Rural Heritage December 2025/January 2026

keeping it clean and letting it heal from the inside out. The opening the horse made was not nearly big enough to let it drain or for us to keep it clean. I had the vet help me make an incision that was over an inch long and, by the next day, it had opened further on its own to a circular hole about 3 inches across, and it appeared just as deep! It was a gaping and ugly hole in the chest. Now that it was open, it was up to us to take care of it. And we were just about at the height of fly season. Our vet prescribed antibiotics, and that continued for more than three weeks. We had a routine that we used twice a day. One thing that surprised me was how well he would tolerate the direct contact of water from a hose right on the open wound. We did not use any pressure, no thumb over the end or any nozzle

for example, but we could run the hose right into the cavity for five minutes while the horse grazed on a lead rope. After this flush, we would soak the whole site with weak (the color of tea) iodine solution. Applied from a pump spray bottle. I used half a bottle at time, soaking it well and getting all the way inside. Again, on the advice of our vet, after we dried around the outside of the wound, we sprayed a couple pumps of “silver honey,” which is a topical spray made of Manuka honey, micronized silver, shea butter, calendula flower extract, neem oil, vitamin E and B5, among other helpful skin promotants. This was just a little added insurance for fast healing. After experimenting with several ways to cover the wound enough to keep flies away from it, we settled on a highly modified XL tee shirt that he

Duke’s Tee shirts didn’t always look this good, but they did the trick of keeping flies off.

December 2025/January 2026

17