Udderly soothing animal ointment a hit with humans
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - When Barbara Peacock applied a veterinary ointment called Bag Balm to her horse, she always rubbed the excess into her hands.
After noticing that little cuts on her hands started disappearing, she now uses the balm for everything from dry feet to diaper rashes.
Bag Balm, long used by farmers for chaffed cow udders, has become a mainstay health and beauty product for humans. It's been praised by country singer Shania Twain, featured in movies and recommended by dermatologists, cyclists and tattoo artists.
"It works incredibly well," said Peacock, 61, of Castaic, California. "I love it."
Dairy Association Co. Inc. in Lyndonville, Vermont, is manufacturing more than 2 million cans of the balm a year.
"We even had a lady call in and say she used it on squeaky bed springs," said Barbara Allen, 56, president of the company.
Bag Balm, which costs $6.79 online for a 10-ounce can, isn't the first veterinary product that has found its way to medicine cabinets. Mane 'n Tail shampoo, made for horses, was voted best moisturizing shampoo by Cosmo Girl in 2003.
Udderly Smooth udder cream has a line of body lotions, and Hoof Lacquer, a horse hoof polish manufactured by Gena Laboratories, now comes in half-ounce bottles for fingernails.
CAUTIONARY WARNINGS
With animal concoctions so easily available at traditional and online retailers, some cautions apply.
A 1997 article in the monthly journal U.S. Pharmacist cited a case in which an 8-month-old girl started growing breasts. When tests failed to explain the problem, the girl's mother mentioned she used a horse product for the baby's diaper rash.
A physician hypothesized that beeswax in the ointment, which contains estrogen, caused the premature development.
The author of the article, Steven Pray, a pharmacy professor at Southwestern Oklahoma State University, discourages people from using Bag Balm because it is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for animal use only.
"I've heard people say, 'If it's good enough for a cow, it's good enough for me,'" he said. "But we are different physiologically than animals."
That doesn't stop Alan Rockoff, a dermatologist in Brookline, Massachusetts, from recommending Bag Balm for minor conditions such as flaky skin and rashes.
"There's certainly nothing wrong with it," he said. "It's been around for so many years, it's hard to think it would be toxic in any meaningful sense."
Bag Balm became a household item when farm workers discovered it made their hands softer after applying it to cows.
The balm and its packaging have undergone little change since 1899. It has a petroleum jelly texture and an odor that has been described as medicinal, weird and like sulfur. The company once tried adding an agent to change the smell, but the result was "just awful," Allen said.
Sandra Earn, owner of Dominion Veterinary Laboratories, a Bag Balm distributor in Winnipeg, Canada, said sales shot up about 75 percent after singer Twain endorsed the balm in a newspaper interview. It has remained a big seller.
Earn said she keeps a container of the balm on her desk because she thinks the can is pretty. But her personal preference is Udder Budder, another ointment for cows.
It works better than Bag Balm, she said, "if you can get past the smell."
