hair loss on top of tail

Question
My horse is 7 years old and lives in a stable.  He is in training for reining and ridden 6 days a week.  He is a hard keeper so he is fed grain and alfalfa pellets twice a day and his usual grass hay.  He is wormed every 6 weeks.
Last year his hair fell out from the follicle at the top of his tail and his mane.  We gave him ground flax seed and it started growing back.  This year only his tail fell out and the flax seed didn't do anything.  We also had him on safflower oil and kelp.  We did skin scrapings, blood tests for his thyroid, mineral deficiencies and nothing came back conclusive.  If you have any advice for me so he doesn't look ugly in the show pen I would appreciate it.

Answer
Hi Christina,

This is bit of a tricky one!

Is the horse leaning on his tail or rubbing it on a wall or fence?

There are a few things that can make a tail fall out.  These include:

Selenium Toxicity

Contact dermatitis

Ringworm.

There are other various skin disorders, but if the scrapings came back negative it's hard to tell.

Have you changed his wormer lately?  If it is pinworms then a change in worming chemical may help.

You could also try apple cider vinegar about 50ml a day in his feed (introduce slowly).  This acts as a general tonic and blood purifier.  

If there are no physical signs of injury (red pustules, broken skin, swelling, redness etc) then I would wash his tail in a mild antibacterial/medicated shampoo once or twice a week.  Watch out for any conditioners etc that you may be using, this could cause an irritation.  Try and keep his tail in a tailbag, this will protect the hairs if he is leaning or rubbing his tail.

If there is a bit of scurf present you could try rubbing a small amount of olive oil into the skin, but if you do this you need the tailbag to keep the dust off it.

Other than that it's hard without seeing it, but it's really a matter of time.  As you know tails are slow to grow so I would imagine that it would be next to impossible to have a smooth tail if you plan to compete in a few weeks/months.

I haven't a lot of experience in presenting reiners for competition, but would it be too 'girly' to pull his tail?  A pulled tail always has a rougher appearance at the top of the tail anyway,it would make the whole thing sort of blend in...

Good luck!