always what people think.

Flax/linseed oil studies in horses show better antioxidant status and nicer bloodwork, and improving the overall omega-3:omega-6 balance can certainly help with general health and low-grade inflammation. That’s why linseed is great for shiny coats and background support.

But when you’re dealing with a horse who is already struggling with inflammation – stiff arthritic joints, chronic airway disease, laminitis or metabolic inflammation – you’re asking the body to turn a bag of flour (ALA) into bread (EPA/DHA) fast, when its little metabolic bakery is famously slow.

This is where the omega-3s that are more usable by the body start to look interesting.

Several equine studies have now given horses EPA and DHA themselves, usually from marine or algal sources, and then looked at what happens. In one study, horses supplemented with a DHA+EPA oil showed clear increases in EPA and DHA in plasma, synovial fluid (joint fluid) and lung surfactant, which are exactly the places you care about for arthritis and airway disease.

A clinical trial in horses with chronic lower airway inflammationfound that an omega-3 supplement providing long-chain omega-3s improved clinical signs, lung function and airway inflammation when added to a low-dust management plan, compared with management alone.

Work in youngsters has also shown that, when you feed similar amounts of omega-3 from different sources, fish-based oils change blood cell omega-3 levels more than flax, again pointing to the idea that if you actually want EPA/DHA in tissues, you’re better off feeding EPA/DHA, not just hoping ALA gets converted.

And importantly, a 2021 study in growing horses found that supplementing with omega-3s (from either flax or fish oil) did not increase oxidative stress or deplete vitamin E when diets were balanced, which is reassuring for safety.

Plant-based ALA-rich oils are great for topping up the pool, but if you want to really nudge your horse’s inflammatory pathways in a therapeutic way, the long-chain omega-3s (EPA and DHA) are the heavy hitters we actually have evidence for in diseased horses.

That doesn’t mean chuck your micronised linseed in the bin and drown your horse in fish oil. For a healthy horse on mostly forage, a good ALA source (like linseed) is usually enough to keep the omega-3:omega-6 balance in a nice place during winter when supply in forage is short.

For a horse with active inflammation, relying only on ALA is a bit like buying flour and hoping it turns into bread. The conversion bottleneck means you may never get enough EPA/DHA into joints or lungs to see the effect you’re hoping for.

This is where conditions like CPL come into the conversation too. Chronic progressive lymphoedema is very much a chronic inflammatory and lymphatic disease of the lower legs, with long-term oedema, fibrosis and ongoing low-grade inflammation in the skin and soft tissues. So it’s reasonable to treat CPL horses like we treat asthmatic or arthritic horses when we think about omega-3s: they’re in the higher-priority group where adding a direct source of EPA/DHA, on top of good management and veterinary care, may well be helpful, even though nobody has yet published a CPL-specific omega-3 trial.

🧠 Nerd note: There are currently no clinical studies looking specifically at EPA/DHA supplementation in CPL horses. The idea of using them here is an extrapolation: CPL is a chronic inflammatory, lymphoedematous condition, and EPA/DHA have already been shown to alter inflammatory markers and improve outcomes in other equine inflammatory diseases (like equine asthma and some joint problems).

This is why more equine nutritionists and vets are now suggesting keeping your sensible base (forage, sugar-sensible diet, plus ALA from grass/linseed), but if there’s a specific inflammatory problem you’re trying to manage, consider adding a direct source of EPA/DHA, usually from marine or algal oils.

Algal oils are a nice option if you’re not keen on fish oil for an herbivore or for ethical reasons; they supply DHA (and some products also include EPA) in a form the body can use straight away, without asking the horse to do the metabolic conversion itself.

One final thing to keep in mind: these changes are a slow burn, not instant magic. The studies that looked at tissue levels and clinical effects of EPA/DHA in horses were running for 60–90 days, not two weeks, before they measured meaningful differences in joint fluid, lung surfactant or clinical signs.

So, if you’re sitting with a sore, inflamed horse and a bottle of omega-3 wondering if it’s doing anything, it’s worth asking questions such as: what form of omega-3 is this actually providing, just ALA, or EPA/DHA as well? Does my horse need maintenance, or is it more a case of firefighting? Have I given it long enough, at a sensible dose, alongside good management and veterinary care?

Now off to find some algal omega-3 for my horse!

05/12/2025

Meet Goose! Horse oil for the shine ❤️

The mane!

Tamed by Hedgewitch Essentials 😍
Usually like wire wool by now 😝

Goose has way more beauty products than me.

04/12/2025

If you live with a cob or any other big hairy-legged horse, you’ll know the feather can hide all sorts of drama. Mud fever, mites, chronic progressive lymphoedema (CPL)… and sometimes nastier things that most of us hope we'll never have to deal with.

Two of the big, scary ones that seem to crop up in feathered horses, and disproportionately in those with CPL, are hoof canker and coronary band dystrophy (CBD). They sound terrifying because, frankly, they can be. But it helps a lot to understand what’s actually going on and why these problems seem to occur together.

Canker first. This is the one people sometimes call thrush on steroids, although it’s really unrelated. It usually starts in the frog and can spread into the bars, sole and even the hoof wall. Instead of firm, rubbery frog, you get soft, crumbly, spongy horn that can look almost cauliflower-like, often greyish-white, with a truly eye-watering smell. It bleeds easily if you trim or pick at it and can make the horse very sore and reluctant to stand still for long, let alone work.

Coronary band dystrophy is a bit more under the radar. The coronary band is the strip of tissue at the top of the hoof where new horn is made. IN CBD, the coronary band becomes thickened, scaly and crusty, sometimes with cracks that ooze. The hooves themselves can chip and split more than you’d expect. Often you see similar crusty, overgrown changes on chestnuts and ergots as well. Rather than being just an infection, CBD is more like a long-term fault in the little horn factory that runs along the top of the hoof.

Now bring CPL into the picture. Many of the horses that get canker or CBD also have those classic CPL legs: chronically puffy lower limbs, thickened skin, folds and nodules, crusts and scabs under the feather, and endless battles with mites and mud. CPL is a lymphatic disease where the leg’s drainage system doesn’t clear fluid properly, and it’s surprisingly common in heavy or feathered breeds. Put those things together and you can see why the legs and feet of these horses become high-risk.

🧠 Nerd note: A big review of Belgian Draught horses described CPL, canker and coronary band/chestnut/ergot changes appearing together in the same animals. The authors suggest they’re probably different faces of a shared underlying “skin and horn biology” problem in these breeds, rather than completely separate, random conditions.

So why feathered horses in particular? Part of it is simply how they’re built. They tend to have more keratin production (more hair, more scurf, more crusts), and hoof horn that in some genetic lines is softer or poorer quality. Modern studies suggest CPL is strongly genetic in certain draught breeds, and CBD is mostly reported in mature draft-type horses too. Canker seems to be over-represented in the same population.

🧠 Nerd note: In some draught populations, how badly a horse is affected by CPL is more than 50% explained by genetics in statistical models. Studies report CBD in heavy horses, but that doesn’t mean every horse will get these problems. What it really means is the basic wiring of skin, horn and lymphatics is a bit different in these breeds.

On top of that genetic backdrop, CPL changes the ground rules again. When lymph drainage is poor, the legs are constantly a little (or a lot) swollen. Fluid and inflammatory gunk hang around in the tissues instead of being cleared quickly. The skin is stretched, damp and more fragile. It doesn’t take much – a bit of mud fever, a tiny crack at the heel, a nick to the skin – for bacteria to wander in and set up home. In coronary band dystrophy, the actual process of turning skin cells into strong hoof horn is faulty, so you get those scaly, crusty bands and weaker horn. Add CPL to the mix, where you have a horse with more swelling, more scarring, and compromised immunity, it’s not hard to see why the top of the hoof becomes a long-term trouble spot.

Then there is the feather. They’re beautiful but they trap moisture, mud and dirt. They hide early warning signs until things are quite advanced. They also make a perfect little apartment block for feather mites, which cause itching and stamping. Itching leads to scratching and trauma, trauma and moisture lead to irritation, cracks and infection. All of this is sitting on top of legs that already have compromised drainage because of CPL. Canker and CBD don’t magically appear out of nowhere; they slide into an environment that’s been rolling out the red carpet for them for quite some time.

So what is canker, underneath the smell and the horror? The current view is that it’s an infectious disease of the hoof horn and underlying tissues, driven by a mix of bacteria. A group called Treponema, which is a spiral-shaped bacteria also involved in digital dermatitis in cattle, is high on the suspect list. They like soft, damaged tissue with low oxygen, and they’re very good at hunkering down in little pockets and biofilms where disinfectants and antibiotics struggle to reach. Healthy hooves bathed in normal muck don’t usually develop canker. It’s when you combine those bugs with softened, macerated horn and long-standing irritation that things go really wrong.

🧠 Nerd note: Studies that took tissue samples from canker lesions found several Treponema species (closely related to those found in cattle digital dermatitis) in the diseased horn, but not in normal hoof tissue. That’s why many researchers now talk about canker as a digital dermatitis–like disease in horses, with treponemes as probable key players.

Coronary band dystrophy is a bit different. When vets look at it under the microscope, they see overgrown, disorganised epidermis and thick, abnormal keratin. The skin there isn’t making horn in the neat, layered way it should; it overproduces and makes a mess of it. In many horses with CBD, you’ll see similar overgrown, scaly changes on chestnuts and ergots, which are basically little islands of the same type of tissue. Infection absolutely joins the party since those cracks and fissures let bacteria and fungi in, but the original problem is in the horn factory itself.

Given all of that, it makes sense that canker and CBD are so hard to treat and keep on top of. With canker, you’re fighting bacteria that hide deep in spongy, diseased horn and form biofilms, in an area that doesn’t have great blood supply to carry drugs in. You can pour things on from the outside, but unless the diseased horn is carefully and repeatedly cut away, very little reaches the bugs.

With CBD, even if you calm infections down, the coronary band is inclined to keep making dodgy horn because that’s how it’s wired.

On top of that, none of these problems ever arrive on a blank canvas. The same horse may have CPL, feather mites, secondary bacterial and fungal infections, a long toe or under-run heels, a bit of EMS or laminitis history… If you only tackle one piece of the puzzle, for example, you trim the frog but ignore the mites, or treat the skin but don’t change anything about the environment, the whole thing tends to creep back.

Spotting things early helps enormously. A frog that stays foul-smelling and mushy whatever you do, or a coronary band that remains crusty and cracked despite basic care, is worth a proper vet look and probably a conversation about CPL in the background, not just a bit of thrush or mud fever you can't seem to get on top of.

If a horse also has CPL or heavy feather, then feather management, mite control, movement and weight all become part of the same treatment plan rather than side issues.

And finally, it’s good to be kind to yourself. These are chronic, complicated conditions sitting on top of genetics and conformation you can’t change. Even with excellent care, they may relapse.

Over the years we've helped many horses manage both canker and CBD with a specially formulated product, Frog & Sole Extra, a topical mix of plant oils that reduces bacterial load - see before and after photos.