SARAH: "Since October means Halloween," which I love,
"I was wondering about warts in horses."
Oh, this is good. "A horse I am looking after for a friend has
a white wart in his ear.
How can warts be treated, prevented,
and kept from being passed on from horse to horse?"
DR LYDIA GRAY: All right.
So warts, there's a couple kinds of warts.
There's the ear warts.
I might call them ear papillomas.
Others might call them aural plaques.
A-U-R-A-L, aural.
And then there's the kind of warts
that are more Halloween-y that are on the end of your nose
and muzzle on horses.
Those kind of warts, and they're all the equine papillomavirus
so they're all caused by the same virus which is contagious.
So preventing spread is a good question.
Those are seen more often in young horses,
so certainly less than four.
I'm thinking to be like a yearling is really where.
And if you've seen them, the whole end of their muzzle
is covered with these small, they stick out, they're round.
They look like cauliflower.
They're just really ugly.
So the best thing to do is-- because they go away.
They spontaneously resolve on their own.
You don't have to do anything.
But just take the yearling and put him
in the back, maybe, of the barn for a couple months.
And then it's fine.
But you do have to be careful that they don't fall off
and that you don't use brushes and halters and spread them.
So be a little bit careful to try
to contain the warts on those.
But she's asking about ear warts.
Those are a little different, they're aural plaques.
Those are more in adult horses.
They are flat.
They don't stick out or protrude.
They're not stalk like like the ones on the muzzle.
And you see them as flat, white, in the ear.
They're caused by the equine papillomavirus
but they're spread by flies.
So prevention is-- I have a prop back here.
SARAH: I know what's happening.
DR LYDIA GRAY: The prevention is to get
a fly mask that has ears.
And that way flies don't get in your horse's ears
and spread the papillomavirus For the same reason,
once you're trying to treat them,
if you-- because horses can get a little head shy, ear shy.
They hurt, they bother them.
They know they're there.
You can put the fly mask on with ears after it
and keep the flies out.
And keep them from being pestered by the ears.
There hasn't been for years a treatment
for the aural plaques.
You just ignore them, don't look, don't pester them.
Don't bother them.
Don't put stuff on there, because the more you
address them, the more irritated they get, the horse gets.
It's bad.
But now the last maybe two years,
there is a new prescription cream
that you can get from your vet.
It's quite painful and sometimes the horses
have to be sedated for it to be put on.
But it does work really great.
So if you have a horse that just leaving it alone is not enough,
he really is really bothered by this,
then you might want to talk to your vet about that cream.
But the aural plaques and the ones on the nose, they
are caused by a virus.
So they are infectious and contagious.
And so there is an element of, I need to not spread this around.
So if you're petting noses, just don't
go down the barn and pet all the noses
and stick your fingers in all the ears and spread it.
Because you can.
You can do that.
SARAH: So definitely do pet the noses.
Just wash your hands and be careful
when you're going from nose to nose.
Because you don't want to not pet the noses.
It's kind of the best part.
When you were describing that, you said aural plaques.
Which sounds a lot like oral.
And so we have O-R-A-L is related to the mouth.
A-U-R-A-L is related to the ears.
All right.
Learn something new every day.