Horse Health & First Aid

Every paddock eventually collects the same story: the wire cut nobody saw happen, the filled leg on a Sunday morning, the dull coat that will not improve no matter how much brushing it gets. This is the transactional centre of everything horse health at iRide EQ: complete first aid kits and vet supplies, silver-based wound care, gut and hoof supplements, sun protection and cold therapy boots, shipped fast around Australia from real stock, not a catalogue of things we might order in.

What Goes in a Horse First Aid Kit? The Working List

Google will offer you a hundred first aid kit checklists, and most of them quietly copy the human camping version. Horses are not campers. A useful horse first aid kit for Australian conditions covers three real jobs: stop a wound and hold it until the vet comes, spot a temperature or filled leg early, and keep a small digestive or dehydration wobble from becoming a float trip to the clinic. Build the kit around those jobs and you will not waste shelf space on items that expire before you ever open them.

Here is the working list we sell every week, priced as stocked. The complete kit at $90 already covers most rows; buy that first, then top up the things your property specifically runs out of (on our place it is cohesive bandage, always).

Kit item	The job it does	Our product	Price (AUD)
Complete kit	Everything below in one box	Value Plus First Aid Kit	$90
Digital thermometer	38.5 is normal; the number tells you whether to call the vet tonight or tomorrow	Safehorse of Sweden Thermometer	$54.95
Bandage scissors	Blunt tip cuts wraps off a swollen leg without nipping skin	Stainless Bandage Scissors 19cm	$5.95
Wound dressing	Sterile cover for cuts and grazes under the bandage	Curabine Veterinary Dressing	$24.95
Cotton wool and gauze	Padding layer under any leg wrap, every single time	Cotton Wool Roll and gauze roll	$18.5 and $15.7
Cohesive bandage	Sticks to itself, not the leg; the outer layer of a stable wrap	Valuwrap Cohesive	$4.95
Adhesive bandage	Holds dressings on hard-to-wrap spots like knees and hocks	Valuplast Adhesive Bandage	$9.4
Antiseptic wash and spray	Fighting infection in cuts when the flies are at their worst	AgSilver CleanWash and CleanSpray	$88.82 and $54.28
Poultice dressing	Drawing heat and infection out of a hoof or filled leg	Equitex Poultice Dressing	$15.75
Electrolyte paste	Sweat replacement after hard work on a hot day	HydroPaste Electrolytes	$28

Two honest notes from the field. First, check expiry dates on washes and dressings every spring; an out-of-date bottle is worse than a missing one because you think you are covered. Second, keep the kit where the float gear lives, not buried behind the tack room door, because the one time you need it at 9pm is the one time you are carrying a head torch and a lead rope and nothing else. Our full walkthrough of box contents, dos and do nots lives in the first aid kit essentials guide.

Wound Care and Bandaging: What Actually Works

Australian horse wounds follow a pattern. Wire, fencing tin, a kick in the paddock, and then flies. The first hour matters more than the product you end up buying, but the right shelf of products turns a panicky afternoon into a routine one. The aim is always the same: clean it, cover it, keep infection out, and decide fast whether this is a bandage job or a stitches job. If you are ever unsure whether a cut needs a vet, ring one; proud flesh and infection cost far more than the call-out.

The silver-based approach is our most reliable range for this job. Equifit's AgSilver line pairs cleaning with silver-infused aftercare: CleanWash Daily Strength ($88.82) for everyday washing, CleanTalc Daily ($60.15) to dry and protect in humid weather, and CleanBalm for the healing stage once new skin starts forming. For deeper knocks and heat in a leg, the Equitex medicated poultice dressing ($15.75) draws fluid and infection the traditional way, and Wound Plus ointment ($47.5) is the natural-option balm we reach for on girth galls and saddle rubs.

Bandaging deserves its own sentence or three, because this is where riders hurt horses with good intentions. Never put cohesive bandage directly on skin, never wrap tight enough to stop a digital pulse, and always work a padding layer underneath: cotton wool or a quilted leg wrap, then Valuwrap cohesive ($4.95) with even tension top to bottom, overlapping half a width each turn. If the leg above the bandage fills after a night, it is too tight or too low, and the correct poultice-and-support move is a job for your vet's instructions, not a guess from a Facebook thread.

Gut, Calm and Hoof: Choosing Horse Supplements That Earn Their Feed Bin

The supplement shelf is where most owners overspend first, so here is the filter we use: does the horse have a job-based need (hard work in heat, travel, competition), a visible problem (dull coat, loose manure, poor hoof wall), or an ulcer-and-scopes level issue that needs a vet? Only the first two belong on a shopping page. The horse supplements collection carries the range; this hub keeps the best sellers on rotation in the rail above.

Match the supplement to the job rather than the label:

• Gut and digestion. GutOnic ($109.5) is the everyday probiotic and ulcer-support blend riders here keep on the float, and psyllium ($50.35) is the standard answer for sand concretion risk on coastal and sandy paddocks.
• Calm and behaviour. Pastes such as ZenPaste ($28) and blends like ZenBlend take the edge off travel and clinic days. An honest word: herbal calmers are for nerves, not for danger. A genuinely explosive horse needs a professional, not a syringe.
• Hoof and coat from the inside. Biotin ($76.5) remains the evidence-backed basic for weak horn, and DermaBlend ($109.5) with omega oils does the same job for skin and coat shine that grooming products can only fake from the outside.
• Electrolytes. Non-negotiable in an Australian summer. A horse in full work sweats out salts faster than any hay bag replaces them, so pastes and liquids like HydroPaste ($28) belong in the feed room from October to March, not just on competition day.
• Vitamins and minerals. If the diet is good pasture plus a balanced hard feed, most horses need less than the supplements industry would like. A broad-spectrum base like NutriBlend ($109.5) covers gaps for horses on restricted diets, poor pasture or heavy work.

For the full ranked shortlist by category and price, our Top 10 horse supplements for 2026-2027 guide goes product by product, including which ones are genuinely worth the shelf space and which are filler. Feed any new supplement for six weeks before judging it, and change one thing at a time, or you will never know what worked.

Skin, Coat and Sun Protection Built for the Australian Sun

The Australian sun is not a footnote in a skin care section, it is half the job. Pink-nosed horses and pale-coated greys burn through winter in the northern states and badly from September everywhere else. Powders seem gimmicky until you use one on a horse that hates creams: Soothing Calm sunscreen powder ($12.5) brushes onto white noses, blocks the UV that causes the peel, and survives a feed bucket far better than any cream we have tried. For the burns and rubs that already happened, aloe vera spray ($26.5) cools raw patches under the saddle area and behind the elbows where sweat sits all summer.

Coat quality that lasts past a wash is built from the inside: DermaBlend and omega oils above, then finished by the grooming routine on the grooming brushes collection. Feed the coat, then polish it. Riders who do one and skip the other are always the ones asking why the shine at the show does not last the trailer ride home.

Cold Therapy and Recovery Gear for Working Legs

Two decades ago icing a horse's legs meant a bucket, a hose and twenty minutes you did not have. The current generation of boots does the whole job unattended: Equifit's gel compression tendon boots ($384.03) pair cold with compression, the TendonPak wrap ($405.64) heats or chills square gel packs against the leg, and the Majyk Equipe ice boots ($399.95) are the go-to on high-volume competition yards. After hard cross-country schooling, a long float trip or a hot-weekend show schedule, twenty minutes of cold therapy per leg is the routine that keeps next weekend on the calendar.

For overnight support, standing wraps ($264.69) and the Silver Sox and Gel Sox range do transport and stabling duty: they hold a poultice in place, reduce stocking-up in horses that stand in, and protect travel legs from boot rubs. The rule of thumb worth keeping: heat and swelling that do not improve with one round of cold therapy and support earn a vet call the same day. Cold boots manage work, they do not diagnose anything.

Worming and Digestive Health: Products and the Schedule Behind Them

Allwormer pastes such as Equinox ($16.75) and Expel ($20) sit in this collection because worm burden is a health issue before it is a feeding issue. What matters more than the brand is the calendar and the faecal egg count behind it: resistance is real in Australian paddocks, so drench on evidence, rotate actives by season, and dose to an accurate weight rather than a hopeful eyeball. Our seasonal worming schedule for Australia explains the timing month by month, and the paste you need at each point in it is on the first panel of this page.

For the digestive side that pastes do not cover, the gut supports above carry the load between drenches. A worming program and a probiotic routine are complements, not substitutes.

Frequently Asked Questions