Help/ advice for horse recently diagnosed with cushings

shortstuff99

shortstuff99

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Hello everyone,

My horse who is only just 17 years old has recently been diagnosed with cushings disease, she doesn't have the curly coat but does have most of the other symptoms. Unfortunately the cushings led her to develop quite bad laminitis. She is on treatment for both the cushings and the laminitis but refuses to take pain meds which obviously hampers her treatment. We have tried all ways to get her take the meds and she has even been on the wormer like paste but to no avail! I would be greatful if anyone could give me tips on how to get her to take the painkillers and if anyone has any advice on the long term management and care of a cusing's horse.

Thank you very much if you got this far!

xx
 
no help how to entice your horse on taking meds but we give our old cushing pony chaste berries(vitex agnus castus,monks pepper) from the health food shop ---15mg a day we grind them up in a coffee grinder and mix in his food this helps him a lot and he sheds his coat every year
take a look at the lamintus trust website they have some good reading on this condition
 
I'm sorry to hear that :-( Only tip I can giv e you with regards to administering medicines is this......Buy a worming bit! Firstly, dilute medication with water, add thick apple sauce, suck it into a syringe then squirt it throuigh the worming bit......I found this so much easier than anything else when I first started giving my boy his daily dose of Danilon due to Arthritis. He was a nightmare as he's a fussy feeder at the best of times! He's now settled into eating 2 sachets a day (one in each feed) with little to no issue so there is hope.
 
For getting meds down I've used, apple juice, apple sauce, soaked hi fibre nuts so it's mush. I've put pill's in slices of apple / pear / swede, pill's, in the middle of sugar free polo's.
Worst case senario I've had a suringe off the vets, and mixed with apple sauce or simmilar, then suringed it in and held there chin up, until theve swallowed

As for other things you can do, we've had 2 cushings horses, and may have another, not diagnosed yet, but the past week, weve had symptoms.
Chaste berry, is fab. Its a herb thats sold for moody mares, but its great for leveling hormones, and on our last 2 stopped nearly all symptoms. Inc sweating. It csn be bought in liquid and dry herbs, I found that the dry herb from D&H was cheapest, and did the trick.
And Milk thistle, also from D&H, it helps cleanse the liver, as toxins in the liver can also be an issue. This actually stopped our old TB from flooding his stable with wee each night, and he went almost back to normal

We had to clip the TB out all yr, in the end as in his last yr he was like a wooly mammoth, so he had a reflective fly sheet on in summer to keep him cool.

Neither of our 2 boys were on prescribed meds, as we were able to keep there symptoms mild, But prescribed meds can really work wonders. Its just a case of keeping an eye on lami, as you well know, throughout the yr, inc frosty grass, and keeping an eye on there weight in general, our vet always prefered ours a little lean, so we would restrict grass, and feed adlib straw, to keep there digestion working

Jill x
 
Sorry to hear about Cushings diagnosis, I think there are plenty of tips on getting meds in, only thing I would add is make sure you are trying to give Danilon rather than Equipalazone, both for taste and effects of long term treatment.

As for managing a pony with Cushings, unless you can get the Cushing's under control you are very unlikely to get the laminitis sorted and Pergolide is the drug of choice for this.
 
I have to syringe my boy's meds in (he has Pergolide and Metpirone)... I use Natural Yoghurt as the mixer and find it works well as long as I fill the whole syringe with yoghurt so there is a high yoghurt/med ratio
 
My 17hh horse is a nightmare. He has cushings but so far no laminitis. The only way I can get meds into him is to feed a small warm bran mash mixed with a dollop of apple sauce (shop bought) and a dollop of sugar beet. For his pergolide I feed it broken in two bits and mixed with coolmix. Not sure that you can give sugary things to your laminitic but horses tend to adore bran feeds which has no nutritional value at all.
 
I would just like to thank everybody for your helpful replies! I have ordered the wormer bit so hopefully this will help. She will take the pergolide in a carrot, but that is the only med we can get down her, she has just become so suspicious of everything that she just wont try anything! Its like she thinks we are trying to poison her! Hopefully the bit will work or that she will take to the bran mash otherwise I really don't know what we will do. I can't plain syringe her meds anymore because she throughs her head really high and she gets this strange phenomenon where it causes her to faint so hopefully the bit will work!
 
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