Poultice for Horses – A Soothing, Cooling Treatment

Dry poultice can be revitalized with water.

Types of poultices for horses

• Poultice is a drawing salve, applied topically, to legs, hooves, insect bites, or closed wounds.

Clay poultice

• Most of us remember the clammy, gray clay poultice. This cooling style is best for minor discomfort, quick recovery, and general use after exercise.

• Now, many manufacturers add ingredients to a clay base to boost the drawing and soothing properties of the clay. You can find herbal ingredients, like arnica, to relieve soreness.

• Some poultices have added essential oils or other natural ingredients, like lavender or peppermint.

Menthol and capsaicin in poultice

• Menthol, a common ingredient in liniments, improves blood circulation to the area. While it feels cool, it also has a warming effect. Many horses and people find naturally soothing ingredients like menthol fantastic, while others may not appreciate this.

• Capsaicin is the ingredient in peppers that gives them spicy heat and is sometimes added to liniments or poultices to increase blood flow topically. Just like menthol, your horse may have a negative reaction to it.

Epsom salt poultice

• Epsom salt poultice is best for sole bruises and hooves. It’s typically green, and the Epsom salt chunks are easy to see and feel.

• Other hoof treatments, like Magic Hoof, are similar to a poultice but designed only for the hoof.

• You can use green salt pastes on the legs, but it will stain white or gray hair a lovely shade of green.

There’s no mistaking Epsom salt poultice!

What is Bentonite Clay?

• Some formulations use bentonite clay as the main ingredient. Bentonite clay is naturally occurring, and its fine particles come from volcanic ash.

• This specialty clay is used for cat litter and in cosmetic, medical, and agricultural applications.

• For horses, you can find Bio-Sponge, a bentonite clay that horses eat to help with diarrhea. Your veterinarian can advise you on the proper usage if your horse has diarrhea, which can be an emergency.

• As a topical treatment for horses, bentonite clay may help with sores, bites, allergies, and skin infections. Your vet can also advise if this is a good remedy for your horse.

Mind your ingredients

• The fancy additives to traditional clay horse poultice can boost the benefits of this treatment but may add to excess heat. While a therapeutic blend of minerals and ingredients sounds great on the label, check all ingredients to see if it’s the best poultice for your horse.

• Many ingredients will test at shows, at the FEI and national levels. Generic, plain clay products are excellent for horse shows, as they are effective at soothing your horse’s legs without testing. Talk to your vet if you are unsure of what works.

Use Poultice for Swelling and Comfort

• There’s a long list of benefits to the use of poultice for horses. These range from simply soothing sore muscles after a hard workout, drawing heat and excess fluid from the lower legs and helping superficial irritations. In a post-exercise or therapeutic setting, a poultice is ideal!

• Your vet can advise you on the best course of action when you have a lameness, acute injury, or larger wound. This plan may include medications, topical treatments, modified exercise, liniments, or poultice. Because of the many causes of lameness and injury, work with your vet on the best poultice and how to use it. While poultice is typically benign, your horse may benefit from another treatment at first and then supportive care with poultice.

Diapers make excellent pads for hoof abscess packing.

Drawing hoof abscesses

• It’s common practice to use an Epsom salt poultice for abscesses. But, these green pastes are best used AFTER your vet has created a drainage area.

• Hoof poultice can help draw inflammation and infection from the hoof to help an abscess erupt, but why make your horse wait that long? Your vet can create drainage to relieve pressure and pain instantly. Then, the poultice can work more effectively.

• You can also find poultice pads that make applying hoof goops much easier.

How to Apply Poultice to Legs

• There are few things easier to do with horses than slathering on some pasty, clay goodness. The tricky part is wrapping it all up, but with some practice that gets easy, too.

Tools to gather

• • Poultice of choice
  • Small bucket of water, especially if your poultice is cracked
  • Paper towel, newspaper, or paper grocery bag
  • Leg quilt or no-bow wrap
  • Standing bandage

Steps

• You can do this without gloves, but then you may end up with clay or goop drying under your fingernails.
• Grab a scoop of clay with your fingers. If it’s cracked or drying out, add water to the container and let things soften.
• Smear it on your horse’s tendons, and you may also want to cover the fetlocks.
• If you prefer things to be smooth, dip your hands in the water and smooth out anything you don’t like.
• Then, get your paper wet and wrap it around the leg. This paper layer protects your quilt or wrap from becoming goopy.
• Now, you can apply your standing wrap.

Do you have to wrap the poultice after applying?

• You sure don’t! But, if your horse rubs their nose on their legs, it can get everywhere. Shavings and dirt will also stick, but for the most part, it’s just as effective as wrapping. It’s common in some polo barns to skip the standing wraps.

Applying Poultice to Hooves

• This is super easy if you have a hoof boot. Otherwise, you’ll be making the duct tape shoe.

Tools to gather

• • Your poultice
  • Diaper or padding
  • Protective boot or infinite duct tape

Steps

• The easiest thing to do is slap a blob of poultice onto the diaper. You could even scoop it out of the container with the diaper.
• Then pop that on the sole. Your horse’s weight will squick the hoof packing into all the nooks and crannies.
• Then, add your horse’s hoof boot or many layers of duct tape.

Damp paper, newspaper, feed bag lining, paper towel, etc. all work well!

How long do you leave the poultice on?

You can leave the clay treatment on overnight if you like! It’s always a great idea to avoid leaving wraps on 24/7, as you need to inspect the leg and perhaps apply more poultice. 

Removing Poultice for Horses

• Use grooming gloves or a curry comb to remove dried poultice from the legs.

• Or, you can rinse the poultice away, but if you spend some time chipping away the dried clumps, there’s much less to rinse off. It’s much faster to curry the dry stuff off.

• You may find that some hoof poultice doesn’t like to dry out, in which case you can wipe out the excess and let your horse go their merry way.

The green Epsom-based poultice is also great to use as a hoof goop.

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