Protein lumps

honey65

honey65

Member
Jul 4, 2009
333
4
18
Bakewell, Derbyshire
I think my horse has protein lumps. He's been on box rest for 2 weeks now and I've given him unlimited haylage. Having realised what is giving him the lumps I'll cut back on hard feed and given him hay instead, but I wondered if heat made them more likely. Even though Comet is a Dales, he is not a good doer and drops weight easily so I keep him well rugged. He never feels overly hot, just nice and warm under his stable rug. Could I be over doing it and making the lumps worse?
 
I have to be very very careful not to let Arnie get too warm or he comes up in lumps. Thinking about it, in the summer, when they are out at night say, they are cool to the touch, not cold but not warm as such. If I let Arnie get past the "cool to middling" stage he gets lumpy.

Haylage is another major thing for lumps. Not all haylage causes them though - only certain ones - seems to depend how rich it is? Feeds containing barley are quite bad for causing it too. If haylage or hay has been cut from a field that was undersown with barley you can get problems with lumps.

The lumps look like hives really. They can make a horse very uncomfy and itchy:(
 
Luna corona and happy hacker - I tried to take a picture but the lumps are under the hair and so you can't see anythink on the pic. He has loads of lumps all over his body and neck about in 5mm diameter which are hard to touch. Comet doesn't react when they're touched so they obviously aren't painful. He doesn't seem to find them too itchy (therefore making me think not an allergic reaction). The yard staff all seemed pretty certain that they're protein lumps ('urticaria') and from researching on net it seems reasonable.

I'm moving yards next week and have hay waiting for him. My current (full livery) yard doesn't have any hay :)confused:) and will only give their hard feed - not terribly hard to see why I'm moving. So when I move I'm hoping it will improve under my care.
 
it's always good to learn something new - thanks for the info and as for your current yard, haven't they heard that the customer is always right? plus, I would have thought that a horses welfare would come first as far as the hay/haylage issue is concerned?

Good luck with the move.
 
Skippys Mum said:
I have to be very very careful not to let Arnie get too warm or he comes up in lumps. Thinking about it, in the summer, when they are out at night say, they are cool to the touch, not cold but not warm as such. If I let Arnie get past the "cool to middling" stage he gets lumpy.
Click to expand...

Have the same with Maddy, she have to be clipped out any where tack sits so she doesnt get to hot. In the autumn I didint clip her for a while as she was out of work, she did get hot even though unrugged and when I came to clip her not only did I find 2 lumps that I knew were there but hundreds of tiny ones that her thick coat was hiding.

But without seeing them it would be differcult to guess. Where sre the lumps? How big? Are they itchy? Sore? Do they look like their scabing or flakey?
 
Sorry, I've never heard of urticaria (nettle rash) being called protein lumps before! If you know what's causing them, you can deal with that, and the homoeopathic remedy called Urticaria 6c could be useful in reducing the lumps even quicker.
 
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