CHOKE - Rather urgent - please explain

[Lill]

One of our horses was taken ill with choke night before last and taken to the vets and apparently, according to the vets, he is 'stiill blocked'.

He was not given any hard feed that could have caused it the only thing we think it could possibly be is acorns or straw.

But why is he still 'blocked' 48 hours later?

 

[Lill]

Of course should be in vets section really apologies.

 

[filly190]

Havent heard of it lasting this long, sounds very serious, good luck with it

 

[Lill]

I haven't either and although he is apparently on medication for food and water as he can't swallow surely they should be doing something about his blockage rather than waiting for it to 'clear naturally'. ??? Would think there are all sorts of things that can go wrong by leaving it this long?!

I don't actually know much about Choke which is why i have asked but this does not seem normal to me.

 

[kirstyfk]

My dads old horse had choke for about 3 days it was so horrible to see him standing in the sand school with stuff coming out his nose and big blobs of food coming out his mouth. Luckily it did clear but just took time. The stupid horse shouldn't have eaten his chaff so quickly!

 

[Oldred]

I don't want to alarm you but I did lose my lovely mare to choke so I sadly know a bit about it. Your horse may be still blocked because they can't flush the obstruction through as yet. I would imagine they will go back and keep trying to clear it rather than just seeing what happens.

In my case my horse had the first choke (caused by problem teeth that were not fixable) and it took many hours of flushing and trying to extract it with mini forceps. The problem is that a bad choke can distort the oesophagus (sp) causing a pocket which can collect balled up material (in my horse's case because the cause was the teeth not chewing properly). She was then of course restricted to eating mashes and chopped fibre but still had another choke which was cleared. They couldn't clear the third choke and I called it a day. I only mention this because they did say that once a horse has had a choke it is very likely they will have another one so you must be very careful about teeth and what they are allowed to eat for ever afterwards.

I also remember them saying that horses often do clear a choke themselves if its not too serious so fingers crossed for you and your horse.