anyone got experience of mare producing milk without having a foal

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andieash

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Can anyone shed light.. my mare has not had a foal but has produced milk which has been infected..
Vet said could be freek reason or tumour on ovaries
anyone else got any advice or experience of this
 
Could be a false pregnancy. But are you sure it's not just mastitis? Mastitis causes the udder to swell - sometimes alarmingly. A load of things can set it off: a move to better grazing, stallion or handsome gelding in the vicinity, stress. With mastitis, the udders can leak a gungy stream of infected yurk (technical term lol) and often it is necessary to "milk" the mare to get rid of this infected muck. If you have to "milk" your mare, check your life insurance is paid up to date first!
 
hi, you answered my other dilema (very much linked) to this, being the PTS decision.

I was just wondering if the mastitis/milk producing problem was just what you have replied with or maybe the tumour as vet said could be.

Still trying to make my decision, can't afford to have her scanned and insurance won't cover it anymore (typical) but sort of need to know if really bad or could just be freek incident that will clear up and not need to be part of pts decision.. hope that makes sense
xx
 
i am sure the vet would have covered this but worth mentioning anyway, my mare started producing milk, not in foal or had a foal, quite alarming, put it down to the fact that she had been in a field with a lot of clover in for a week and there is oestregen in the clover. Took her off the clover field and gave her epsom salts for a week and the milk dried up after a couple of days, although i think i caught it early and she didn't become infected.
 
My mare has been producing milk this summer. She ran with the stallion last year but was scanned empty, so I'm thinking it could be some kind of phantom pregnancy, maybe she reabsorbed early on, as the milk was produced around the time she would have foaled. Otherwise, possibly the pasture, as I know that oestrogens in certain pastures can have this effect.

The vet looked at her as there was blood in with the milk initially but the vet was convinced there was no infection. It hasn't caused any further concern.
 
Not sure about the link between mastitis and pts?

If it is a bog standard mastitis, it will clear up with a course of antibiotics. My rescued mare Angel came to me with a terrible attack of untreated mastitis as her foal had just died in horrific circumstances. She had a ton of other dangerous health problems and it took two separate 14 day courses of antibiotics to get rid of the mastitis. Two years later, she went to a trainer's yard to be backed and she promptly went down with another milder spell of mastitis. That's when the vets told me that episodes of mastitis can be triggered by different grazing, extra protein in the diet, handsome geldings, remembered visits to a stallion etc etc. Your girl may also have a phantom pregnancy but my understanding of this is that it is easy to remedy with a hormone injection.

I can't see either of these diagnoses as needing a pts solution. Obviously, if your girl has got malignant tumours on her ovaries, then the outlook may indeed be pretty poor. How old is your mare? Seems odd that the vet should leap to that conclusion with no real evidence for it. I totally understand that biopsies etc to confirm ovarian cancer would be expensive but if it was me, I'd start at the easy things first. The definition of a common complaint (mastitis) is that it's common!

If your mare is elderly, could be a different story.
 
Yes my competition mare started to produce milk when i turned a youngster out with her (2yr old). Didn't turn to mastitis but she continued to produce milk for months. Didn't affect her in anyway and disappeared when separated. Your vet may think it appropriate to treat with some antibiotics? try not to touch in that area as i believe you may stimulate the mammary glands to continue producing milk.
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I had a mare that produced milk every summer without fail. I consulted a number of vets and all said not to worry - it was just her. She had never had a foal. If she got a lot of milk, I was advidsed to milk her but in her case otherwise it was best to leave alone. I put it down to summer grass. We never had any problems with this whilst competing every summer. Good luck.
 
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