2 ponies, 1yr apart, 2 sudden deaths

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Arkmiido

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Around this time last year, one of my shetland ponies, aged 6, died very suddenly - he had been absolutely fine up until then, although had sustained a kick to his face some months before and we wondered at the time if he had a weakened blood vessel/aneurysm which burst, as he had been running the fence line calling for a mare who was in the next paddock. Or a "heart attack"/sudden cardiac arrest/ruptured aorta... I regret that I didn't have a PM done at the time (mostly for cost reasons) when I thought it was probably a one-off, random (and very sad) happening.
Now just over a week ago, I lost another one of my driving ponies, aged 5. He'd been in work, was fit and healthy, and was seen grazing at 11am, and my mum found him head on the floor at 12, just over a week ago.
I was at work and didn't know until I got home as mum didn't want to upset me while I was working (bit more of a shock to see my dead pony as I was parking the car, but hey..)
On call vet came out next day and did a brief internal exam and took liver/gut biopsies/bloods and we are still waiting for results, but she is not hopeful that we will find anything. His stomach contents were grass only, as far as she could see and his bowel looked healthy. Full PM wasn't very easy to arrange as he died on the saturday.

Both ponies died within about 10ft of each other, at the same time of year. No poisonous plants as far as I, my mum (a very keen gardener) or the vet could see, although obviously I accept that is still a possibility. 6 other ponies are all fine.

I have moved all of the ponies into another paddock which is meant to be winter grazing, so no doubt my next issue will be a mass outbreak of laminitis :rolleyes::rolleyes:

Any ideas??? Atypical myopathy was suggested, I doubt grass sickness as it was too sudden. We are in Kent.
 
I was going to suggest EAM or grass sickness. Have lost two horses to both(one of each) and it was June 6th so you are in the right time of year. Grass sickness is said to be triggered by something that happened 10 days previous to the death..some horses display obvious signs, others don't. eg TB's will, ponies not necessarily. I was going insane at my then vets for the week preceeding her being pts-3yo filly. they were adamant she was functioning fine, I knew her well enough to know she wasn't. it was grass sickness. Some seriously give such subtle signals that unless you are there at the time to witness, you could genuinely have missed them..my then vets said call back when i have something genuine & important & serious (rugby was quoted by senior vet-clearly his priority) less than one week later they were spoken to by another vet I called in & had to pts for grass sickness. You cannot be with them 24/7 and some are genuinely real tough cookies who are incredibly hard to pick up on, even if you were a vet or with them 24/7 -in the same way some horses will do all but phone you to read you and say they've googled their symptoms they are so obvious..like my tb gelding I lost to EAM.. sadly you won't know this till its too late. I'm incredibly sorry to hear that you have had to go through this,twice.sending hugs xxx
 
the other thing I wondered being the location they both died being so close reminded me of the poor horses that got electrocuted at the races last year..under ground cables or could they have been struck by lightning and had unknown weak hearts?all very possible and worth looking into if at all possible.. I feel terrible for you i really do xx
 
Not sure.. I lost 2 to some kind of colic, 367 days apart from the same grazing.. One had toxic shock.. Both off the same grazing.. Both July.. And the farmers wife lost her mare to colic the month before my first one..

We are suspicious that it was something in the land..

I'm sorry for your loss..

If we come up with something I'll let you know.. We are looking into heavy metal poisoning or similar.. I moved mine 250 miles away so that's hopefully an end to it..
 
Not sure.. I lost 2 to some kind of colic, 367 days apart from the same grazing.. One had toxic shock.. Both off the same grazing.. Both July.. And the farmers wife lost her mare to colic the month before my first one..

We are suspicious that it was something in the land..

I'm sorry for your loss..

If we come up with something I'll let you know.. We are looking into heavy metal poisoning or similar.. I moved mine 250 miles away so that's hopefully an end to it..
 
Thanks for the replies, I'm sure it is linked somehow.
No, neither were shod - 33-34" mini shets don't get shoes at my place!
Not near electric lines or anything underground...

I'm wondering if soil samples would help?
Herbie did have slightly poo-stained legs and a slightly mucky tail, which suggests he scoured before he died (otherwise gravity wouldn't have gotten the poo to his fetlocks!)
I can't remember if Tom had the same thing... Also both ponies were massively bloated but it's not possible to say if that happened as per normal post-mortem, or preceded them dying.
I have another horse vet (the on-call wasn't my usual horse vet) coming out tomorrow to do some teeth/vacs etc of my other guys so maybe she'll have some ideas.
I think the worst part of not knowing why, is worrying that my other ponies are at risk. I'd never forgive myself if I lost any more, if there was any way I could have prevented it.
 
SaharaS said:
the other thing I wondered being the location they both died being so close reminded me of the poor horses that got electrocuted at the races last year..under ground cables or could they have been struck by lightning and had unknown weak hearts?all very possible and worth looking into if at all possible.. I feel terrible for you i really do xx
Click to expand...

I thought about underground cables too. :(
 
Happened on the 26th so I guess the ground was bone dry - it was the really hot dry spell we had... I'm pretty sure the cables were under the car park so probably not that in the end.
Thanks for the suggestions though, it's all stuff to think about. I'll post on here when I get the biopsy results back, even if NAD.
 
If there's still time, ask them to test whole blood for GSH-px (the abbreviation for glutathione peroxidase) using one of AHVLA's lab's.

I say this because, yes it could be all sorts of things, but you only have the one chance to test the blood, and there's stuff I've been reading recently about selenium that would make me wonder.

There has been mention of low selenium levels in both some equine grass sickness and some atypical myopathy cases. Another paper found an apparent link between the occurrence of equine grass sickness cases and nutritional muscular dystrophy (NMD) "white muscle disease" one farm. NMD is caused by low selenium levels, but it often takes an additional stress factor like travel, change in housing/field arrangements, exercise to actually trigger the catastrophic disease.

In particular, I believe that the current reference levels (ie the "normal" values) for GSH-px are way too low to pick up chronic selenium deficiencies, and so it is conceivable that some animals have levels classed as "normal" when in fact they are marginal or sufficiently deficient to cause other problems.

It may be way off the mark, but if you are starting to wonder about a link between 2 ponies, then you are really looking at the possibility of either a genetic link (if they are closely related?) or an environmental link (food being the obvious one).

Be aware that most vets do not have the faintest idea about selenium in horses.

If you opt to have GSH-px tested from the blood, the UK's AHVLA labs quote reference range as 30-150 units/ml PCV (where PCV is packed cell volume of the blood). I believe the range should be 150-300, and I also believe that my gang have shown signs of deficiency at levels of GSH-px of 58 and 72.

For the sake of a blood test that will cost around £70, I'd have it done personally. It won't be included in a general "comprehensive" blood test unless you specifically ask for it.

Another option is to have a full forage analysis done on the grass/hay, and have someone interpret that (eg Forageplus), but that will take more time.

I do know that if I suspected a case of equine grass sickness and/or atypical myopathy on my land, I'd definitely check selenium levels in the forage and start supplementing selenium if that showed a deficiency.

Could be something totally different, of course, but just throwing up an idea.

Sarah
 
Maybe there is cables in the area. If you go to a tool hire place and ask for a Cable Avoiding Tool (CAT), you should be able to scan the area in your field, and it beeps when picks up a cable.

This is my vauge knowledge of them... might be worth nipping down to Speedy Hire or similar!
 
Just had the results back from the vet - worm egg count negative, liver biopsy negative, gut contents didn't show anything apart from minimal E. coli growth, which is usual, especially in a sample taken 24hrs post mortem. I mentioned EAM and selenium when I spoke to the vet and she didn't think it was worth testing for as none of my others are sick, so basically the plan is that we just never use those particular paddocks for horses or ponies ever again.... just in case.

I take your point that vets may not know that much about selenium though!
I think I may get soil tests done regardless - have been meaning to, to see if my grazing needs supplementing with anything, and I'll try and get selenium included in the profile. Now to find a company that does soil testing!!
I know we are low in magnesium as we had a bullock die with staggers many years ago.
 
Just had another thought.

What did muscle enzymes come up as? They are AST, CK and LDH on the blood report. Ask for exact figures if the vet says just "mildly elevated" or "normal" or whatever. In fact, I'd ask for a copy of the complete blood report, so you have something to compare with if you ever need to have bloods done again.

If you have a soil test done, you'll only see what levels of minerals there are in the soil. It won't tell you how available those are to the plants (and therefore to the ponies). It's possible to have high levels of a mineral in the soil, and yet a very low level in the plants grown on that soil, if another mineral interacts with the mineral in the soil and effectively binds it and prevents it from being taken up by a plant.

So I'd suggest sticking with a complete forage analysis instead because then you will know exactly what the ponies are eating.

Have there been any other problems with the cattle (just wondering whether those could point to any particular mineral imbalance)? Is it yourselves who farm or someone else - again, just thinking it might be worth checking with whoever does the livestock management in case they're aware of any mineral imbalance and are using any supplements for it?

Hope you find the cause, whatever it is.

Sarah
 
wench said:
Maybe there is cables in the area. If you go to a tool hire place and ask for a Cable Avoiding Tool (CAT), you should be able to scan the area in your field, and it beeps when picks up a cable.

This is my vauge knowledge of them... might be worth nipping down to Speedy Hire or similar!
Click to expand...

even better, call electricity board, if there is and it is proven -even if ancient cables bypased pre you owning yard, will be in their interests to assist incase a human gets hurt/killed. They should not charge and should have a plan of previous cables tho worth asking,where are you based by the way? There was some mention of grass sickness prone areas. My filly was Sussex and my gelding 120 miles away-i do wonder if EAM is a different form of grass sickness that might be slightly differing in areas and symptoms..I would definitely do as Sarah suggests, yes arguably alot, but £70 is nothing for your peace of mind that your other horses are safe. I'll try dig out any more useful links to anything I can think of xx
 
I don't know any of the blood results other than everything was "normal" (yes, apart from the fact that he's dead.....) although I can ask them to send me the full profile to try and figure out. Despite being an ITU nurse, where I understand human blood results (mostly!!) but these animals... It's like a different language!
I know a pony who was diagnosed with mitochondrial myopathy - was just reading another one of your posts re a planting horse (I have a planting horse too - her favourite pace is halt). :o:o:o

We haven't kept cattle for a few years, and then, it was only a hobby of my mum's - we had/bred one or two every couple of years that would go in the freezer and (at the time) lived with my ponies. It was just that one case of staggers because "Desmond" was just grazing that summer and didn't have a cattle lick, and I think subsequently, the bullocks were kept apart from the horses and given bucket licks and never had a problem since.
My ponies just have boring salt/mineral licks as they devour the molasses-based licks!
 
I'm very sorry to hear your sad news :(

I'm afraid my very strong suspicion is Equine Atypical Myopathy. Having had two horses with this I know how rapid and devastating this can be. None of our other horses tested positive at the time but sometimes it can be a slow build up and not a sudden onset situation and, as the name suggests, it can be random and doesn't always strike down every horse on the same pasture.

In the absence of any proof of electrocution / poisoning / heart problems etc, I'd be going with EAM.

My sincere condolences :(
 
Even if you get in contact with the electricity board... they are not forced to know where every cable is; not all are marked on drawings.
 
Do you have adders? you might not see the puncture marks and I am not sure the time from bite to death in horses but warm weather at this time of year brings them out to sunbathe and they tend to use the same places each year so if your ponies are running along the path and accidentally disturb??

So sorry for your loss.
 
What are your water troughs in that field? I've known cases of a build up of lead poisoining from the pipes or trough itself.
 
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