Liver desease in horses

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Sarah and Armani

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Hi everyone this is new to me I have a new horse that has been un well for 5days so called the vet.he was moved from his field to another one with loads of grazing on wensday last week and from wensday night he's not been him self dead lethargic sweaty and generally not his cheeky self,he was a bit footy to.the vet came on Saturday and took blood did tests and it came back with slight damage to his liver and still waiting on some others that wernt done in house I'm really wurryed he won't lead a normal life and what's brought this on when he had hardly any grazing he was fine is the grass to much for his liver to cope with?can anyone help me??? He's 12 years old tb x hanavairian thank you Sarah x
 
Agree with the laminitis comment.

Our horse was dignosed with liver issues, thought to be from eating oak leaves (altho we're not sure where he found them!) We were recommended Trinity Consultants L94 which is a liquid supplement you add to feed. Our horse was transformed into a monster in literally 2 days, we didn't recognise him! He was very quiet when we bought him and a bit of a pet, however within two days on this supplement he was unrecogniseable, he turned into a wild child and got very keen. However I should point out he is a racehorse so this was a good thing for us! I think the supplement cost approx £70 and lasted a month, he didn't need anymore after this.

I'm not suggesting this is what you need but if you get further down the line it might be worth having a chat with Trinity Consultants, they were very helpful and the supplements are tailored to the individual needs.
 
Do you think ?he's been on limited turn out since Saturday 2-3hours a day and is a lot perkyer and not doing the shuffling with his feet?do you think his body can cope with a certain amout of grass and when he's had to much he's Not him self because his body can't cope with all the sugar ect in grass? also he's better in a morning when he's been in his box for the night a lot brighter ect iv not had a lot to do with lamanitic horses but the vet says he might also be insulin intolarent don't no much bout either?
 
If you do a search on my posts, I've put tons and tons of stuff about damaged livers on the Forum. PM me if you need any more info but at the moment, I'm confused by your horse's symptoms. Sounds more like laminitis to me so I wonder why your vet did a blood test? It may be that the liver damage is in addition to laminitis, just discovered by accident. If there is the remotest possibility that your horse has laminitis, you need to immediately get him off any grass and stable him with deep soft shavings right up to the stable door. I'd ring your vet and ask for clarification. If a horse is moved to lush new grazing and within 24 hrs comes in footy and unhappy, the first thought MUST be laminitis. A secondary problem with the history your horse has is that he could have a low grade gassy colic - that would certainly fit with the too-swift switch to lush grazing and sweaty misery. When you move a horse to lush new grazing, it needs to be done in exactly the same way that you would introduce any new feed, ie a little bit at a time.
 
MrsD123 said:
I wish someone would just go out and blood test 1000 random horses, it would be interesting to find out how many show liver malfunction
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Normal ranges are created by doing exactly this, i.e. blood sampling healthy horses. The normal range is then set to encompass the mean result +/- 2 standard deviations, which will include 95% of the horses sampled. By this logic, if you sampled 1000 healthy horses, you would expect that 50 of them would have results that fell outside a normal range, without being an indicator of disease.
Liver enzymes can also be tricky to interpret because they can also be affected by a range of non-pathological factors, e.g. recent adminstration of bute, not as a sign of disease but just as a normal response.

Perhaps most importantly, a large amount of liver damage is necessary before we will see any clinical changes at all, so there can be large changes in liver enzymes without any effect on liver function whatsoever. Equally, in end stage liver disease, there is so little functional liver left, that even significant disease will produce normal results. Much more important than the amount of damage done to the liver is the functional consequence of that damage, which we can measure in a few ways, for example by bile acid concentration (normally low as they are filtered out by the liver), and indirectly by albumin levels (will be reduced in liver disease as produced by the liver).

Liver enzymes are also poor indicators of the degree of damage, which is better assessed by ultrasound, and also poor indicators of cause and prognosis, which is better assessed by biopsy.

In short, minor rises in liver enzymes are poor indicators of liver disease or damage, but may point the direction for further investigation. I would at least ensure a bile acid level is taken - if this is normal and enzyme levels are only mildly raised the chance of significant liver damage is very slim. If the bile acid level is raised then further investigation by ultrasound/biopsy is probably warranted.
 
Thanks for all your info it's early days since I was on here last got back my other results and my poor boy is insulin restraint to ,bless him going to manage him with food and exercise for 2 weeks then do more bloods any one got any info on this I'm hoping he will be fine to still compete??
 
My Horse got severe lammy brought on by liver and kidney failour, somone tried to kill him by poisoning him.

he was very very swaety and drank about 6 buckets a day, i had to gove him anti biotics and some other special liver medicines, he didnt eat hardly for a few weeks, he almost died and was very very poorly, he never did more than 2 poos a day and he was on box rest the poo thiong lasted about 3 months, he had absolutly no energy to even hold his head up.

the good news, he fully recovered from the liver and kidney problem, he didnt like the anti biotics in his feed, so i had to get food flavouring and put of few drops of that directly on the snti biotics, for some odd reason he really like the strawberry and banana flavours hehe

best of luck hunny, stay strong and brave, it will be hard work, but they can make a full recovery.

if he is foot sore I would imagine he has laminitis too, so make sure to keep him in and make his bed big, and get some frog supports on him, even if its not at leats youve prevented anymore damage if it is :)
xx
 
LouB said:
Agree with the laminitis comment.

Our horse was dignosed with liver issues, thought to be from eating oak leaves (altho we're not sure where he found them!) We were recommended Trinity Consultants L94 which is a liquid supplement you add to feed. Our horse was transformed into a monster in literally 2 days, we didn't recognise him! He was very quiet when we bought him and a bit of a pet, however within two days on this supplement he was unrecogniseable, he turned into a wild child and got very keen. However I should point out he is a racehorse so this was a good thing for us! I think the supplement cost approx £70 and lasted a month, he didn't need anymore after this.

I'm not suggesting this is what you need but if you get further down the line it might be worth having a chat with Trinity Consultants, they were very helpful and the supplements are tailored to the individual needs.
Click to expand...

Just another vote for L94 - just ordered my summer one. It is £38 a bottle but for a months supply it's about £70. I detox season by season now. I also have a laminitic.
 
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