With the warm weather comes the bugs! Our pony Caddy and the goats never seem all that bothered by the bugs. I think they may have thicker skin. But our big strong horse, Fasci is so bothered she will come running back into the barn to escape the horse flies. She has a beautiful sleek coat and sheds out quickly but has thin skin that the bugs love.
I have noticed over the years the welts she gets from bug bites get bigger and bigger. None of the fly sprays or my homemade repellants work for more than an hour or two. Lately I have noticed that she rubs on trees to scratch them and turns them into open sores. I use our Tea Tree lotion Stick on them and that was healing them up nicely, until she got a really bad bite right where her belly and back leg meet.
I couldn’t figure out how she was scratching that one and she was making an awful mess of it. I will spare you the pictures, trust me I’m not bothered by much but I thought it was gross.  I bought some spot-on bug repellant like we use on the dog ( I don’t like to use them, but we have so many ticks I feel it is the best option). So far it has been working for a week so no more new bites. But she was still scratching the ones she had so they couldn’t heal.  Then I saw her do it. She was using the goat hutch. So we moved the hutch out of the pasture for now and everything seems to be healing now.