Horse with Colic

Fed early last night .. 3:30 snow on horizon .. got them fed before it got here. The Sun Valley 25 year old gelding Tenn Walker was down .. but bright shiny eyes .. got him up but had to smack him with a blanket to make him jump up .. pulling on the halter didn't work. He started mildly kicking with his hind foot and turning around and biting at his flank area .. stomach pain. Called the vet and the owner.

Vet has lost several horses in the past week to colic .. liked the heart rate .. 50. Seventy or above indicates twisted gut and surgery or putting them down.

Tubed him and gave him a shot to ease the pain .. 6:00 .. heard banging on wind breaks at 1:30 AM .. down. Got him up and into loafing shed .. not the one in the pasture I'm building. Freezing and light wind. Mixed some of my Ginseng from Mnt. Rose Herbs that I keep on had to fight bloat in month old kids and human stomach pain .. and Colic Ease from Silver Lining Herbs .. watery mixture .. sucked it up with small syringe .. grand daughter was doctoring her bunch down the road and ran off with our big one .. will have to get it replaced and get a few extra .. she cuts the end out of them and mixes ground up Bute with Burr Rabbit Molasses and pushes it into the back of the mouth to get Bute into a horse .. one pill equals 15 asprin.

2:15 .. Got the horse back into the shed out of the wind and off the frozen ground onto straw .. eating straw could have made him sick .. put three mug fulls of my mixture in to him and I'm having a cup of coffee and will check him again. Night lights on and the coyotes are in with my neighbors cows howling .. hope they are not calving .. my Boer goats are nervous but can take care of them selves. My cutting horse mare wishes they would come get in her pen .. she would kill them for sure. I have ridden her cutting cows .. I would not wish to have her after me.

I hope your horse is ok this morning...such a worry for you. It's odd that there has been a rash of colic incidents in your area, does the vet have any idea why?

10:00 AM .. Vet very happy that Cody passed his mineral oil and cleared his bowel. He ate some hay, Vet said no grain for a few days, I turned him and his running mate out into the pasture where I'm working on the loafing shed. I don't think they will bother it.

This will get them completely away from hay and straw. Will pull all the straw out of the loafing shed where they were and get the pen ready to take them through the next storm. Would rather not leave two old horses out in a pasture without even as much as a wind break .. in our storms.

When horses on grass start colicing in the spring .. I have heard old stockmen say it is just a deal that blew in on the wind or hatched out of our ground. Didn't ask the Vet.

I'm going to bed. Fire is going and Nancy is fed and happy.

Hello guys, I'm currently doing research about horse colic. I was able to search this thread via google.

What kind of colic is your horse having? My grandmother's horse had colic caused by EGUS, and it hit her horse pretty bad. The horse is colicky about 3 times a week, the vet says she had EGUS, so we decided to treat her with our vet's recommended treatment. But one product made her horse feel definitely better, it was Abprazole from Abler. Is it okay to post links here? I just wanted to share: http://www.abler.com for equine ulcers. You might want to check them out.

Colic is miserable.  Glad your horse is better.

I believe that in winter,  one catalyst is horses drinking less water, grazing less  and eating more dried feed in fewer meals.  A few things I try is smaller more frequent feedings ,  I feed in hayracks in the stalls for the most part due to ease but feeding in  haynets that are secured down in the bottom of hay feeders so they horses pull out less feed at a time seems to waste less feed I place bales in  wheelbarrows I designate for hay then I water the bales the night before for the next days feeding.  Its a little intensive but much less waste and to date no colic.  A lot of people advocate daily worming as well.  I might try extra garlic and after reading about the farmer in France deworming his ducks letting them eat  Cannabis, well surprisingly a little research suggested it had been used for this in China historically too.  I wonder if it would make for happy mellow horses? 

This is an idea I came up with for feeding to slow down hay consumption and prevent waste;
I came up with hay nets secured in barrels that are cut high enough that the horse cannot simply toss the hay out but they can put their head down in .  I thought about getting discards of chain link and cut carefully to fit in the barrels and worked so there is no sharp edges and placed over the hay and secured with chains and metal snaps so they cannot lift but the weight of the chainlink causes it lower as the feed is eaten down and they have to work at getting the feed in smaller bites pulled through the grid of the chainlink (much like actually pulling and tearing grass during grazing)  rather than grabbing mouthfuls they drop and waste or shovel in too quickly. 
 

 

I believe that in winter,  one catalyst is horses drinking less water, grazing less  and eating more dried feed in fewer meals.

Yep.
Grain very often seems to be the culprit in behaviour and health problems with horses. Sunflower oil is good if you need to bump up the calories without getting the bad behaviour that grains seem to cause.
If a horse is getting  a lot of work then they might need grains but a lot of horses spend most days doing virtually nothing apart from standing around so they really don't need calorie dense food like grains. Horses should be eating low calorie food all day without long breaks of not eating. It's not good for horses to have periods through the day where they have no food. That's when they can get problems with colic and EGUS.
Hay pellets are a quite good low calorie dried food that can be soaked in water before being given to the horse.

Warren David wrote:
Horses should be eating low calorie food all day without long breaks of not eating.

I agree but I do acknowledge not everyone is able to provide constant forage. 

My winter hay is a clean but stemmy first cut grass-hay that I feed free choice.  I do have some waste but not much because my schedule allows me to put it out often.  My horses, also, seem to drink more water when I feed stemmier hay than when I feed a soft first/second cut. 

So far, I haven't had an issue with colic.

Suzanne Reiner wrote:
I agree but I do acknowledge not everyone is able to provide constant forage. 

Yes well I acknowledge that too. I don't understand why you think I don't? I mentioned that the horses should be eating low calorie food all day because it is an important point that helps people understand why their horses are getting problems with colic and EGUS.

That was my point in bringing up the challenge of finding a way to feed that limits waste and slows consumption so you can conceivably load three big flakes in a feeder and the act of having to retrieve it from the weighted and secured chainlink grid creates  a healthier and cost effective way for you horse to browse hay all day from just two feedings .  I think a lot more thought could be given to this .  I had thought of heavy chains latched in a tight grid and secured over top of each feed as well that the sheer weight would ensure as the feed was slowly consumed the grid remained lying in place? 

I was looking for an alternative to hayrack feeding where the horse remained eating with  his head  in a natural downward grazing position and different than just putting it in a tub .  Alot of my problems with bolting food and waste was the fact the flakes are compacted so the horses tended to lift big sections of hay to their mouths which they would toss, paw , drop and stand on , yet the extra time effort to shake them loose went unrewarded as my horses still scooped and flung hay about as well when they would grab a big mouthful they would lift their heads and in a breeze or strong wind the hay seems to get festooned over the countryside  yet out of reach for eating .  Smaller chopped hay was hard to come by and finer hay seemed either unpalatable  or just as easy to waste.   Then the beasts colic or get ulcers ,  arrgh!

Warren David wrote:
Yes well I acknowledge that too. I don't understand why you think I don't? I mentioned that the horses should be eating low calorie food all day because it is an important point that helps people understand why their horses are getting problems with colic and EGUS.

I never said you didn't.  I acknowledged the fact that MY choices don't work for everyone.  I didn't realize you would assume I was being nasty or under-handed toward you.  It was not my intention.  I'm not putting words in your mouth or suggesting you were being over-bearing or left a caveat or some such nonsense.  I, simply, joined the conversation. 

Well you did say...

I agree but I do acknowledge not everyone is able to provide constant forage.

I didn't think you were being nasty or underhanded. Your use of the word "but" looked to me like you were assuming I didn't acknowledge that not everyone can provide constant forage. 
We have some of the same problems as other people with trying to keep the horse's feed balanced so that he is neither getting too much at once nor having long breaks without food. We can't keep him at home at the moment. We are keeping him at some nice stables but some of the people working there have different ideas about what and how our horse should be fed and how they want him fatter! We get his food organized to  just how we want it but it doesn't stay that way long before somebody will start feeding him differently again.

This is so funny.  I used "but" to avoid people thinking I was suggesting my way was the only/best way.  Unfortunately, you read "but" to mean something else entirely.  The unintended consequences of interpretation continue to be the bane of message forum writers everywhere and here. 

People certainly do have different ideas of what a healthy horse looks like.  I've seen lots of "bloomy" horses at good boarding facilities.  I guess in the horse boarding world keeping horses with a little junk in the trunk is a sign of proper management.  Pampered ponies sell stalls. 

Synergy wrote:
That was my point in bringing up the challenge of finding a way to feed that limits waste and slows consumption so you can conceivably load three big flakes in a feeder and the act of having to retrieve it from the weighted and secured chainlink grid creates  a healthier and cost effective way for you horse to browse hay all day from just two feedings .  I think a lot more thought could be given to this .  I had thought of heavy chains latched in a tight grid and secured over top of each feed as well that the sheer weight would ensure as the feed was slowly consumed the grid remained lying in place?  

I can see how some interference would slow down the bolters and help keep the hay from being wasted.  However, depending on the height of the feeder, I would be concerned about a horse getting caught on the gridwork mechanisms or getting a lip pinched somehow.  How would the feeder besecured to keep the horses from flipping or rolling it?

I have one of those sneaky little devils that has to figure-out how everything works (I have to take precautions and padlock all my main gates!).  I would have to have the vet out on the first use.     

i'm not sure about using it on livestock, but i remember reading somwhere that cloves are a natural antiparasitic and could be useful in de worming?

Mustang Breeze wrote:People certainly do have different ideas of what a healthy horse looks like.  I've seen lots of "bloomy" horses at good boarding facilities.  I guess in the horse boarding world keeping horses with a little junk in the trunk is a sign of proper management.  Pampered ponies sell stalls.   

Yes plenty of fat ponies there. I think you will be pleased to know that our horse is being fed just how we want at the moment. How long that will last remains to be seen though. Somebody is bound to think of some reason to change his feed without telling us. He is like a different horse without all the grains some people keep wanting him to eat. His behaviour  is so much better and he looks more athletic again.

I am not sure if you meant the spice cloves but garlic cloves are fed to horses to ward off flies and as a natural dewormer, and deworming plays a big role in intestinal health in horses too.  When I read about that farmer feeding his ducks cannabis to deworm them I found some historical references to it being effectively used as a deworming agent as well. 

As the corn belt moves into GMO's .. did you hear what happened to the crop last year in the record lows .. got a deadly mold and went solid and was about impossible to get out of the elevators.

A lot of colic in grain could be the change in humidity with winter or just not letting the crop get dry enough before cutting .. rain .. more rain coming .. get it out of the field and who cares.

Then there are the millers who steam and roll .. and they are not too careful how they accomplish this task either. Get it too wet and say .. "I thought everyone knew to feed rolled feed within two weeks?" I stood on the feed dock and was talking to a rancher out of Upper NV and he was making his once a year truck load purchase. I can guarantee he didn't know any of this .. and was not told either by the employee on the dock.

My four horses got straw before a big storm. One had to start eating it all the time. He got sick and the other three did not. Loafing around and either chewing of the wood they can find .. cribbing .. or eating straw someone just dirtied .. month old Kid Goats do the same as they are switching from one stomach to two .. get crap in there and bloat. I fight that with ginseng and yarrow and if they can't breath .. smoke them up with some burning  myrrh and that will cause them to breathe much nicer. Everyone use to use it.