advice for mare recovering from impaction colic

[EJ87]

Ok as u may be aware my mare took colic on friday she was seen by the vet and received a paraffin flush plus bowel sedative and pain killers. she was turned out into a wee grass paddock with just enough grass to keep her at bay and was doing well eating, drinking, pooing but on sat night started to colic again. vet came checked her passage she was clear and gut wasnt twisted so gave her another injection and said not to feed her anything and in sun morn was upbeat again so turned out to her grass paddock and so far has not relasped. altough she was lying quite alot in her paddock this morning but was still eating and drinking and pooing and was alert enough so i assume she was just taking a rest. does anyone have any advice for me for helping her recover from colic? how long before u could say we are out of the woods? if i bring her in tonight as its bucketing down what should i feed her? vet advised against hay/ haylage as he beleives it may have caused her to colic in first place. would pulled grass be best say a bucket full every couple of hours till 10pm then nothing to 6am? Or best left in paddock rain or not she does have a light turn out on.

 

[Fairynuff]

I would leave her out with a suitable rug on. Nothing like movement and grass to keep the intestines moving. Hope she is now over her bout of colic.

 

[Jingleballs]

Having been in a similar situation I was advised that turn out was the best treatment to keep the gut moving so I'd be inclinded to keep the horse out - not on very lush grazing though.

It's a bit of a generalisation for the vet to say that they think hay/haylage caused the colic though!

I fed gradually increasing amounts of soaked hay and small sloppy feeds for a week or so after the colic which seemed to work.

 

[be positive]

I had one that had a minor colic a few weeks ago, he was given soaked hay when in and very wet feeds of fast fibre to help keep him loose and get fluids in, I also gave him extra oil and salt for a few days.
I like to keep the fibre intake up but if they are not drinking enough this can cause slight de-hydration and the possibility of impaction, so maybe hay well soaked and double netted to prevent her eating too much in one go.
Mine was back in work in a couple of days but was only a little off and responded to the first lot of drugs with no further problems, yours will need a little longer to get everything back to normal.

 

[redriverrock]

My Tb was in hospital over xmas with compaction colic.
The after care and advice I got from the vets was for my horse obviously so I would advise getting in touch with your vets for more specific advice on your own horse but this is the advice I was given and it has worked well.
Do not feed hay/haylage on the floor..it must be in small hole nets so he cannot wolf it down. The amount of water he drinks must be very closely monitored, I was advised between 20 and 30 gallons per day. No hard feeds at all, no chopped apples, carrots etc and feeds to be very sloppy. We also fed a pro biotic...cant remember the name but your vet will know. Turn out is very important to keep the gut moving and light exercise is also good to release gas! my horse can still get quite trumpety when we first trot!
I wouldnt under estimate how serious compaction colic is...we were very near to losing our horse and I am so pleased he is still with us. He went down hill very quickly but to look at him he just looked abit sleepy, no sweat, no obvious signs of discomfort...even the vet was surprised after she did her obs at how ill he really was. Dont mean to scare you, Im sure your mare will be OK, just dont be scared to get as much advise from the vets as possible.

 

[hendrabonnie]

There seems to be a lot around at the minute.. My mare was slightly quiet with no obvious signs of colic, but I just knew she wasnt quite right. I stabled her and monitered her but when she didnt eat her tea i knew she was poorly. The vet came out and because of reduced gut sounds on the right, he stomach tubed her but she still didn't pass droppings for 48 hours. She was given really sloppy bran mashes and 12 hour soaked hay a hand full at a time. I increased her turnout gradually with walking out in hand 6 times a day. I syringed oil 25mls 4 times a day for 2 weeks and gradually decreased this to keep the gut lubrucated. It took her around 2 weeks for her to back to normal and for me to be more ralaxed about her being on the mend. For me having her turned out wasnt a option as i couldnt monitor intake or output as there is no seperate field for her to be on her own. The walking out in hand for 15 minutes really helped and she was always brighter after these. If i had the option to turn out i would have. She is now back out 24/7 with no idea what caused it.

 

[Pearlsasinger]

Our cob mare had recurrent (3 times in 1 week) colic one summer about 5 yrs ago. The last time the vet attended he did say that if she did it again, he thought we only had one option. Fortunately she didn't go down with it again.
We have no real idea what caused it but he thought maybe venous. We were advised to leave her out with the herd as usual, eating grass. The problems arose as the pain-killers wore off each time (always just into emergency callout time of course). We fed her very sloppy bran-mashes with molasses to keep everything moving through, I can't actually remember but I expect we also gave her liquid paraffin - the vet was very old school and it's what we've always done.
She lost a lot of condition and took months to put her weight back on - we fed her on soaked grassnuts and dried grass twice a day, with hay in the winter months. We retired her and now keep her weight on with linseed oil and have changed to haylage for supply reasons. She looks so well now that we often wish that we had tried to bring her back into work the following summer - but we didn't so there we are.