My gelding is a tick magnet. When other horses get one occasionally, he'll have several at a time. His immune system evidently freaks out at tick bites -- he gets huge swellings filled with blood and pus. Not fun when that happens at the girth. *And* we're in Lyme Disease country.
But I've discovered a sure-fire method of repelling ticks from him. Garlic. I feed a teaspoon, twice a day, of ABC garlic. It's more expensive per ounce, but you feed much less and it's not as messy compared to, say, Springtime garlic, which I fed for a couple of years. It doesn't repel other biting insects (no help at all with horrible deer flies), but it works wonderfully against ticks. I discussed feeding garlic with my vet before trying it. He said that anecdotal evidence indicates that it helps some horses, but not all. I know some folks believe that garlic is toxic to horses (because it's related to onion), but Susan G commented a while back that at such a low dose it should not pose a threat. As we know, many things we feed our horses are wonderful at one dose level and dangerous in larger amounts. Cindy =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
