Mare with colic

Blaise

Blaise

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My girly's cme down with colic in the last few days & vet has put it down to being stabled since monday (couldnt turn out cos of the snow & ice, was too dangerous getting to fields) and eating large amounts of her straw whilst she was in. So far she's been given 2 lots of liquid parafin & magnesium sulphate but is still only passing very small amounts of droppings and i'm getting really worried now. Vet's been out 3 times in 3 days and thinks the impaction is quite bad. The only thing she 's had today is a very sloppy (think soup!) bran mash and he's told me to keep lunging her to try & get things moving along, so i have. My main worry now is that she's not drinking and is getting dehydrated, which isn't going to help the colic. Is there anything else i can do or ad to her water to encourange her. We used to add apple juice to my friend's horses water as he never drank & got impacted qite a lot, will this hurt her? How about different flavour cordials or salt, would any of this encourage her to drink or be doing more harm than good. Also, will the bran mash hurt? I fed her a smll handful in about 1.5l of water which she ate (well, drank) but will this be blocking things up more?

Sorry for all the questions, i've never had to deal with colic in my own horse before & feel really useless. Well done to anyone who's made it this far!
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I would ask the vet about the dehydration . Regarding the lunging becareful of over doing it as the horse will tire - when my lad ate his entire bed (have put him on shavings ) I walked him gently around .Good luck hope she recovers soon .
 
You could give sugar beet water (without the beet) as most horses seem to like it. I can't imagine that giving water, even flavoured with apple juice or beet juice could do any harm, especially if you are concerned that she is dehydrated.
I don't want to worry you further, but if she's been colicky for 3 days, without showing much sign of improvement, perhaps you need to get her referred to a veterinary hospital for further investigation.
One of mine had similar signs (although out 24/7) of impaction, but still with some diarrhoea. When she didn't show improvement by the evening, she went in to horsepital for observation, and then was operated on a day or so later for impaction of the small colon. She recovered very well, the vets said they thought this was because she was in good condition, and still strong when she went in.
I hope she gets better soon.
S
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Sorry your horse is suffering with colic
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I would have thought if your vet has been up for last 3 days he would have referred her to a vet hospital if he was really concerned? If you are not happy maybe ask if vet will refer you just to be on the safe side.
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Hope your next post says she is much better
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Thanks guys. My vet is usually really good and tends to err on the side of caution with most things so i'm hoping he's less worried than i am. Will definitley see what he thinks about referring her in the morning though. Since about 9am this morning there have been 4 piles of droppings in her stable, with the amount of parafin she's had should there be more? What she has done loks quite normal, size and colour wise and it's not really dry or hard so this should be a good sign, right? It's more the not drinking thing i'm worried about now. She doesnt seem to be in lots of pain as she's not rolling or looking/kicking at her stomach & when i walk into the barn she comes to the door with ears forward and certanly oesnt seem to have lost her appetite the way she slurped up the bran mash!
 
How many droppings there should be depends on how much she ate yesterday and the day before (assuming she is taking somewhere between 24 and 48 hours to pass food through), so only you can tell!
I do hope she gets better soon, without the need for referral.
S
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Why not ask your vet to ring a specialist centre for advice? There was a vet documentary on tv few weeks back and they successfully cleared an impaction colic by giving vast amounts of coca cola! I understood it to be a recognised method. The only cautionary note was that once an impaction colic has happened once, it's likely to again. Sorry. Hope your girl starts to recover soon xxx
 
Sorry to hear your horse has had colic
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It's a nightmare isn't it
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From reading your response to other people's posts it does sound as though she's going in the right direction - Have you thought about adding Epsom Salts to her bran mashes? This would work in two ways, as a laxative and to encourage her to drink more - I don't see why you couldn't add apple juice to her water to encourage her to drink either
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This cold spell really has upset a lot of horses resulting in more cases of colic arising than normal
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Fingers crossed for your mare - keep in touch with your vet and if in doubt ask for a referral to a specialist vet hospital.
Good luck
Kate x
 
if she is pooing that is a good sign coz that is showing she is not blocked. is she allowed hay yet if so soak it to death so when she eats it she will be getting liquid from that. if you are concerned about anything get in touch with your vet you dont want to mess around with something like colic! good luck hope she is better soon!
 
I had one bunged up over the new year
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. We've been having minus 9 for almost a month now and 2 of my liveries have practically stopped drinking. The one who was bunged up started showing signs the afternoon of the 31st. I gave him some Buscopan IV and vet then came out to stomach tube a generally re hydrate. We spent 3 days tubing with gallons of soapy liquids and IV drips. He is now (touch wood) back to normal. Ive turned off all automatic waterers and we are running ourselves stupid with bucketed water but at least we know who isnt drinking as they should and steps are being taken to keep them hydrated. I have one in particular who isnt drinking enough and he gets buckets of tepid water with bran and a handful of salt in every 2 hours or so. The rest are all on bucket water, sloppy bran mashes, sloppy sugar beet and a good handful of kitchen salt on the tongue once a day. Ive cut down on their straights and hay which although I hate to do...........
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. Im sure your mare will be okay and think your vet is on the ball. Mairi.
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Hey yeh my horse got colic in october and ended up having emergency surgery, then came home and was rushed back a day later for another emergency surgery, but when he finally came home they needed him to drink like 10 buckets of water a day so we were told to put molasses in it, because horses love it and it certainly worked.

Hope this helps

x
 
Hi folks, thanks for all of your replys. Ria seemed to be much brighter in herself this morning but still not enough droppings in her stable so called the vet back out & he's took her into the equine clinic today& put her on a drip to re-hydrate her & pump loads of fluid in to hopefully get things moving a bit quicker than they are. He doesnt seem too worried about it and thinks it will clear up with this. He mentioned surgery as a last resort in some cases but really doesnt think it will come to that. (fingers crossed) Just waiting for them to call me with how she is tonight.
I left a full bucket of plain water & 3 small buckets with different flavoured water in last night but she didnt touch any of them, however one of the liveries in my barn has seen her using the automatic feeder for the last few days so she must have been drinking something. I'm going to see f there's any way they can turn it off so i can monitor what she's drinking over the next few weeks. I've never liked those waterers much anyway. I'd never thought of molasses, will give that one a try next!
 
If the vet needs to rehydrate (try pinching some neck skin and see if it immediately springs back or goes back more slowly) then they can drip liquid in via the jugular I believe.

Is the hay being soaked, that helps it move along too and provides some hydration.

Linseed oil is also slightly laxative try a slurp in each mash.
 
My horse suffers from recurrent colic and got it last Thursday when the weather went milder. He had been in since New Years Eve and was only meant to go out for an hour but ended up going out for three. I thought it was the grass but now I am thinking it is the haylage as we have swapped over to some rather rich bales. Be careful of feeding bran as it can cause problems to do with the bacteria in the stomach so some one was telling me the other day, not quite sure in what way. I'd also put your horse on probiotics, got mine on pink powder.
 
Hi, sorry to hear about your mare, the mare i have on loan had a severe colic attack (timpany (SP)) on monday night, to the extent that not even coligone helped (sorry kate, usually a fantastic product, and always worked well in the past) vet gave her max dose of everything he could and even sedated her, luckily next morning she has looking happier but shattered to say the least. I too think it was due to the weather after reading a few posts on here. Hope she recovers well.
 
Gosh please don't apologise! Sometimes it's more than gastric acid that causes the problems
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I'm just glad you got the vet out and managed to settle her!
I hope she's recovered ok?
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Got to admit this weather is causing havoc throughout the country with lots of colics appearing
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Kate x
 
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