Know the Signs
Make checking your animal’s skin part of your everyday grooming routine, especially before and after a show.
Depending on the animal and stage of infection, suspicious areas may include:
- Circular or irregular areas of hair loss
- Dry, flaky, or scaly skin
- Crusty patches
- Broken hair
- Thickened or irritated areas of skin
- Areas where your animal suddenly begins rubbing or scratching
In cattle, ringworm commonly appears as round, hairless patches. However, not every bald or irritated area is necessarily ringworm, so contact your veterinarian when you aren't sure what you're dealing with. Animals with active ringworm should not be exhibited because of the risk of spreading it to others.
Don't Share Your Grooming Equipment
Your clippers, brushes, combs, halters, show sticks, blankets, buckets, and other supplies travel everywhere your animal does—and they can travel home carrying more than you bargained for.
One of the simplest rules during show season is:
Your animal. Your equipment.
Avoid borrowing or sharing grooming equipment between animals, particularly with livestock from other farms. Extension biosecurity guidance specifically recommends cleaning and disinfecting equipment before transportation and discourages sharing fitting, care, and feeding equipment at shows.
If something does need to be shared, properly clean and disinfect it before using it on another animal.
See Something Suspicious? Isolate First.
If you notice an unusual skin lesion, don't continue using the same brushes, clippers, halters, or towels on the rest of your animals.
Separate the animal and its equipment while you determine what's going on. Consider creating a designated set of supplies for that animal and clean and disinfect anything that may already have come into contact with the affected area.
Remember: ringworm is zoonotic, meaning it can spread between animals and people. Good hand hygiene and careful handling matter, too.
Make Ring Out Part of Your Show-Barn Routine
The best time to think about ringworm isn't when you're a few days away from a major show.
It's before there's a problem.
That's why Ring Out is a great product to keep in your show box and incorporate into your barn's skin-care and biosecurity routine.
Ring Out is a topical concentrate formulated to help manage ringworm and other fungal skin conditions while supporting healthy skin recovery. It can be used on cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, horses, and other animals when diluted and applied as directed.
Ring Out can also be used as part of a proactive show routine. FlexTran recommends using it before and after shows to help maintain healthy skin, as well as treating shared surfaces such as stalls, trailers, grooming tools, and other equipment to help reduce contamination.
For a showman, that makes Ring Out useful on both sides of the problem: helping manage ringworm when it appears and supporting a proactive routine designed to reduce the chances of bringing fungal contamination back into your barn.
Always follow the product's dilution and application directions, and consult your veterinarian when a skin condition is severe, persistent, spreading, or you're uncertain of the diagnosis.
Create a Post-Show Protocol—and Follow It Every Time
Don't wait until someone in the barn finds ringworm to decide what you're going to do.
Create a routine that happens every single time the trailer comes home.
Your protocol might look like this:
- Inspect every animal for bald spots, crusting, irritation, wounds, or other skin changes.
- Separate returning show animals from animals that stayed home.
- Clean and disinfect grooming equipment before it goes back into your regular barn setup.
- Clean the trailer, buckets, halters, show sticks, and other equipment that traveled to the show.
- Wash show clothes and clean footwear rather than walking straight back into your barn wearing them.
- Incorporate Ring Out into your before-and-after-show skin-care routine as directed.
- Continue monitoring animals for skin changes or other signs of illness after returning home.
Extension guidance recommends isolating animals returning from exhibitions and thoroughly cleaning and disinfecting equipment that traveled to the event before it is reintroduced to the farm.
Prevention Is Part of Showmanship
Great showmanship isn't limited to what happens once you enter the ring. It's everything you do in the weeks and months leading up to it.
Paying attention to skin health, keeping equipment clean, avoiding unnecessary sharing, isolating suspicious cases, and establishing a consistent biosecurity routine can help protect the work you've invested in your animals.
And when you're traveling throughout fall show season, don't wait until you see a suspicious spot to think about ringworm.
Keep Ring Out in the show box, stay consistent with your routine, and make skin health part of your show-day preparation.
Because after all the work you've put into getting your animal ready, you want to walk into the ring focused on one thing: showing your best.
Be proactive. Protect the coat. Stay show ready.
