Mastitis advice/help

E

emalou2

Well-Known Member
Joined
3 October 2008
Messages
224
s400.photobucket.com
Hi, my mare came down with mastitis Sunday morning. Vet came gave IV anti biotics, anti inflamm, and painkiller.
Advised to strip (which she allows me to do at the moment) and massage also walk around to try move the swelling and break it down.
My mare used to be a brood mare, last foal over 4 years ago, im told its unusual for mastitis in a non prgenant mare? is this correct>?
Ive also read its a very serious condition.. her temp was 39 on sunday but has come down to 38 today.
Im concerned as the vet insitis on coming out to give her anti biotics, ive got to give her penicillin tomorrow morning and 2x bute but hes coming again tomorow night (3rd visit) and has suggested scanning her Thursday.
She appears to be her normal self today so am i worrying for nothing?
What ive heard clearly concerns me and the fact that the vet will be seeing her 3 consecutive days is worrying? Is this a normal process or hasshe just got it really bad??

Thanks
 
I don,t know anything about mastitis in mares but do know about cow mastitis. It sounds like your vet is doing a very good job with antibiotics and anti inflamatries. The stripping out is also very important so do as often as you can. Horses are a lot more sensisitive than cows so don,t begruge the vet visits. Hope she gets better soon.
 
I have no experiance of horse mastitis, but when I had it (!!) I felt like I had really bad 'flu; literally ached from head to foot, pounding headaches, didn't want to move, high temperature, couldn't eat anything, not to mention the very sore bits!!

So, don't under estimate how serious it is!!
 
Some mares can go down with a bout of mastitis for really weird reasons. Reasons include new geldings in the field, move to richer pasture, taken to a different place and probably many more! My rescued mare arrived with mastitis after her young foal was killed in traumatic circumstances. She had a zillion other serious health problems too and the mastitis took over a month to resolve. She then went down with another episode 18 months later after she was sent to a local trainer for backing. This wasn't as serious and recovered with 5 days antibx.
 
My mini shetland had bout a couple of weeks ago, her baby is 15 months old so not related. One side of her udder was massive and attempting to touch it was impossible, the vet nearly ended up wearing a furious pony. Bute and anti biotics cleared it up really quickly and she's had no further problems.
 
Thanks all. The vet came today and said he was happy with her progress. Still coming tomorrow to give iv's. She's feeling herself more, even went up and landed on my foot! (grrr)!
 
In addition to everything your vet is doing, you could also bathe the area with warm water as it helps reduce the pain and makes it more comfortable for the mare as well as softening the muck in the udder making it easier to strip it out. You can do that as often as you can/like.
 
Yes I would massage, maybe with warm olive oil, as long as she is allowing this, that is a good sign, you need to monitor for changes. lumps or hardness or heat, strip out regularly, empty the udder. I would hope the antibiotic treatment will end soon, but you are paying a lot for all the vets attention so ask him for a bit of extra information.
For cows we would catch the milk in a dark blue bowl and swirl it around, looking for tiny lumps, in mares milk, you may need to dilute the milk.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top