Glands up/swelling under jaw line

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thatsmygirl

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My mare had her teeth rasped a couple off weeks ago and all was fine apart from a couple off edges to rasp down. Anyway today she has come in from the field with swelling and glands up under her bottom jaw line( in the groove) which she never has. Any ideas? I'm thinking maybe tooth infection? No cough or discharge from nose etc. She eat her breakfast and munching into her hay fine. The only other thing which has changed was I put the horses out into a field last night which has rested all summer and has ( gone to seed grass) as I want it munched down. Could the grass seed irratate her? I'm slightly worried at the mo. Anybody have experience off this?
 
Sometimes, once they have had a good scoff on good grass, some horses glands do tend to swell up.
Keep an eye on it, but you should hopefully find that it has gone down later and may again be up in the morning after turnout. This happens to my mare sometimes, its nothing to worry about.
Keep an eye, it should just be this though from what you have said. I had my mare for over a year before it happened, happened for a few days then went back to normal again.
 
We have a horse on our yard whos glands swell if he gets a lot of grass. Looks pretty dramatic but usuall goes down over night once he is off the grass. Maybe just see if it goes down today and if not vet tomorrow?
 
Oh thanks guys, she was wearing a greenguard muzzle as her weight is perfect and ready for hunting, I would sit and cry if she bloated out now but have to turn her out with my others. Going by what you have said I'm guessing she would have to work so much harder to get the grass up through the muzzle which maybe wouldn't off helped? First time she has worn it and wasn't impressed. Iv owned her for neally 8 yrs and never had this problem before.
 
I think there has been a flush of autumn grass - have noticed my horses saliva glands are up and yesterday he had a bout of spasmodic colic - vet says he has loads of cases of colic and laminitis at the moment because of the flush of grass.

If its saliva glands they should go down over night so check in the morning.
 
Glands can come up in response to infection or allergic reaction. In the absence of other symptoms I wouldn't immediately panic but just keep an eye on things for a few days. If they don't go down then call the vet. It sounds like your horse may have had some kind of allergic reaction to change of pasture.

As a number of other posters have said, salivary glands, sometimes called 'grass glands' can come up as a reaction to eating grass. They will generally reduce in size quite dramatically if the horse is stabled overnight.

My horse recently had raised submandibular glands (glands under jaw). No other symptoms were present. Horse was active and eating well. I called the vet out as the glands hadn't gone down after a few days. Vet gave antibiotics as a precautionary measure but glands were still raised after a week or so. Vet came back and gave a corticosteroid injection which helped a little but it took well over a month for glands to completely return to normal.

Vet said that he'd seen quite a lot of horses recently with raised glands and a lot of these like my own horse didn't respond quickly to treatment and just took time to return to normal.
 
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