Help please hay allergy for a horse person!

[harli]

I think I may now have an allergy to hay. This is very frustrating to me because.....

#1 I was never allergic to ANYTHING until my second child was born. Since then I've found I have an allergy to 2 different antibiotics as well a yeast infection med

#2 I'm a horse person. Hay is one of my favorite scents and the barn is my favorite place to be. Seriously I could smell that stuff all day. Now I'm allergic to it???

I haven't been around hay recently because the horses have been eating grass for a while now until just about 3 days ago. My sister decided it would be a good idea to get my 4 year old a guinea pig (even after I said no but that is neither here nor there). Yesterday I noticed that my eyes got itchy while around the 'piggy'. I doubt it's from the pig himself because I have dogs, a horse, a cat and until just a few months ago rabbits that I'm not allergic to. The pig is kept in a cage with cardboard bedding and hay for food. I'm going to try shredded paper bedding(which is the least allergenic) in case that is the problem but sadly I really think it's the hay.

I'm recently coming off a really bad case of mastitis. Which I was on antibiotics for 20 days for, due to the doc prescribing the wrong antibiotics during the first course of treatment. Then I'm just finally coming off the terrible yeast infection that had to go through 4 treatments ( probiotics, 2 over the counter meds, and diflucan) to treat. So I'm sure my immune system is in hyper drive at the moment.

Is there any hope that once my immune system calms down that the allergy will go away or lessen? Is there anything that can be done homeopathically to treat it?

[DisplacedYooper]

Originally Posted by harli

The pig is kept in a cage with cardboard bedding and hay for food.

How does the quality of the guinea pig hay compare to the quality of your horse hay? Hay marketed for horses tends to be very high quality because horse owners are known to be very picky about moldy, dusty hay. Hay for other animals (cows, for example) is often not of the same quality. The horses at my university's research barn really suffered for a few years because the folks in charge of making hay were only producing "cow quality" hay, and even though it wasn't (usually) black with mold, if you were careful about smelling it, most of the hay has some mold smell. The hay there often made me sneeze, but the well-made hay at the barn where I board now doesn't cause the same reaction.

[harli]

I hadn't thought of that being a possibility but honestly both hays are pretty excellent.

I mow the lawn all the time though and rake the dried clippings. How likely is it that I'm not allergic to that but I am to longer stem hay?

[JaneS]

High dose 250mg of natural vitamin C such as camu, acerola or amla powder. The natural bioflavonoids are awesome for allergies and neutralizes the histamine response. I got rid of my lifelong hay fever with this (comes back if I slack) and I'm also way less sensitive to dust and mold.

Continue high dose probiotics.