Anyone had 2 horses with perotonitis in same field but months apart?

neddynesbitt

neddynesbitt

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I'm not sure how to explain fully so please bear with me

My lad was diagnosed with perotinitis in January this year & was incredibly lucky to survive (he spent 10 days in intensive care)

Today my friends horse has been diagnosed with it too :(

They moved back into this field for the winter 3 weeks ago & my lad got colic that night & the following night :(

The other 3 horses are all ok but we are now VERY concerned that maybe it could be something in the field?

When my lad got it, they were both on the same hay but the other horse was absolutely fine. They are both on the same bale of haylage & (fingers crossed) my lad seems to be fine.

The only common factor we can find is that they are back in this field again.

Has anyone had this happen to them & was a cause ever found (ie weeds etc)

We never found the cause to my lad & are distraught that this has happened to my friends lad.

Bloods have been taken at 11.30pm tonight & we are delivering them to Liphook at 7.30am for urgent testing.

We are desperately looking for another yard but so far haven't found any nearby with vacancies

Please help, just don't know what to do and want to prevent any of the others becoming this ill.

The vet has informed us tonight that he is very very sick :(
 
Ouch - how very worrying!

It COULD be co-incidence that two horses have had peritonitis in the same field, but put together with your horse's colic attack when put back in that field - that MIGHT be 3 (peritonitis is the cause of about 16% of colic cases.)

The problem with peritonitis is that there are a lot of possible causes (like colic itself.) Peritonitis is probably best described as a set of symptoms - indicating the peritoneum has become infected or inflamed - rather than a stand-alone disease (like Strangles, for example.)

If you can't move the horses out of that field (which would be my first course of action) then you need to go around it - inch by inch - looking for things that might not be 'right'! I'm thinking of things like a pond (which might be contaminated); or a very boggy patch (ditto); some 'painted' fence or field shelter that shows signs of being chewed - paint or preservative might be something not 'safe' for horses; or unusual weeds.

Other than that, all you can do is watch the other horses VERY closely for any signs of being 'off-colour' - and hope that the vets can shed some more light on it when the bloods come back.
 
What about thorny bushes - if swallowed it is possible that thorns may damage gut walls - bit of a longshot I know but a good friend of mine lost her horse and the post mortem showed that 2/3's of the stomach was scar tissue which was thought to be a response to ingesting and being damaged by something sharp.

Fingers crossed for you all x
 
i am so sorry to hear this, i hope they pull through and is it possible to move them to a nice livery yard - even if it is a longer journey time, just until you can sort something more permanent. I can understand why you would not want to put the horses back on this field xx
 
My horse is currently recovering from Peritonitus so I have full sympathy for you. We also could not find a cause however Rossdales said they have seen a large amount of it this year and my boy was lucky to survive. It does worry me as to the cause so understand you being paronoid about it I spoke to my vet and they listed all possible things at the time it turned out that my horses peritonitus was a primary infection (we had a culture done on the abdominal fluid to try and find a cause)
 
Thanks for all the replies, really appreciate it :)

Thorny bushes had crossed our minds too, we cannot see blackthorn etc but along one edge of the field there is a hedge which we will inspect very closely. Also, we have a lot of thistles, do you think they could do this?

As regards the chinese lanterns, I don't think we can discount anything at the moment so thanks Cuffy for the link :)

We have been looking for another yard (posted on here last week asking if anyone knew of yards in West Sussex). I have been very nervous anyway after what happened to my lad & with him colicking 3 weeks ago, made us want to move.

Now with this happening, we need to speed up our search.

There are 2 of very big yards in this area that have closed recently with a 3rd a great possibility so lots of people looking :(

We can find part or full livery but do not want that, it must be DIY as we know our horses so well & both of us spotted this very early on. Unfortunately our YO text me 3 weeks ago to say my boy was absolutely 100% fine & I didn't need to come up if I wanted a night off. I was already driving there & when I arrived I found him with colic for a second night running & the vet had to come out & tube him etc!!

We are probably very paranoid after this but we do recognise those little signs that things aren't right very early as we know them so well. After all we've been through really appreciate help from others but can't relax until we have seen them for ourselves & know their condition first hand.

It's not that we don't trust people but after being told our boys were ok (even after we had ignored YO & called vet anyway) but we would find it incredibly hard to pass them over into someone elses care :(

If anyone knows of a nice yard (preferably small) in the Horsham area, please let me know.

Once again thanks everyone xx
 
Cant help with a new yard! sorry:o

but as far as the perotonitis is concerned its not very nice to see you horse getting ill and is very worrying for owners.
hope it all gets resolved soon
 
Thank you MR, it's been a real rollercoaster since it started. His temperature kept shooting upto 41 & he was very poorly. Then after the antibiotics, he had a severe reaction, sweating & really blowing. This happens everytime he has them (twice a day).

Then he picks up & gets our hopes up, only to be dashed again when the drugs start to wear off.

The vet has told us we are not out of the woods yet but, he is pleased with his progress (temp stayed lower today) :)

The worst thing is not knowing what caused them both so not being able to 100% eradicate the cause & prevent it happening again :(

We are going to ask the YO if we can move fields but she is not the easiest person to deal with. As we don't know for sure what caused it, we would never blame her for what has happened but we are hoping she will understand our concern that the only common factor is the field.

Even if we did know 100% that it was the field, we still wouldn't blame her as there is nothing visable that she or anyone else has ignored. If there was then we would think differently but would still have to take some of the blame ourselves as if we could see there was a problem & had ignored it ourselves then we would have to take responsibility for still turning them out in this field!!

Unfortunately our YO always worries that she will get the blame for something that happens. This is not the case, all we want to do is make sure our boys are ok and prevent it happening again :(

The vet says there is a lot of it around at the moment & the best thing we can do is change their field in the hope that it could help.
 
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