hock abscess

[Marilyn]

My neighbour is having probelms with her old mare. The horse went lame about three weeks ago and on calling the vet it was discovered that she had an abscess in her hock. As one started to heal, the another one came up but luckily the two were linked. Anyway, despite the fact that the mare is not particularly lame any more and is happy in herself, the abscess isn't clean yet...does anyone have experience of hock abscesses? Any help would be greatly appreciated"!

 

[claire1976]

Yes, I had an awful wound on my mare's hock in spring and it developed into an abcess. Its an awful place for anything to heal. My mare wasn't lame on it but it took forever to heal. It was being bandaged every 3 days and constantly wet and sticky. In the end I felt I was getting nowhere with it and took the bandages off to allow it dry up and used some MSM cream to encourage healthy tissue to grow. It took about 3 months to completely heal and even now she's left with a capped hock.
My vet spent quite a lot of time flushing the abcess out with saline which I think kickstarted the wound to repair itself.

 

[Marilyn]

yes, the vet seems to be doing a lot of flushing and poking. poor horse and porr owner, she's really upset

 

[claire1976]

I can symphathise - it's horrid. My horse was injured the first week of spring turn out and was box rested for 3 months during summer. I had to graze her in hand daily but she coped so well. I felt terrible that she didn't have summer fun with her mates and felt sorry for myself for still having to muck twice a day and pay for feed/bedding etc whilst no summer riding -boo!
Its a real drag getting hock wounds to heal and you just have to be patient really. I hope it works out for your friend. The thing to remember is that older horses take longer to heal. I supplemented my mares feed with pink powder and MSM powder and really feel that helped with the body repairing wound from inside.

 

[Marilyn]

She's getting the horse a global herbs supplement, something like immune plus? Did you ever use a poutice to draw the infection out? Her vet seems a bit old school and won't accept that anything like that could help. It's a good point about that fact that she's old too, I hadn't thought of that...