Mare very stiff behind - can anyone help? (also in tack room)

[ponypatter]

My mare is 2 months pregnant, but has been a bit 'down' over the last week or so. I assumed it was just lethargy with the heat, but yesterday she practically refused to come out of her stable and was very lame behind. She just takes tiny little steps and looks very sore in her pelvis. Kept her in and she is much better today so I tried to do some stretches with her and shes fine with everything except that when I run my thumbs over her rump and down each side of her tail (hope I am explaining this ok!), she does not react at all. Normally she'll rotate her pelvis down and stretch out her back well.

Otherwise she is completely fine and normal. She is not in work and is on summer (crap) grazing, haylage and a scoop of happy hoof a day. Did wonder if she could have tied up?!

Very grateful for any help!

 

[flintfootfilly]

I would have got the vet out straight away.

However, taking it from here, I'd monitor her today especially:
-temperature (if it's up it could indicate infection)
- pulse (if it's up, it can be a useful indicator of pain, and other things)
- general demeanour
- colour of urine
- and obviously how she is moving

Depending on your findings with those things, I'd decided whether it warranted a chat with the vet sooner or later.

If you think she may be tying-up at any stage in the future, it's worth having bloods done straight away, to be sure you catch the muscle enzymes at their peak. In a normal horse, they'll go back to normal within a few days.

Hope she's improved today.

Sarah

Was she obviously lame on one particular leg, or was it general stiffness in the hind end?

ETA: Just looked at the analysis for Happy Hoof (0.15mg/kg of selenium). If I were to feed 3kg of that per day to one of my 500kg ponies, they still wouldn't be getting enough selenium to reach the NRC recommended minimum daily amount of selenium. (Selenium is an antioxidant required to help minimise damage to muscles).

So personally I would switch to feeding a good vit/min balancer containing organic selenium (selenium yeast). The one I'm choosing at the moment is Blue Chip Original, because it contains 0.9mg selenium per daily ration.

Not worth scrimping on this, especially in a pregnant mare, but not in any case really (as I'm learning from experience of getting it wrong!).

Sarah