A rider-first education hub for stiffness, recovery, cooling, hoof care, skin care, hauling, regional weather, insect pressure, emergency readiness, and plain-English barn terms.
Do not treat smoky, hazy air like an ordinary hot day. Check local air-quality and heat guidance before riding, conditioning, hauling, or asking a horse for strenuous work.
Smoke changes the decision before the ride. Heat changes the recovery plan afterward. A cooling product cannot make unhealthy air safe.
Check Current U.S. Air Quality · Wildfire Smoke & Evacuation Readiness · Cooling & Post-Ride Recovery · Hot Weather Water Checks · When Electrolytes Are Not Enough
Call your veterinarian, farrier, fire department, or emergency authority for sudden severe lameness, non-weight-bearing, hoof heat with a bounding digital pulse, fever, colic signs, dehydration concerns, wounds, rapid swelling, abnormal breathing, smoke exposure, fire, embedded parasites, unusual tissue damage, or anything getting worse instead of better.
Quick answer: fly and tick season should start with a hands-on horse check. Move unusual wounds, embedded parasites, fever, swelling, drainage, visible larvae, or rapidly changing tissue into the veterinary lane.
USDA is leading the federal response to New World screwworm detections in the United States and currently describes the overall risk to people and animals in the United States as very low. Texas has an established infested zone and movement controls in affected areas, so current veterinary, state-animal-health, and travel instructions matter.
For suspected cases in Texas livestock: contact a Texas Animal Health Commission regional office or call the Texas State Veterinarian on call at 1-800-550-8242. Outside Texas, contact your veterinarian and the appropriate State Animal Health Official or USDA APHIS office.
Do not delay reporting to try another spray, salve, cleaner, dewormer, or home remedy.
FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization for Ivermectin Liquid for Horses, a prescription oral solution for narrowly defined, short-term prevention of New World screwworm myiasis in horses.
Barn rule: an emergency authorization is not a direction to give every horse more dewormer. Call your veterinarian and use only the specific authorized product, timing, dose, and circumstances.
Read the FDA announcement · Read FDA's letter to horse owners and veterinarians
Visible larvae, foul odor, enlarging wounds, unusual pain, drainage, fever, weakness, appetite changes, or abnormal behavior are veterinary and animal-health reporting questions—not product questions. Neither the FDA-authorized preventive use nor an ordinary fly-season routine replaces immediate evaluation when an infestation is suspected.
No. The authorization is narrow, prescription-only, and tied to specific wound-risk moments. FDA says it is not routine prevention for healthy horses without wounds or an expected wound risk.
No. The authorization is for short-term prevention under specified circumstances, not treatment. Suspected or visible infestation requires immediate veterinary and animal-health reporting.
Citraquin® Environmental Defense Spray may remain part of an ordinary, label-directed fly-season routine on intact skin. It is not a screwworm prevention product, treatment, diagnostic tool, drug, or guarantee.
USDA Screwworm Response and Reporting · AAEP Equine Guidance
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