Foal contracted tendons, any advice appreciated

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Hurricanelady

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Hi all

I have a 5 month old Trakehner foal (sire 17 hh, dam 16 hh) who has had a growth spurt recently and got very tall. Farrier is visiting to trim the foal every 4 weeks and advised on Thursday last week that the near side fore was getting slightly too upright and possibly start of a club foot developing. Mare is in foal again, due June 2012. She is doing well and although was underweight after foaling, is now holding condition well and looking good.

The farrier lowered the foal's heel and advised cutting feed back. I previously had both mare and foal on Bailey's stud balancer (450 g per feed each x 2 feeds) plus 15 Kg haylage between them at night, 1 scoop speedibeet per feed for the mare, and very small handful of beet per feed for the foal. Both out on hay quality grass in a 2 acre field from 6.45 am to 4.30/5.00 pm.

This is my first foal and I realise now I shouldn't have had them on haylage. Have immediately switched to hay and prior to being able to contact Bailey's, moved them both onto low cal balancer over the weekend (450g mare, 250g foal per feed).

Bailey's have advised changing them back onto stud balancer, and increasing quality for mare to 1.36 kg a day, and for the foal to 1.14 kg a day until 6 months old, then increase to 1.36 kg a day till 12 months old. They have also advised giving foal assist to the foal for the next 30 days.

I'm confused over what to do - farrier and local feed company have said that it shouldn't be necessary to use (or increase quantity of) stud balancer, what is needed is to try and slow down this growth spurt. Bailey's have also said the pics look as if the foal has a touch of epiphysitis, which the farrier doesn't agree with.

Any advice much appreciated, I had not planned to wean until between end Dec-end Jan to give foal as much time as possible with his dam and try and have him gelded whilst he's still with her; but at the same time I need to support her current pregnancy and not leave him on too long to her/unborn foal's detriment. I have got the vet coming on Friday to review the situation.

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I would be weaning the foal ASAP if it were mine and have it on a very basic low calorie diet of grass/hay and surelimb/foal assist. I certainly wouldn't be increasing the baileys stud balancer.
What has your vet said? I would go with your vet and Farriers advice and soon!
 
Hi everyone

Many thanks for prompt replies. Specialist equine vet at my practice on holiday last week and can't come out till Friday this week, will see him then unless it needs treating as an emergency before that.
 
Wean the foal now, is what I would do. Have read a few posts on here and one girl had to wean her foal at 3 1/2 months old. Don't feed yr foal hard feed, only grass and hay and talk with yr vet a.s.a.p, really the farrier should be coming out to trim the foals feet/heals down every week or two, not 4 weeks (i think this is a little too long) has yr farrier talked to you about putting on a shoe on, may be get a farrier who see's and deals with this problem on a regular basis.... all the best
 
I'm going through exactly this right now. My foal is 6 months 1 week, this started when he was 3 months.

1. Wean foal asap (I didn't straight away because I thought he was too young at 3 months, we waited till he was 4.5 months) He wasn't bothered in slightest as it happened and has seen his mum a couple of times since without either of them getting upset.
2. Baileys Foal Assist will do no harm, possibly some good, so why not?
3. Just hay and grass, no feed of any kind that comes in a bucket, no supplements, no balancers. Your aim is to reduce the protein is his diet as much as you can, hence no supplements as they all have protein in them.

We had oxytetracycline injections, and vet's opinions, which looking back, I'm not sure were much use. Having read up about this on here and tinternet in general, it is the advice of my farrier which seems to be the best, rather than that of my vet. Vet was suggesting we give him foal creep pellets, which are the last thing he needed when on the mother still, if anything it could have made things worse. Like you I am first time foal owner, so very dependent on what the "experts" tell me. Whether we are out of the woods yet remains uncertain, I have made decision that I am not going to give my colt the operation (check ligament desmotomy) that might fix this, we are dependent on farrier to try and fix this. Foal will "go on" if he doesn't come right on this fairly aggressive remedial farriery route. We have said end of February to make a decision about this. There is another recent post on here which was talking about Botox as an option in this situation, I have yet to do my own research on this, I am thinking it could be worth trying in our situation. We have farrier coming every 2 weeks or weekly, little glue on shoes on his bad hoof. It is getting better, but still a long way to go. It is not cheap, its costing us £60 every 2 weeks approx for this farrier wizardry.

If our foal had not moved beautifully and had the sweetest kindest temperament (been bred for my 16 year old daughter), I'm not sure I'd be taking this route. If I'm honest, it would have been a lot easier to have him PTS following diagnosis and get another one with normal feet, harsh as that may be. :( I have deliberately not kept a detailed record of the costs as, but we are well over £500 already, which is enough to have bought me a very fine replacement for our little Hiccup. And I bet he'll repay me by having an undescended testicle.
 
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Hi all, many thanks for detailed suggestions. The farrier will definitely come more often if needed and he's very experienced so I'm confident about his advice.

Have cut back to hay and grass and will see what vet says about adding foal assist or surelimb and whether to wean now.

He's a lovely foal so fingers crossed we can get over this issue.
 
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