Burst colon in Irish Draught Stallion

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kmulryan

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We had the unfortunate experience of watching our 15 year old ID stallion die within 2 hours of finding him unwell in his stable yesterday morning. We
brought him to a Department of Agriculture testing lab to perform a post mortem and the only results we have received to date is he had a burst colon.

Today we had another death where a 10 month old weaned pony foal 2 stables up from the stallion above also died after we brought him to the vet showing signs of having a temperature, very dull and listless and just not himself. The vet administered something to bring down his temperature and gave us a bottle of penicillan and some bute sachets to give to him tomorrow. By 5pm this evening he was dead in his stable.
We are bringing him to lab to have a post mortem done in the morning.

We cannot believe what has happened as these were part of our family, so well loved and very much missed. We are in such shock that they died so rapidly with not much prior symtoms until near death. We have never experienced anything like this before.

We have had some horses over the many years that have died of colic, and cellulites but nothing like this. We cannot figure out what is causing it except for our water which was polluted last Thursday with cattle slurry, but our vet said it was highly unlikely that this water would have caused this but I have my doubts now. It is the only thing we can think of, we have let out the rest of our horses and injected them all with penecillian. There was another 10 month old foal in with our foal that died today and she is so depressed and we are really worried about her.

If anyone has every experienced this before please let us know.

The symtoms seem to be from what we have seen are:

slight change in mood but very hard to notice unless you know your animal very well.
High temperature and some trembling.
Not too inclined to eat ration but was nibbling on some silage.

Thanks a million,

Karen.
 
My goodness, that's terrible! What a shock for that to happen to one horse never mind two! I've never heard of anyting like this before either and i really hope that you manage to get to the bottom of it. Poor horses and poor you! Fingers crossed that the rest of your horses are not affected by this :(
 
So sorry for your loss, I've no ideas as to what it could be apart from some sort of poisoning from the cattle slurry ? I'm sure I've heard of water being poisoned by slurry recently ( E-Coli ?) but just can't remember at the moment but will try to get brain in gear in the morning, you must be devastated at your loss & need to find out what has happened, I really hope you find out soon and that none of your other animals become sick,
Ann X
 
OP that is absolutely devastating for you. I cannot begin to know how you must be feeling. Just one question, you say you are feeding silage. Is that correct? It can cause all kinds of gut problems in horses. Did you mean haylage?
 
The symptoms you describe (especially the trembling) could suggest botulism. This can be caused by infected forage and especially very wet haylage or silage. I would stop feeding whatever batch of forage you are right now and start feeding hay or differently souced haylage. I hope no more of your animals come down with this.
 
Wagtail said:
The symptoms you describe (especially the trembling) could suggest botulism. This can be caused by infected forage and especially very wet haylage or silage. I would stop feeding whatever batch of forage you are right now and start feeding hay or differently souced haylage. I hope no more of your animals come down with this.
Click to expand...

^^ This - especially when you said 'silage'
 
Thanks a million for all your replies and sympathies. We are in shock over this, cannot believe our ID stallion (Bruge) and 10 month foal (Coltey) are gone. Bruge was part of our lives for 15 years and he was such a gentle animal, brillant temperament and he was a great showjumper also. He was a grade A showjumper and produced some lovely very quiet temperament foals. We miss him so much. Our foal Coltey was castrated last November and we were going keeping him as a pony for our 2 sons as he had a lovely temperament also. He was such a pet and would come up to the door in our house during autumn looking for apples and carrots. He was so gentle for such a young animal.

We got results of pm for our ID stallion, and he died from a burst colon caused by twisted gut, the thing is he showed no symtoms of having twisted gut. He wasn't rolling around at all.

We brought over our 10 month old foal to have a post mortem done this morning so we will see what the results are there.

We cannot believe that this happened.

In relation to feeding silage this is something we regularly feed all the horses and have never had a problem with it before. There are about 15 horses in the stables in different places at one time eating silage.

There were 2 horses and 2 10 month foals all eating the same feed. 1 horse and 1 foal died. The others seem fine, we rugged them up and let them out last night and injected them with penicillan as recommended by our vet.

I read the symtoms of botulism and these did not have droppy eyes or eyelids.
 
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I am very sorry for your loss of 2 horses.

I have always been told never to feed silage to a horse and that doing so is a very risky business indeed. It could just be you had been lucky to date; I certainly wouldn't rule the silage out as a cause. I attach a link to a thread about feeding silage discussed on here previously for your information:

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=202712
 
Botulism can cause impaction in the gut and result in ruptures of the diaphagm and colon. But hopefully, as you say they did not have all of the symptoms and so it is unlikely to be the cause. It's just so strange losing two so close together that it makes you look for a possible link.
 
Wagtail said:
The symptoms you describe (especially the trembling) could suggest botulism. This can be caused by infected forage and especially very wet haylage or silage. I would stop feeding whatever batch of forage you are right now and start feeding hay or differently souced haylage. I hope no more of your animals come down with this.
Click to expand...

I have to say that this is the first thing I thought too, you only need one bale of infected silage to cause botulism :(

OP I am so sorry for your devastating loss, I cannot even begin to imagine what you must be feeing right now, I hope the pm brings you some closure.
 
Did the vets rule out Atypical Myopathy? No expert on the subject but the symptoms are sweating and raised temperature and trembling and affected animals go down hill and die very quickly. I believe I read that it can affect horses under 5 more commonly and is more prevalent in mares (although this is not always the case). Its more common on wet/boggy fields and there is speculation that a toxin clostridium sordellii (which is a form of botulism) may have a role in the disease.

My thoughts are with you xx
 
So sorry to hear about this - this is so sad and I can't begin to imagine how devastated you are. Hugs!!!

Just a random idea I had, are you in a grass sickness area? Your horsey might have had acute grass sickness, comes on quite quickly and horses can die within 24 hours, although there are generally more symptoms than you describe...

Just a thought!

Hope you are OK and all the other ponies are all alright as well.
 
Sorry to hear such awful news, it must be such a shock to lose two so quickly.

I was also wondering about a grass sickness related illness, particularly when you mentioned the slurry.

Some years ago now, a yard near me lost 4 horses to grass sickness in a very short time frame.
The cause was suspected to be a burst underground sewage pipe, which had forced sewage up throught the ground onto the field.

Symptoms were similar to your poor boys.
 
Hi,

Thanks a million for all your lovely posts and suggestions as to what causes of death might be.

We got results of post mortems today and the Irish draught stallion died of
chronic colic and the foal who died the following day died of salmonella poisioning. I believe that the stallion's cause of death has to be linked to the contaminated water too but haven't been able to find any link between colic and salmonella yet but maybe someone else might off heard of a possible link.

It is too much coincidence that our water got contaminated and then 2 animals die a few days later.

Both animals were stabled in the same line of stables but there was one stable between them with another horse in it that had no symtoms, there also was a 10 month old foal in the other stable with the 10 month old foal that died of salmonella, we thought she had very slight symtoms and injected her with penicillan as recommended by the vet.

Thanks again, and hopefully we will never experience anything like this again.
 
Was the stallion also tested for salmonella, is it possible they didn't look further than the twisted gut/burst colon as cause of death once they had found them? I am no scientist but salmonella = stomach pain = rolling violently/thrashing about = twisted gut, or am I way off the mark? It just seems very coincidental to lose 2 so quickly from very different things. I know salmonella can be picked up very easily in the fields from dead birds (usually chickens put down by foxes for a short while then ground grazed within a short time).
 
Of course salmonella causes colic! That is the main symptom. When humans get it it causes violent vomiting and diarrhea. Horses cannot vomit but I expect they suffer very painful stomach and intestine pain and inflamation too.
 
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