care post colic surgery... your experiences please

[haras]

My pregnant mare is now ten weeks post colic surgery. she is still on box rest... six weeks to go and counting, before the restricted turnout can commence!

I am currently making small changes to her diet. She has put the weight she lost back on, so I now want to try and maintain her weight, as I don't want her fat for foaling.

I am making the changes slowly, but would just like to know other peoples experiences, things like turnout, treats, changing feed etc etc....

basically anything you can!

Thanks

 

[TayloredEq]

I have rehabbed 2 horses post colic surgeries (both were double surgeries).

Feel free to pm me if you would like to ask anything specific.

Feed wise I don't treat the horses at all. And if I had to change any feeds I took 2 weeks to change the feeds over. Hard feed wise we fed 4 little feeds a day rather than 2 bigger ones.

Turn out wise - One of the horses was due to start his turn out in Feb start of this year. As the weather was so intermittent and we couldn't have been consistent with it we kept him in for longer and waited till the snow/heavy frosts had gone.

That's very brief but if you want to ask anything else please do. One horse was very easy. The other less so! He suffered 3 bouts of peritonitis, 2 abscesses from his thrombosed vein and a hernia!!

 

[abb123]

My horse had colic surgery this summer. I tried not to change her food that much rather just increase gradually the quantities. I fed her 3 times a day and gave her a ball twice a day which kept her occupied.

I grazed her in hand for the first couple of weeks and then, as she was so calm, I was allowed to turn her out in a stable sized corral whilst I mucked her out. The time in the corral was increased gradually to about an hour in the morning and an hour at night and then she went out for half a day and then eventually a full day. This worked really well for her as it wasn't a big shock to suddenly go from complete box rest to out.

She has now made a full and speedy recovery and looks better than ever.