Colic Surgery - recovery

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beckieswann

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Hello everyone,

I am one of the lucky ones and my horse survived colic surgery on Tuesday night. He had torsion and displacement colic and thankfully he was in surgery within 3 and a half hours thanks to my amazing Yard Manager, Yard staff and vet.

He's recovering well and had his first bran mash this morning and is off the drips :)

What I am looking for is ideas and information regarding post surgery. I want my boy to recover well (I'm in no rush!) and was looking for any advice or similar experiences. Any alternative therapies etc?

My vet will obviously be advising me going forward, but I'm looking for other ideas and suggestions as well.

Thanks :)
 
Glad hes done well, he will probably have lost a lot of weight and need building up slowly, you will obviously get feeding advice from the vet but the one thing I found having had a horse survive surgery and go back to a full working life, is they will need a careful diet for the rest of their life.
Ours had daily turnout, or 24/7 and the softest hay I could get, he found anything hard and stalky difficult to digest, not something you tend to get told, he would have mild colics occasionally if his diet changed, so something to be aware of.
Good luck with him, you may have an interesting time in hand walking when he is allowed, that was the worst part, trying to keep all 4 feet on the ground once he felt better.
 
Glad to hear surgery all went well.

My horse had the same as yourself on 2nd September this year and has amazed everyone with his recovery as he was home from the vet school in 5 days and had even longer surgery than yours. I was away at the time and think our luck was because I had to converse with the vet long distance and just made the decision to send him to the vet school regardless as couldn't assess him for myself.

We have had no complications whatsoever and took this time to grow even more and fill out as he was just four and a half.He was already due to have a holiday over the winter as he was backed last autumn and spent this summer going out and seeing the world and doing low level competitions.He just brought his holiday forward a few months.

The first month I fully boxed rest and only hand led out to have a pick at grass this was to ensure that he didn't cause any problems to the wound by being a numpty out and about. We fed him on haylage and also the new mollichaff condition as he was getting all his essentials from that and helping him regain the condition he lost. Little and often is the key and as they are inactive they don't need any high powered hard feed!!You just need to guage how he is progressing and adjust accordingly.

The second month he was slowly turned out building up to a full day and also due to the time of year coming in at night. Don't be surprised how much it takes out of them as after the first day of being out for half an hr he came into the stable and plonked himself down for the a few hours kip. Yes did cause panic stations to start with!!!

We have now reached the end of month three as they really recommend three months recuperation and he is into his routine of hand walking, turned out during the day and in at night. He has bounced back really well and think ourselves very lucky! Not sure if it is because he is now in a small paddock on is own and had befriended one of the sheep and they now go everywhere together!! Box rest on the whole he was very good, had the odd day where he lashed out with his back legs and went skywards on the end of the lead rope off all fours but to be expected!

Try and break up the boredom in the stable I had tied up half filled bottles of water from the roof and turnips hanging to keep him amused and could play and move about stable instead of being stock still.

Don't tell my pony but his holiday is now over and this weekend going to restart the lunging and back on board building his work up. I'm off to hunt out two body protectors before getting back on!!!:D

Good Luck with the recovery and if in any doubt ask your vet no matter how trivial a question you think it is!:)
 
I am glad your horse is doing well. My BF pony had a colic op and despite being 22 years old, she really bounced back like the proverbial rubber ball. She hardly lost any weight and had a really straight forward recovery and was back being ridden in no time at all.
 
I see him every Morning and Evening and the difference is amazing... he's doing so well, onto hay tomorrow :) he will also get a bit of pampering as dried blood on the face from his thrashing about isn't the greatest look.

Thank you for the tips and advise and i'm so glad to see that recovery is swift. I will definitely need some boredom ideas!

Does anyone have problems with reoccurences?
 
just make sure you or the vet check his heart regularly mine had a colic op last year and was quite poorly so we turned him out straight away in a small field i fed him on haylage balancer to keep his gut working properly and he also had accessto an apple tree which good or bad seemed to help keep him going? however a year later when i brought him back into work we discovered he had atrial fibrillation which could of easily been a result of his op we had him treated but it tends not to work if they have had the condition a long time and i dont know for sure it was the op Despite all that he is still hunting once a week only steady but hes happy which is the main thing. But just keep an eye on the wound and have some bute paste at hand so if your horse looks uncomfy you can just give him some bute mine came home and colicked a bit as soon as i turned him out , i knew they would never reoperate so i gave him 2 bute and took the dogs fro a walk! when i came back he was right as rain! could of been the journey home.anyway good luck and feel free to pm me if you need anything and also don't panic !!
 
Two of my horses have had colic surgery - and both recovered well.
I found the key to managing them on box rest was breaking up their day in a structured way. I'd feed and muck out in the morning, with them tied outside with a feed ball (yes I did have to keep retrieving it), then take them for a 10 min walk and an in hand graze for up to 45 mins (depending on my plans for the day).
After that they went back in with a haynet, then at lunchtime I had someone check them and give them a leaf of haylage. In the evening I'd do the same as the morning, with a full groom, and as long a graze in hand as I could manage, then leave them with the radio on. My partner would then check them in the evening, pop their night rug and switch off the radio.
As they improved, I gradually put them out in a stable sized grass enclosure, for longer, making it a little larger each day until they could go back out.
I have to say, for one of mine it's been about 4 years and she's doing well. The other was about 18 months ago, and although she has other health issues (auto-immune) the actual colic recovery went well - so don't despair!
If you are walking them in hand though - do wear a HAT and GLOVES, lead them with a LUNGE LINE and take care - it can be a bit dangerous.
S :D
 
Thanks everyone :) he's back home today-cannot believe it! I'm doing regular checks and hope I can sleep tonight! Can't blieve how lucky we've been! :)

12 weeks is going to be a looooong time!
 
How lovely to have your boy home and doing well.

One of my mares had a surgical colic at the end of June this year. Hers was a large colon dorsal displacement to the right colic, but no torsion. Touching wood she is coming along nicely, although her recovery has had a couple of glitches.

She developed an infection at the site of the incision, which took a prolonged course of antibiotics to clear up (about 5 weeks), so from that experience I would really keep a close eye on the incision for any signs of a discharge, and if one develops (hopefully it won't), I'd be on to the vets straight away.

I also found it helpful for me to keep a twice daily record of temperature and pulse for a few weeks after she came home. The temperature will start to spike if there's any infection developing, and the pulse will give you a general indication of pain levels or general wellbeing. I found it really useful to record these, so then if there was any significant change I could discuss it with the vet.

If your boy is still on antibiotics, I'd definitely monitor his temp/pulse for at least a week after he finishes the course, and probably longer, just to be sure you are on top of any potential return of infection. Again, hopefully that won't happen, but it's easy enough to monitor just to be sure.

With my girl, she came down with laminitis about a month after coming home. Although we'll never have firm evidence for why it happened, I believe it was because of the prolonged course of antibiotics. My girl is unshod anyway, and I'd been religiously keeping her feet trimmed back from the moment she went down with colic, because it is known that laminitis can come on subsequent to colic. So I'd strongly recommend making sure your boy's feet are trimmed very regularly so that if by any chance he's one of the ones to develop laminitis, then at least there won't be too much excess wall to give room for any sinking.

OK, so those are the two things which we had happen, which we'd rather not have had.

Beyond that, I found I got into a routine of taking her out for twice daily inhand grazing. Because I'd had a bad experience (kick in the head) of hand grazing with a different pony, I decided to set up a totally different regime for it. So we didn't go into "her" fields at all (where she might have been tempted to kick up her heels and hoolie). Instead we walked out along the local, quiet, lanes, and grazed the verges, my reasoning being that those were places she was used to being calm and sensible rather than her "playground" field.

When we progressed to the active leading out stage, I swopped her halter for her bridle and let her out in that. Again, thinking along the lines of her being used to working when she was wearing a bridle, so grazing the verges was no longer allowed on those walks.

I found that within a few days of her coming home, she really wanted more contact with her buddies and more space, so I set up a little electric pen leading out from her stable. She could choose whether to be in that pen or in her bedded stable. The pen was only stable-sized, but it was enough to let her out in the sunshine and the wind, and she just seemed to chill out more being able to make that choice for herself.

She really made the most of contact with her buddies, and did long sessions of mutual grooming, though I always kept her on a halter so I could separate her from her buddy if either of them looked to be turning grumpy.

For me, I found it helpful to get into a strict routine of what time of day I was aiming to do the inhand grazing and the active walking out.

Hope everything goes smoothly and that your boy is soon well on the road to recovery. Oh, Liverpool uni have a good website section on colic, which I found useful in the early days.

Sarah
 
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