Regarding the abscess issues, I have one horse which foundered several years ago which was my introduction to insulin resistance in aged quarterhorses in particular.

I had to modify his green grass habit! In the end, I converted the whole property back to native grass although some exotics will persist and come on the wind each season. And I had to learn not to let them get too fat at any time of year. Fat is not good for us nor our horses.
But being not so fat is better than grazing muzzles or limited grazing while being held away from herd mates or in dry lots etc. Very hard to get suitable dry hay.

This year in particular, with this mouse plague, quality hay will be almost impossible to get now after this rain.
I expect this rain will put paid to the mouse plague but there will still be lots of dead mice in horse hay.
Please everyone, be very careful when you buy hay or bags of grain product that it doesn’t contain dead mice or mouse bait or Botulism may result. Let your nose tell you!

Thank you! I really appreciate this contribution, and am grateful for the recognition that a first line of treatment might be needed (it is!). A lot of horses have hoof abscesses at the moment too, even with regular and thorough trimming.

Local endurance riders have used henna products on the pasterns too, but I’m not sure how effective this is in the face of standing 24/7 in water and wet ground in a downpour.

Try organic full cream milk with or without honey added as a first line of defence. Milk is not only a remedy for horses but a well known tonic for food plants that have powdery, grey or sooty mould. 10:1 is the usual ratio or if it’s bad or the air is very humid use 5:1 sprayed on, always using full cream organic milk and doesn’t matter whether it’s homogenised or not for the plants. Also straight milk is suitable as an eyewash for humans and animals due to being alkaline. This is why it can work on plants or animals with mould/fungal/bacterial topical infections. There is also something to do with the milk harbouring good bacteria which fight off or out-populate the bad bacteria and fungi.

For your horse, paint the milk on at full strength or bathe the leg(s) in it and wait for it to dry if possible as it may attract flies or ants. You need to keep watch, and if it does it’s not suitable.
Honey is applied full strength but it must be lightly bandaged or the horse or its mates will lick the honey off. So in wet, humid or hot weather, this is not a really good idea to bandage the legs. Manuka honey is known as a remedy for swollen legs caused by scratches and greasy heel along with light bandaging to prevent fluid build-up in the lower legs. It could be that the fat in the milk offers relief to the skin maintaining a degree of suppleness or that the good bugs overrun the bad bugs. But I don’t think the smell would be very nice! lol Also regarding the NZ honey, research has proven that Aussie honey that comes from most bush areas of the country has almost the same medicinal properties as Manuka. Any honey coming from tea tree country is suitable.

However, even though I like to have my horses as chemical free as possible, if I saw they had any of the issues this article is written about in this weather, I would probably resort to Equidene (iodine) or similar as a first line of treatment because you don’t want to spend days testing organic possibilities while the problem gets worse with every passing hour.

I would be thinking there is a time and place for testing and under these extreme circumstances, now is not the time. However, it is good to keep this remedy in mind for mild cases at normal times of year.