copd

W

whiteclover

Well-Known Member
Joined
22 March 2011
Messages
815
Visit site
Has anyones horse had bad copd and got better with it? Ive been using inhalers (ventolin & beclomethosone) for nearly a week now. I started him on it on Monday and hes no better. The vets coming out tomorrow but I fear its not good news.
 
Finding the cause and removing, if possible, is usually the most successful route, 24/7 turnout if it is not pollen related, haylage is usually better than soaked hay.

Plenty of exercise to keep them fit and open the airways will help once they are well enough.

I have one that is much less sensitive than he used to be, he lives out most of the time but can be in for short periods without problems, he never has hay as it seems to be the trigger however well soaked, fine on haylage.
 
My horse started coughing a few years ago and was on an inhaler. This actually did nothing!! He was then referred to Rossdales and they confirmed that he was moderately allergic. I was soaking his hay but decided to change to haylage and that is probably the biggest thing that helped. He now is fine he occasionally coughs and is worse in the summer due to the pollen and can headshake but have now put him on Horsesense biscults and they do seem to be working. I also give aloe vera juice twice a day. When he was referred he couldn't trot more than a couple of strides without coughing! Hope yours improves but if still on even soaked hay I would change, I also changed to cardboard and shaving bed. Hope this helps. Let me know how he gets on.
 
The inhalers do take some time to take effect, my boy started on flixotide back in january and it was probably 3 weeks before I noticed an improvement, I think he was on the flixotide for 2 months before moving onto beclametasone which he is on now. I also changed his management, moved to an outdoor stable, bedding is now rubber matting and woodchips and soaked hay fed from the floor and no dry hay when turned out.

Unfortunately he went a bit downhill last week, we think the pollen was making things worse and after a long chat with my vet we decided on a course of injected steroids and they're really helping.

It is really frustrating, but the treatment and changes have improved my boy and he has been full of energy, able to jump, gallop without getting out of puff.

Good luck :)
 
If it's a pollen allergy then it's a difficult to impossible thing to manage. For a severe allergy, it's clearly impossible to stable a horse in a hermetically sealed pod with filtered air, from April to October. This is the only way to completely remove pollen grains from the atmosphere. A mildly affected horse can often be helped with drugs to relax airways and break up the sticky mucus strands in the lungs that cause the damage. Another sometimes successful route is REACT which is a method of producing a tailored serum for the horse following careful testing of allergens. This is an expensive option with absolutley no guarantees at all and my understanding is that it's only about a 50% success rate though I'm ready to be told otherwise. The only cheap and pretty much 100% successful management of this is to move your horse to a yard on a windy headland overlooking the sea, preferably somewhere on the west coast of the UK so that the prevailing winds all come more or less straight off the Atlantic thus bearing no pollen grains at all. Ha ha. Not possible for most owners! There's a product called Nostrilvet which my vets said is useless, so save your money. Nosenets for true pollen COPD/RAO rather than headshaking is also false science as so much of the air inhaled at every breath will come from around the sides of the nose cover. Also it's a moot point whether the size of the mesh is small enough to filter out all pollen grains. And anyway, even if it does, it would surely clog up within a few hours? Many so called feed supplements do little more than ensure the horse is getting all necessary vits and mins - a lot of pseudo-science written about this topic so beware. My veteran is severly affected and sadly, my experience is that it gets worse and worse every year that you aren't able to control the symptoms because the lung damage is cumulative. Make sure your horse is as lean and fit as he can be. Moderate exercise but if he's badly affected then his exercise tolerance could well be very low and trying to push him through it could give him a heart attack. Worth checking his breaths per minute at rest, which should be about 8 - 12 per minute (that's counting 1 inhale + 1 exhale as = 1 breath). My veteran is at least 45 and if mildly stressed (he hates travelling) it can shoot up to over 65. I've had some success with Cavalesse but you need to start this 3 weeks before the first appearance of the pollen so it's too late for this year. Good luck x
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top