There is a completely natural way in preventing lice in horses. Not just in preventing, but in treating existing lice. You don’t have to go down the dangerous chemical route. Nature knows what she’s doing. She’s got it down pat.
The Causes of Lice
Before reaching for any treatment or prevention, it’s sensible to work out the cause. It’s also sensible to decide if the treatment or prevention you’re considering is worse than the condition. This happens regularly with veterinary (and medical) drugs.
In homeopathy, we put causes into two camps – the exciting causes and the maintaining causes. Both causes can cover a wide range of conditions, some easy to fix, some less so.
The exciting causes are those that are caused by a single event. Examples include an injury, a bite, a shock, a trauma.
The maintaining causes are those that are maintained by an action, but a repeating action.
How the body responds depends on how healthy the immune system is. If it’s in good order, neither cause will have much impact on the economy as the body can respond well. It’s designed to do that. If it isn’t in good order, a cascade of problems can ensue from either cause.
While these problems are viewed as separate issues by the veterinary (and medical) industry, they are only the body’s way of expressing a lack of harmony.
One maintaining cause of lice in horses is being well rugged up. Fresh air circulating around the skin is one of the healthiest ways to control lice populations. Little pockets of trapped and warm air are ideal breeding grounds. Open that up, and the conditions are not so favourable for them.
Sunshine is another way of preventing lice in horses. Or of treating them. Birds will sunbathe with their wings outspread to capture the sun, for many reasons, one being for parasite control. Sunshine is an essential part of everyone’s health. Permanently stabled horses are never as healthy or as happy as those out at pasture, for a variety of reasons and one of them is their lack of exposure to the sun for that parasite control.
Unrugged horses out at pasture attract insect eating birds. The birds are busy pecking at any delicious insect they find. They appear to do this gently as the horses are very happy with the process. As with Nature in general, this is a truly symbiotic relationship. Both help each other.
It’s also important to appreciate that if your horses immune system is not in good order, something you’ll not be able to measure, they’ll be a magnet for any and every parasite. And any and every ailment.
How To Keep Your Horses Immune System In Good Shape
There are many and varied ways to destroy anyone’s immune system. They broadly come under three headings, all of them maintaining causes:
- Diet
- Living Conditions
- Health Care
The Diet
The diet is really important. Many of the common brands of horse feed contain unsuitable ingredients. In our current, profit motivated world, money is spent on fancy advertising rather than the quality of the product. Horses need a lot of bulk and they need it all the time.
Which brings up another problem. Wild horses eat for around 20 hours a day. When that isn’t available for them, they’ll get stomach ulcers. That means pain and anxiety.
Living Conditions
Living conditions include being able to wander around as they graze. It also includes having at least one companion as horses are herd animals. A lonely horse will have high anxiety levels as this makes them very vulnerable. They’re not operating from the fact there aren’t any predators where you live. They’re operating from their ingrained wisdom that a herd is safer than being on their own.
What you do with your horse impacts their immune system a great deal. If you’re aware of their feelings and nuances and honour them, this will make for a contented horse. The opposite is true if you don’t. Trainers can be brutal. Stormy May brings a gentleness to training.
The equipment you use is important, too. Bits can do untold damage and are often misused. They have been known to brake jaw bones. Most horses do much better in a bitless bridle.
How heavy you are, the saddle fit, how often you ride, how long you ride for, where you are emotionally when you ride, all have an impact on your horses well being and so immune system. Horses are extremely sensitive beings. Far more so than humans.
Separating horses, weaning them (dams are totally able to do that themselves), selling them on, can all cause a lot of grief. Grief easily incapacitates.
Health Care
The sort of health care you use for your horse has a direct link on how healthy their immune system is. Veterinary drugs and vaccines aim to suppress ailments rather than to cure them. Healthy beings aren’t suppressed either physically or emotionally. They’re free from problems.
It’s vital not to suppress a horse in any way as they’re prey animals. Prey animals will hide their weaknesses so that potential predators don’t see them. A weakness can mean death because it’s an easy catch for the predator.
Preventing lice in horses can be very easy to achieve or can have a complex and twisted road to recovery. Either way, it’s more productive to look for the cause than to reach for those quick fixes that never work in the long run and can harm. Using an holistic health care system such as homeopathy will help maintain your horses immune system while dealing with any imbalances or problems.
