Horse off colour

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Offthewall

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22 January 2013
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Hi everyone, I wanted to run some horse symptoms past you all, horse isnt himself, Ok no answers of 'Call the Vet' as this has already been done.

Horse has gone from being a bit well about himself to looking thin and tucked up. He has been on the same feeding for 2 years, either hay or hayege depending on what was available, teeth done in Jan no issues, wormed 6 weeks ago also. Been pretty much roughed off this winter due to my job and home life, was about to get him clipped and brought back into work but noticed hes been just not right.

He is

Dull
Disinterested
Stopped eating normal feed
Not as happy and bouncy when ridden (not often just the odd short hack)
Standing staring into space
Not eating hay out in the field just standing waiting to be brought in again
Lying down when people about, never does this.
Sweating randomly on and off.

Now called vet and that side has been dealt with, they cant find anything wrong and everything clean and fine so we are a bit stumped.

Ive changed his feed and supplements so ive to give him ten days of this and see how he is. Anyone else had anything like this? Vet thinks virus, only thing they are concerned about is sweating and weight-loss/tucking up but hes not showing pain anywhere nor colic symptoms, so thats stumped them.
 
Does he perk up on bite? Speak to vet to double check but maybe try him on that for a few days and see if he perks up? Has he been wormed? Dung sample checked? I've seen a few who have had a high encysted red worm burden and needed panacur 5 day on top of usual wormer so that may be worth a check. They had similar symptoms.
 
Could it be ulcers - not all classic symptoms but they do vary from horse to horse. A friend's house lost weight, was a bit grumpy and her mane and tail went really thin.

Whatever it is I hope he's soon back to his normal self.
 
Vet never suggested a bute trial for him, I will call them today and ask them to leave some out for me.

I have managed to organise things so as he can have four small feeds everyday for a week or two at the minute, also he's not drinking as much as usual, I have added mint mixer to his water trough to try and tempt him to drink more as normally empty or just about everymorning and it wasn't this AM :(

Anymore suggestions please?
 
Has the vets done blood tests - if the horse has a virus it should show up in the cell counts indicating he is fighting something. Other possibilities would be ulcers.

I found iron and vitamin tonic useful when my chap had a long running recurring virus, he liked the taste of it and royal vet college horse man recommended it.

I ended up taking my chap hunting to try and shake him out of the dullness and it worked a treat but it depends on the horse, mine was a hunter as a youngster so was Very excited to be back in the hunting field. (bit too much so..:-))

I would also look at for encysted redworm with different wormer active ingredients as the other poster suggested, plus when vet takes bloods if they haven't already done that, get them to test the blood for tapeworm while they are at it.
 
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