Colic help desperate

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Kaz111

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Hi looking for some input on colic. My 15.3 TB gelding suffered from colic in November (2014) resulting in him going to Liverpool for displacement surgery he returned home happy. Within a month he had spasmodic colic again and was treating at home by my vet and was fine hours later and has been fine again up till December (2015) when he had colic the vet was called and again he was fine within a few hours.
A week later the colic was back and he was taken back to Liverpool and was suffering with impact colic but he was still passing poo again he was fixed up and come home. He seemed to be down in the dumps for a week or so but was happy in his self by Boxing Day 2 weeks after his return home.
he had been fine in hisself and I reintroduced work back to him 2 weeks ago last night he had spasmodic colic again, he seems fine again this morning.
His feed is the same feed its been since I've owned him my vet and the vets at Liverpool say what I'm feeding is fine and don't change his feed, (hifi, sugar beet, top line cubes no4, leisure mix) he also has 1 scoop of probiotics gut balancer in his feeds daily and he gets plenty of fresh hay,(haulage is to rich for him) water drinker in stable.
Currently he is stabled worked 4/5 days a week when he is well varied from hacks, school,horse walker, lunge.
he is turned out but with it been winter this is limited and I do try and hand graze him daily but the past week hand grazing as been limited due to frost and snow! Try to turn him out in the indoor for a stretch daily as well when it's available as we are at a riding school.
I'm at my wits end with him and having an emotional roller coaster and constantly waiting for his next colic episode any thoughts on how to manage my colic prone horse?
He is up to date with his teeth, worming, injections etc.
Ordered some Fennel today to try instead of the probiotic so any thoughts on this as well? anyone suggest I change his feeds and slowly introduced different types of feed altogether?
No ulcers found either.
 
Just a thought, noting all his colic episodes have happened in the winter...is the water drinker in his stable automatic ? Could the pipes be freezing and preventing him from accessing water? I'd be inclined, especially in this cold snap, to give him a large bucket of water for when he's stabled to make sure he's getting plenty to drink.
 
Unless anyone else has any good ideas, maybe try and find somewhere he can have 24/7 turnout all year? Some horses just can't get on with being stabled I think. Sounds like you've had a rough time of it though. Mine has had bouts of spasmodic colic, mainly when he has guzzled too much grass.
 
Hi his first colic episode when he had surgery we were at another stables where I put buckets in for him. We moved to the riding school in May time as the yard I was at was very poorly run and thought this could of contributed to his colic. but yes it does seem to be a winter thing and I can't wait for this winter to be over and dreading next winter already. I was thinking of giving him buckets in his stable to monitor his water intake as can not tell how much he is taking in with the drinker but I do see him use the drinker and I clean it out weekly.
 
I have had 2 that recovered successfully after colic surgery, both had minor colics afterwards but not serious ones, I was very careful to ensure they drank plenty of water, I would do as suggested above give him a proper bucket that he can access easily and you can monitor how much he takes on board it may be a reduction in intake is the first warning sign, a second bucket with sloppy sugar beet water in is also a good idea.
Secondly the hay did effect them both, they were best on a very soft meadow hay, anything stalky or really hard caused minor problems, soaking lightly helped but the first pony we had would get slightly spasmodic on anything other than the softest hay.

As for the feed I think I would cut out the mix that may be harder to digest and either up the cubes, if he needs condition, or give more beet, I would not be keen on the lack of turnout opportunity as standing in slows down the guts, if the yard cannot offer daily turnout even for a few hours moving may be worth considering before next winter, they should still be able to go out in the snow.
 
I have a horse who also has had a long history of colic, including exploratory surgery at one point. No cause has ever been found, but I strongly suspect that she is very prone to mild dehydration and that then causes a gassy/spasmodic colic. In that situation, they don't feel like eating or drinking and a vicious circle starts.
I would try to get more fluid into your horse if you can, soaking the hay for an hour + at least would be a good start and agree that monitoring water intake would be sensible. It can't hurt.
Good luck, it is miserable watching them like that.
 
I have one who has had colic several times over the years for no reason (not as bad as yours) I got rid of sugar beet, I feed soaked dengie alfalfa pellets and copra. That means he is eating soaked feed and therefore taking in liquid. Vitamin E has helped mine in winter when there is none in grass and little in hay. I suspected he may not be drinking enough and every night I give him a bedtime drink of half a bucket of warm water with soaked alfalfa pellets mixed in to make it palatable. He loves his alfalfa gruel and doesn't realise he is drinking. If I had any doubts in winter I would give him a bucket to drink say am and pm and any other times you can. You could use alfalfa gruel, a few drops of liquid molasses in water, soaked nuts of some sort, anything to get him to drink a third or even half a bucket.

If you could give him a liquid drink on a very regular basis it may indicate if this removes the cause of the colic.
 
Half a scoop of kwik beet or similar in a bucket of water, run it through a sieve and you have a bucket of equine squash. It is so useful after hard work or away at shows when they won't drink plain water.
 
Ditto the beet water, if they don't like that try sugar beet , very sloppy so that the feed is like a sloppy soup and another one to try is apple juice in the drinking water. I would not use the automatic drinker but use large containers so that you can keep an eye on what she is drinking. Lack of fluid is a common cause of impaction colic in the winter.
 
Soak the hay, keep an eye on the consistency of his poo.kf it gets hard feed him extra salt or even Epsom salts in a mash until they are soft again. Add hot water to his bucket in winter, some horses don't like cold water.
Soaked bucket feeds.
As much exercise as possible and out as much as poss eating grass.
 
So he on straw? (apologies if I missed that) When I was at a yard in Germany, I was concerned that a horse was being kept part livery on a dirty straw bed and the owner was ill herself. It turned out the horse been suffering from colic and the yard were trying to prevent the horse from eating it's bed.
 
you say he's up to date with worming, but have you actually been worming with the right wormer. Might be worth a FEC and a tape worm saliva test to make sure you are clean.
 
I agree with everything that has been said here. I found that with my gelding, who I believe had worm damage before I owned him as a four year old, if I altered anything in his daily routine, especially feeding times, there would be a a risk of a bout of colic. My horses love a drink of warm water, just like we like a cup of tea, so I would definitely offer this as much as possible with something in it to encourage drinking. I feel for you as it is so upsetting to watch - feeling helpless and worried sick. Been there many times. Good luck.
 
Can I just ask - as the owner of a very colic prone who used to suffer episodes every week of spasmodic colic. Does your horse graze on lush grazing, as my horse used to do this - the yard used to be an ex dairy farm for over 100 years. I found that muzzling him didn't work, so I reduced the hours he was out at grass and gradually re-introduced him over time.

Also if your grazing in cattle grazing or ex cattle grazing, then is the hay you feed directly cut from your fields? This might be a factor too.

My horse is permanently on pink powder as its got the yeast and probiotic in it. I would keep your horse on a good probiotic but also give him a prebiotic as this is what keeps the probiotic alive. He's been on this yard for 18 months now and only had three colic episodes, but at the last yard he was getting colic very frequently at one point, almost every week, and then every couple of months, for over 10 years. In June 2013 he suffered left colon displacement which fortunately did not require surgery. We think this was due to feeding dry hay after a long period of always having soaked hay although I had made the change over 7-10 days.

I also found that my horse would get colic awhen the weather had been mild, followed by a bout of rain.

If I were in your shoes I would introduce his grazing very gradually, start with an hour a day for a week followed by two hours a day the following week. I would make sure he has hay in his field for when he goes out and the fields are snowing or the grass is icy as this can bring on colic. I used to place hay in a tub and put another big tub over the top, and my horse would trot to the tub and fling the top tub off with his nose! I taught him to do this by practising in his stable for a couple of days with a tub over the top of his feed bucket, and he soon caught on. By lining the gut in this way, it ensures if the horse does eat frosty grass at least his tummy is lined with feed first.

Agree with previous poster about warm water, I try and offer this to my horse as he has an automatic drinker and it doesn't give him as much as he requires in one go, so he loses patience with it. This time of year lack of water can cause impaction colic, so try to give your horse warm water following exercise and get in that routine if you can.

At the end of the day all you can do is your best, but I agree that it must be a very worrying time for you. I got to the point where I thought 'what will be will be, I've done my best, I can do no more'.
 
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Received the below from vets at the weekend. Some good tips.

***COLD WEATHER COLIC ALERT***
With a bitter cold night and hard frost predicted, it is a good time to give you some tips. Vets always see a good number of colics 2-3 days after a cold spell and the cause for most of them will be due to impaction. This is because when it is very cold, horses will often choose to drink less than usual and the gut has less water in it. Once the feed is in the large intestine (which absorbs water as it's job), it takes what is needed just as usual and this leaves the feed material drier than it should be and it gets stuck. All the other feed backs up behind and once the intestine starts to stretch, the horse feels discomfort and pain and will show evidence of colic. This can be very mild through to severe depending on the individual horse's pain tolerance and how much stuff is stuck. Obviously this is made worse if the horse is kept in more than usual and allowed to eat unlimited hay. If the horse eats as much as it can of grass at 75% water and switches to eating hay at 15% water, you can see that the guts are taking in a lot less water. This is also why horses going onto box rest frequently get impactions so this advice applies to them as well.

There are a few simple things you can do to to try and prevent impaction - the plan is simply to get more water into the horse.

1. Feed very wet feed with some epsom salts and table salt, about a tablespoon of each at least once a day, preferably twice. It should be quite soupy. Some horses will need to be trained how to drink/eat this. (I have never met a pony who had a problem with this!) It should not be so salty they won't eat it. Try it yourself, it won't hurt you, to check. The salt encourages them to drink and thereby have more water in the gut.
2. Use very small holed hay/ haylage nets. This will slow down the speed at which the horse can eat and force them to chew the hay more.This provides a lot of lubrication to the hay and increases the moisture content of every mouthful swallowed. Horse salivary glands can produce an amazing 15 litres of saliva an hour. At max. capacity, if the horse eats 1kg of hay an hour it gets 15 litres of saliva per kg hay. If the horse eats 3kg of hay an hour it gets 5 litres of saliva per kg hay. Slowing them down is very effective in getting more water into the gut. It is also better for their teeth and reducing boredom and getting more of a trickle effect and less of a binge effect.
3. Wet the hay or dry types of haylage so they get more total water and it is wetter going down. It may be worth placing the hay in a bucket of water and letting the horse pick the hay out of the water if nets are not possible. They will often enjoy drinking the extra water as well as it will be quite sugary.
4. Warm the water in the bucket where this is possible as it is the cold that often puts them off. Some horses just don't like cold water, some have sensitive teeth, some have sore sinuses they have not told you about, some will delay going to a trough if the ground is bad around it or other horses are bullying them in a field situation and some are just "princesses" about cold water.
5. If your horses rely on a trough outside, you will need to check it for ice an absolute minimum of twice daily as it can freeze back over very very quickly, and don't be tempted to give extra hay. If it is bitterly cold and dry, horses will keep warm very easily and don't need the extra, it will just bung them up.
6. In following some of this advice, don't be tempted to go out and buy a bag of cubes or hard feed they are not used to, or you will have colic associated with feed change, choke from gobbling the lovely new treat and impaction to finish it all off. Use your normal feed, just wet it a lot or if they are not usually fed start with a fibre based feed such as Hi Fi Lite soaked, grass pellets soaked, beet pulp soaked etc.

Hopefully these few tips will help you keep your horses well hydrated and out of Vet clinics. The aim is to get water in the gut, so anything you do that is safe for the horse and effective will help.
KEEP YOURSELF SAFE FROM ICE RELATED SLIP INJURIES dealing with all this water. Somebody has to keep looking after the horse and you can't if you have broken yourself.
 
very good advice Nicnac. When it is frozen I go round 3 times a day with a bucket of warm molasses or alfalfa water for each of them. The biggest problem is that horses just love warm water supplied by a servant to carry it to them. I am sure they would never drink that much normally if they had to do it themselves!
 
OP - I know your vets have said his feed is fine and I'm not going to say that they're wrong, but google Equidgel (Equidiet UK).

I've just ordered some as a colic risk management tactic for when my lot start coming in to come back into work. Especially as your horse has an automatic drinker, it's a great way to make sure he's not going to get dehydrated. Give it a look. It's £35 a bag but it will last a long time.

Other than that, I'd agree to try and find a yard where he can live out and be ridden/competed from the field.
Good luck, must be an awful worry for you xx
 
as these are all happening in winter is it that his stomach cant handle freezing water? my friends horse had that and in winter has to give her horse warm water.
 
I'm currently up on colic duty as George has had spasmodic colic this evening. ACP, bute and sedalin to calm him in the stable and he's looking better and just started eating again, so close monitoring now for the rest of the morning. Thus will just be down to moving fields...he's a sensitive soul, done it plenty of times here, the same move, same horses, same fields, sometimes with colic it just is and a normally easy change will one day for one horse, upset the gut just enough to bring it on.

Good luck with yours OP. Xx
 
We have a horse on the yard who is very like the OPs. Impaction colic, then a couple of episodes of spasmodic/gas colic; then impacted again, in hospital, out of hospital, special diets, box rest, the works. He is now living out 24/7, and *touches wood* no signs of colic for over 6 months. He still gets a special colic-prone supplement, and has soaked hay, but the consensus is the more movement he gets the better.
 
I am so sorry to hear this, what a worrying time and totally feel for you.

Is there anyway you can keep him out 24/7 nice and mobile and moving this will help his gut.

The other thing is water from automatic feeders, we can never know how much they are drinking.....if you can switch to buckets at all and use http://www.horsequencher.co.uk (no I don't work for them!!), it really does work and even travelling my horse will drink water with this stuff to ensure he is hydrated adequately, not sure whether you should just do it maybe check with Liverpool first but he could benefit from electrolytes too....
 
Hes been turned out yesterday and today left him out all day and brought him in about 4.30 will do the same again today and so on. He seemed much happier this morning.
Doesn't anyone know if I can give him fennel and protexin at the same time in his feeds?
 
Kaz111 said:
Hes been turned out yesterday and today left him out all day and brought him in about 4.30 will do the same again today and so on. He seemed much happier this morning.
Doesn't anyone know if I can give him fennel and protexin at the same time in his feeds?
Click to expand...

Be guided by your vet regarding his diet.
 
Another for the water. Mine has buckets and his water intake has dropped considerably over the last couple of days with the cold snap. He has 3 buckets hanging on the wall and 1/2 a big bucket on the floor - this he is now drinking whereas normally, he empties the wall buckets. I have now filled the floor one right up, we have switched to haylage (but same source as his hay was) and feed is wet anyway. I help with a friends mare and she is the same. Definitely worth trying some of the ideas about encouraging water intake. Normally I would just put a small amount of salt in the feed to encourage more drinking, but have no idea if that is a good idea for a horse prone to colic.
 
Agree, be guided by your vet on using fennel and protexin together.

24/7 turnout is fantastic but it's not always the answer on its own. George has been out 24/7 all winter. Moved yesterday lunchtime down to the bottom fields, grass almost identical to the grass in the field he moved from, just 50 yards away. The other four that moved with him are fine, he was affected by it, probably due to a past with severe ulcers and a slightly compromised digestive system, so small changes mean something to him. It's worth remembering that one of the biggest colic risks is bringing outside horses into stables. They are so used to getting 80-90% of their water intake from the grass that it's easy for them to get dehydrated (hence better to use buckets to monitor) and get impacted.
Speaking to my vet last night, he has been out to so many horses this year with impaction colic, all of whom have been brought in from the field and regardless of being given hard feed. It's often more to do with water intake and keeping the gut working as it should.

Keep any feeds very watery (hence mentioning equidgel) but there are many that can be made super sloppy and if you can, feed very wet hay and introduce it fairly slowly.

OP - I'm really glad things are looking up for you...fingers crossed it stays that way. xx
 
Mine used to get gassy colics every few months for no apparent reason. (He was also scoped as having ulcers.) I got him a year's subscription to AloeRide, & for that whole year he didn't have any of his episodes. I ran out of it, took a few weeks getting around to ordering more, & when he'd been off it around 3 weeks, he had another colic. We managed to walk that one off, but it was towards the top end of his scale. Got some more AloeRide, no colic episodes since. Gut noises back to normal within about 10 days (they are really thunderously loud when off the aloe) & he got windy again (never passes wind when off aloe).

Might be worth a try? It's got to be more than co-incidence - I've had him for 5 nearly 6 years, & the only time he hasn't had regular colics is when on aloe - but his are gassy (hence they will walk off) rather than spasmodics, so might be slightly different.

T x
 
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