colic

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alicep

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ok so Alice my mare showed signs of colic last night, and any of you who read my post yesterday will know that i was extremely hungover and this was the last thing i needed. Horses ey? lol any way she didnt eat any hay in stable during the day, rolled and had what i thought were sweat patches over her bum. so my first instance was to call vet who couldnt come down for about an hour (stupid i know) and so i took her for a walk in hand round the lanes for half an hour. by the time we got back vet had called to say he was on his way but alice had now dried and was absolutely fine. so vet came and checked he said everything was normal and to keep an eye on her so i put her in field for the night and checked every hour till about 10pm and still she was fine. so what i want to know is what can you do if you think your horses has colic? i was always told to keep them walking? but there is alot of info avaliable these days and lots of ideas and can you assume they dont have colic anymore if they poo? what are your ideas and experiences. (going out now so will check your responces later!)
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I don't think walking is as recommended anymore. If she wants to walk, let her, if not she doesnt need to. If they poo it is a good thing, but it depends on the type of colic I think, as to whether it means its ok again, and how much poo etc.

Glad she is ok though
 
My old chap used to regularly colic a couple of years ago, but depends on type of Colic, you have spasmodic and impactions...

For impactions which my boy got, I used coffee with caffiene in it, not recommending it just saying I used a tea spoon in handful of nuts and it cleared impactions as a rule, this was AFTER painkillers and muscle relaxant given by vet.

Recommendations seem to be that if your horse wants to lie down and is comfortable, then leave it be if it is quiet. Mine lays down and groans if bad but doesnt thrash and the old "twisted gut" worry is the one that caused people to walk their horses round.

I dont think if they are unsettled you can do a lot of harm in walking them gently, it does get things moving sometimes.

there will be many opinions on this!!!

Personally if calm I leave them be, if thrashing and going nuts I try to keep them up and walking very gently if possible until vet and drugs are avaialble!
 
Jim had a spell of gassy colics which could turn to impactions. My vet recommended walking, or ideally lunging in trot, to try & clear the gas build up.
 
my boy had impaction colic very badly on saturday. vet had me walking him for an hour round the field even though he was quite quiet in his box, just lieing down and groaning. He ended up having a parafin drench.
 
It depends on the type of colic what you should do. Walking for a few mins, gently, is fine - but best done in the school or field, not the lanes. This is in case the horse suddenly gets worse and goes down - schools and fields are (generally) softer with fewer things to get caught up in.
Poo is a good sign - but I had one of mine with an impaction who also had diarrhoea so it isn't really reliable.
Best plan for all colics is to get the vet out, then see which way it goes. In my experience horses usually get better within a few hours, unless it's more serious when you need your vet again, or to ship them off to your local vet hospital.
Hope Alice is fine.
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After quite a considerable amount of bad luck this year i have some knowledge of colic surgery's now!
beginning of june our yearling filly came i from the field in some discomfort (she thought she was dyiny), called vet who came and gave her bute and anti spaz drugs and she improved, restricted her food and checked her throughout the night. think was just a gassy colic.
anyway, 2 days later came in ok, but was laying down at front of stable (a family trait her mother and sister also lay in funny places) got up for dinner and ate a little bit but soon went back to bed....does go to bed at funny times, just figgered tired, no colic signs.
we went to bed about 11, but luckily i watched a film so was still half awake so heard some banging, quiet though, like a tapping every now and then....listened for a couple of minutes before i went out as often foals bang about when they get up or mummies bang when foalies get their teeth!!! nb, still passing droppings at this stage.
went out to check and pheobe was colicing, wasn't thrashing around, but stretched out groaning with bulging eyes, called, vet who was here with in half hr, gave her drugs again, checked heart rate (up a bit) but no signs of improvment from drugs, so rectaled her and small intestine had started to swell (due to twist) thankfully our brilliant vet made a fast descision to go for surgery and we put her in trailor and were at the equine hospital an hr later.
by the time we got there she was dripping with sweat and squiminy in pain and legs kept buckling, never seen anything so awfull, she litteraly didn't know what to do with herself. she was scanned, rectaled again and prep'ed for surgery.
surgery went well, twist in small intestine, but no gut removed, came round well and went to recovery.
by the evening she was eating a little grass and small bran mash.
by the next evening she was back on soaked hay and more grass (in hand). came home day early as she was doing so well. she 's had 12 weeks box rest (grazing in front garden 3/4 times a day for up to 1/2 hr) and now 3 weeks in a small restricted paddock and is doing really well.
took us probably 2 weeks to sleep through the night without checking her several times, either myself or oh still check her before we go to bed. fingers crossed won't occur again, no apparent reason for colic, just bad luck.

THEN.......... 5 weeks later (during phoebe's box rest) went to get mare and foal in from field in the morning, after a night out (were out at night in, in the day to avoid flies) and found dee (broodmare) literally upside down with all her legs in the air!! S%*T!!! dragged her up and got her as far as the school to walk her to try and avoid her laying and rolling. (poor foalie getting hungery and confussed so layed down and went to sleep!!) still passing droppings, sweating up and generally very uncomfortable. called vet, he arrived bout half hr later, got her in and gave her drugs, saying that he'd be amazed if we ever had another colic surgery in our lifetimes as no swelling of intestine whatsoever, so let the drugs kick in and watched her whilst scanning other mares for pregnancy........half hr later intestine was starting to swell so off to hospital again!! hadn't shown any really bad signs until we got to the hospital where she became progessivly worse, when we got there small intestine was twice the size it should have been and she was very uncomfortable (usually a very tough mare with high pain threshold) luckily foal could drink when she was up, prep'ed for surgery and went for surgery at approx 2pm, came round and went back to foal at 9pm who was getting very upset.
after much panick thinking we're doing something terribly wrong, we found out the cause of dee's colic.....an adheision had formed as result of a hermia opperation she had at 4 1/2 months old (now 12 years old) and basically she'd been waiting to colic since then!!! so it was just very bad luck that it happened so close to the other one.
was very slow to pick up after surgery (two days) and was talk of second surgery (phone call to bank manager!!) anyway did pick up thank god and came home 6 days after surgery. unfortunatly came home with wound infection so had to clear that up to.....story very long so to sumerise both out now on a little grass in small paddocks again and doing well.

basically, colics you should restrict food, ideally have them on shavings not straw beds, call vet immediatly, no really benifit to walking or walking to prevent rolling and therefor twisting, as apparently if they're going to twist they'll do it anyway, can continue to pass droppings, temp and heart rate can go up, but the main thing is if you think your horse is howing any signs of colic restrict their food and call the vet, the worst was you've had a call out fee for nothing..... they said that if dee had colic'ed at 12 at night we would have found her dead in the morning.
 
Wow.
And I thought I was unlucky with my 3yo needing colic surgery this spring...
Hope yours make a full recovery.
That's the trouble with colic - you can't always tell what's going on inside from the pain/external behaviours and signs, so you really have to treat each case as though it's potentially serious in order not to waste time if it IS serious.
Good luck with all your colicky ladies.
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Wow.
And I thought I was unlucky with my 3yo needing colic surgery this spring...
Hope yours make a full recovery.
That's the trouble with colic - you can't always tell what's going on inside from the pain/external behaviours and signs, so you really have to treat each case as though it's potentially serious in order not to waste time if it IS serious.
Good luck with all your colicky ladies.
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thank-you, i've attached pics of the yearling, she looked a little poor were she'd lost weight, put is looking much better now, just a few scars from where she had te bellyband on 24 7 for so long, poor bunny, she's had a pretty hard start!
 
My girl had one of those too...but it had a few design errors...specifically the equine teeth friendly velcro attachments at the front which she couldn't leave alone.
She took it off so much that I think the vets gave up. They were impressed by her er...enthusiasm though!
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