Dealing with choke

greenlivery

greenlivery

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Our mare has just had her second issue with choke this year, we have been outside with her all evening and its been pretty stressful. She was hot and uncomfortable and could hardly catch a breath. She is fine now, but had an equally terrible time last summer with extreme choke which took her all night to recover from. Its awful seeing her in such a state, this time we managed to get things moving by walking/trotting her up and down for about an hour (in the rain,wind and dark!), and she seems fine now (after covering us both in mucus and snot!)
Anyone else had a horse with choke? How did you deal with it and how long did it take before your horse was ok again? What did your vet suggest and did you need a vet to come out?
 
Sorry, this isn't going to be a helpful reply at all (more of a hijack), but what exactly is choke? Is it literally where they choke on a piece of food? I have actual nightmares about this happening to Scooby while no-one's there to help him, because he does wolf his food down so fast.
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Unfortunatly I did have to get the vet for my yearling....2nd time it did not clear and they had to shove tubes etc down him to clear it - it is very scary!!!!
So since changing his feed to D&H Safe and Sound it slows him down eating - it contains large nuts that they have to chew, also it is now served very wet............since changing his diet I have had no further episodes.
 
"Choke is the equine equivalent of getting a fishbone lodged in your throat. Food gets stuck somewhere between the mouth and stomach within the gullet or oesophagus "
 
Our youngster had choke and I agree it is very distressing to watch as she was getting up and down and sweating profusely, together with the gunge coming out of her nose. We got the vet out who gave her a relaxant , and we massaged the lump cos you could actually see and feel it, but the choke only cleared when my son rang me on my mobile to see how she was getting on. The sound of the ringing made her jump and you could actually see her swallow, it made us laugh but we were really relieved.
 
hi, choke can be distressing to watch. she should not have any problems with breathing whilst choking as horse breathe nasally. the last thing i would recommend doing is trotting her around. she is stresssed out as it is, without being made to run around whilst trying to deal with something stuck in her throat. the best solution, i find, is to massage the throat quite vigorously from jowl to chest. but the most important thing to do is to keep her calm and relaxed. unfortunately once a horse has experienced choke they are more suseptible to furthur attacks, as scar tissue can build...you can reduce the likelyhood of this by making any feed wet to help the food go down. also if she bolts her food. place a large salt block in the bottom of the bucket to slow her up. i was also suggest you get her teeth checked. hope all this helps. if the choke does not clear after an hour or so, you should consult your vet. x
 
my vet advices me that if my mare choked again i was to put the hose in the mouth (fairly fast by gentle) and if it had cleared in 20mins to call them out, touch wood she hasn't done it since. but it is total petrifying, when my mare did it was on my own, having never seen it before i was convinced she was going to collapses and die before the vet got there.
 
Hi,

My old horse Billy came in from the field one day with choke, me never seen/heard of this called the vet after seeing big lumps of green (grass green) Gob being spat all up the walls!!
Anyways the vet came out and tubed him, whist he tried to kill us..... all fine.

A week later same thing again.... vet called.... vet had to sedate him this time to put the tube up his nose into his stomach, as he kept trying to crush us against the walls..... all fine.

Less then a week later, same again. Whilst he was sedated they checked his teeth, and some of his back ones were really sharp, so may have been stopping him chewing properly.
.. so vet did his teeth while sedated.

Week later... choke again... this time we cleared the blockage and had him endoscoped.

What we discovered was the where he'd had the blockage in his oesphagus (sp?) it had created a bowl shape in his throat, then everytime he had eaten after being tubed this had simply filled up with food and blocked again.

He was on starvation (complete) starvation for 5 weeks!! but this did fix the problem for about a year!

Unfortunatly, he did get choke again, and this time it was too late to catch it and he coughed so much basically his windpipes collapsed and he had to have a tube in to breathe, he was on alot of steroids everyday, and was unable to probably ever go out again, as thats where he would always get choke, so couldnt even paddock retire him. He was also uninsured..... The decision was made to have him pts.

But i really do think that this is worst case scenario ever. I think if he was insured maybe it would've been different and could've tried more things.

P.s Its the bright bay in my signature.
 
The horse I have at the moment has had choke several times. He does really wolf his feed. He has only had it once though since being put on Calm and Condition which is soaked.
Each time I've done as said above- walked (and walked, and walked
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) and massaged his throat until he coughed it up. He gets very drawn up, and, as you say, gets very hot and sweaty, and usually rolls a lot too. It is very distressing to see him obviously unhappy and uncomfortable, but we've never had to call the vet- and i am lucky that he is kept on a yard with a lot of very experienced people who can be reached via panicked phone call from me
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We have a grey mare with a tendancy to choke, on pretty much anything.
They are not convinced it isn't connected to melanomas....
She suffers dreadfully at the time, as said before massaging is helpful. She wouldn't be able to trot even if we wanted her to. It started on chaffy feeds, and hay, this year she started on haylege. Vets have recommended living out 24/7 and a diet of grass. She seems to like that! We try to 'fatten' her up in the autumn and accept she'll drop weight by the spring.
We give her very sloppy soaked beet, or fibrebeet, if we need or want to give her something.
It is very scary at the time, and a constant worry that she'll get hold of some normal feed. And we know it could take her, or she may get so bad we have to make the decision. But as we are prepared we should cope if it happens
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Scary stuff, I think sloppy feed really helps my mare, and if she just spoke English I would explain the problems with being greedy and stuffing her face with too much hay!
xx
 
My pony used to di this quite a lot as he bolted his food. Not seen him do it for years and then last year he did it again. Thing is with him he's quite calm about it all and just turns away from his food and stands there 'concentrating' doing the whole gagging thing and then sort of vomits up all the crap (ok I know it's not vomiting) it was revolting though all out of his nose and mouth. Then he just goes back to eating again.

It is odd though as he's quite a panicky type he is so calm when it happens. Our TB does it a bit too if his food's not soaked enough.

I wouldn't trot a horse about though - I have helped by massaging the throat but generally just leave them to it - certainly if I know it's soft food. If I knew they'd got a carrot stuck or something it may concern me more. Also, if they did it a lot I'd be concerned they may have a physical problem causing it.
 
I've only ever seen one case of it personally, not my own horse and it was sorted by tubing. My suggestion would be though to make her hard feed into soup - add so much water that the feed floats and she has to drink it, and put hay or haylage into a net that has tiny holes, or double up a couple of haynets to make sure the holes are small so that you slow down rate of intake that way. That's in addition to getting her teeth checked by someone who uses a full gag, either vet or EDT.
 
Yes - we have had it a number of times. Quite alarming when it happens.

I now keep a huge syringe and if it happens try syringing warm water down their throats - helps to dislodge. Has to be warm - cold will cause a reflex gag.
 
Our vet advised someone at our yard to trot their horse around for an hour and if it had not moved by then he would come out and see it. It definitely worked though.

Also to get them to put their heads down if you can as then gravity helps a little.
 
Walking and trotting the horse can be a good idea - it can help to distract the horse away from the choke and relax him, which then leads to relaxation of the muscles around the oesophagus and potential resolution of the choke.
 
To prevent choke, there are a few things you can do;
1. Feed small feeds, soak them well with water or sloppy beet
2. Put a couple of very large, round stones in the feed bowl - eating round them makes your horse eat more slowly (obviously the stones have to be too large to swallow...:p).
3. Avoid feeding apples especially with nuts or pellets as the combination is supposedly not good for potential chokes.
4. Soak hay/haylage, and feed from the floor.
5. For really bad cases, feed only grass and straights like oats/barley (in recurrent chokes, often scar tissue builds in the gullet and the resultant narrowing makes more chokes occur - straights are too small to get stuck).
Hope your horse recovers.
S
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Beau got choke a few times when I first got him. He used to get a bit distressed but we found that massaging his neck where the blockage was shited it - a few thumps then using s bit of force rubbing knuckles up and down the throat, then thump again.

We sarted to bacically soak his chaff and give him a soupy feed and that stopped it until he learned not to bolt it.
 
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oh my gosh thats so sad
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Sounds like you did everything you could to keep the horse happy and healthy
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xxx

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Yeah i think we did.

Forgot to add, we changed his feed to lucie nuts, which were soaked soaked and soaked, everything he had to eat was soggy like stew!
 
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