Any ideas? Elderly horse help...

Serenity087

Serenity087

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Our elderly livery stopped eating hay the other day and dropped weight like nothing else in only 3 days!

We've started stuffing him with haylage and he's filled out again... but I'm very worried about the rate of weight loss.

His teeth are fine, he was out in grassy fields all day and still ate his two meals of mash a day.

I'm terrified it's a lymphoma... odd weight/appetite loss can be a sign... and he has had pretty severe cancer before...

Any ideas?

YO thinks it might just be bad hay, her mare has stopped eating it (but then, she IS the fussiest animal EVER!) and he's stuffing haylage like it's going out of fashion!
 
If he is ok now just keep an eye on him. If it happens again vet out and will have to make decisions etc ie was it a one off problem or is it the start of something else downhill etc

Good luck Hope he is ok though.
 
What breed is he out of interest? If one of my tb's stopped eating her hay for 3 days then she would drop weight very very quickly!! I also used to have an old tb who stopped eating (but this was due to a growth) he looked like a bag of bones in days!! If he's happily eating his haylage I wouldn't worry too much!
 
Aw bless him, 40's a bloody good age though! It's quite possible it's justa bad batch of hay. If he's still eating haylage and other stuff then I wouldn't worry too much. At the end of the day though, he is old so he is going to lose weight easily and one day he may decide he's had enough but I would just on with what you're doing. If he's still happy in himself then so be it.
 
we have a gorgous rescue 36yo pony, we bought her in an awful state this year, turns out she quidded her food so wasnt getting what she needed, she also couldnt chew normal feeds properly. She still goes out eats (well trys!) grass, basicaly chews it up, sucks it an drops it again in a little chewed ball bit! but she likes being out etc so we supplement her with a trug of soaked high fibre nuts and veteran vitality a day with other supplements and she does well on it and looks great! have you noticed if your pony quids???
 
The old Appy would get bored of certain food :eek: Even the hay, she liked to rung the changes, so we ended up with different batches of hay to keep her interested, also fed ready grass and such like in trugs. As long as we kept it interesting she was ok, but dropped weight like a stone if she got bored of what she was being fed. Good luck with hin. The Old Clydie who lived into her 40's never lost weight but she was a trencher horse of some renoune :D :D :D :D
 
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