Pain when eating hay?

C

Chestnut mare

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My 19year old mare has been suffering for a while now.

It started in July with a tooth root abcess she was fine eating just a huge swollen face. The tooth was extracted and healed beautifully.

A month later she started severely throwing her head and running on circles when eating hay. The vet came a prescribed rest, pain relief and antibiotics. There was no improvement. She went for xrays and an abnormality was noticed in the tooth next to the one extracted in July. This tooth was extracted.
All healed beautifully again.

Tried with hay still very bad throwing her head and running in circles. Rested again and gave hay replacers. 3 months of rest and not giving hay there is no improvement. She is fine when ridden and eating anything other than hay causes her no problems.

She is going for a CT scan next week. I just wondered if anyone has come accross this before?
 
Chestnut mare said:
My 19year old mare has been suffering for a while now.

It started in July with a tooth root abcess she was fine eating just a huge swollen face. The tooth was extracted and healed beautifully.

A month later she started severely throwing her head and running on circles when eating hay. The vet came a prescribed rest, pain relief and antibiotics. There was no improvement. She went for xrays and an abnormality was noticed in the tooth next to the one extracted in July. This tooth was extracted.
All healed beautifully again.

Tried with hay still very bad throwing her head and running in circles. Rested again and gave hay replacers. 3 months of rest and not giving hay there is no improvement. She is fine when ridden and eating anything other than hay causes her no problems.

She is going for a CT scan next week. I just wondered if anyone has come accross this before?
Click to expand...
I would get an EDT in to check fully in the mouth in case of sharp edges in the mouth by uneven teeth.
 
Chestnut mare said:
My 19year old mare has been suffering for a while now.

It started in July with a tooth root abcess she was fine eating just a huge swollen face. The tooth was extracted and healed beautifully.

A month later she started severely throwing her head and running on circles when eating hay. The vet came a prescribed rest, pain relief and antibiotics. There was no improvement. She went for xrays and an abnormality was noticed in the tooth next to the one extracted in July. This tooth was extracted.
All healed beautifully again.

Tried with hay still very bad throwing her head and running in circles. Rested again and gave hay replacers. 3 months of rest and not giving hay there is no improvement. She is fine when ridden and eating anything other than hay causes her no problems.

She is going for a CT scan next week. I just wondered if anyone has come accross this before?
Click to expand...

Gosh, I'm so interested to read your post as my 9yo Idxtb is going through exactly the same. He suddenly started jerking his head quite violently to the left whenever he tried to eat hay. I've had the vet 4 times already and we are really no further forward. They've checked his teeth twice, given a course of pain relief and antiinflamatories followed by a course of antibiotics. They've taken bloods which turned up. They've also endoscoped to check gutteral pouches etc. still no diagnosis. Our next step is x ray of jaw but I'm really interested to hear what your cat scan turned up as they have suggested that we might do that too.
 
Chestnut Mare and Jimmy1234 - I would say that getting the jaw looked at would be a very good idea in both cases

My little mare had problems exactly like the ones you both have mentioned, which started a couple of years ago. The vets spent ages thinking it was teeth and trying to fix any problems there but a year later with her problems only getting worse, someone suggested it could be her jaw. Turned out it was - she has either injury damage or more likely degenerative problems similar to arthritis in her TMJ on both sides, basically she has no cartilage so it is just bone rubbing against bone.

The amount of time we spent with her mouth open looking at and doing stuff with her teeth probably made the problem a lot worse so I really wish i'd thought of having her jaw checked sooner but it took a long time before the vets suggested this could be the problem. Although there is absolutely nothing we can do about it (Tried injections - very expensive and horribly invasive and didn't work, tired permanently being on bute and she nearly died from colonic ulcers) but we know how to deal with it - no hay and riding bitless.

Good luck to you both, and until you know what the problem is, stick with hay replaces or even better just turn out on plenty of grass, it will save you a lot of heartache
 
Darkwater said:
Chestnut Mare and Jimmy1234 - I would say that getting the jaw looked at would be a very good idea in both cases

My little mare had problems exactly like the ones you both have mentioned, which started a couple of years ago. The vets spent ages thinking it was teeth and trying to fix any problems there but a year later with her problems only getting worse, someone suggested it could be her jaw. Turned out it was - she has either injury damage or more likely degenerative problems similar to arthritis in her TMJ on both sides, basically she has no cartilage so it is just bone rubbing against bone.

The amount of time we spent with her mouth open looking at and doing stuff with her teeth probably made the problem a lot worse so I really wish i'd thought of having her jaw checked sooner but it took a long time before the vets suggested this could be the problem. Although there is absolutely nothing we can do about it (Tried injections - very expensive and horribly invasive and didn't work, tired permanently being on bute and she nearly died from colonic ulcers) but we know how to deal with it - no hay and riding bitless.

Good luck to you both, and until you know what the problem is, stick with hay replaces or even better just turn out on plenty of grass, it will save you a lot of heartache
Click to expand...


Thanks so much for your reply. I am getting jaw x rayed hopefully this coming week so we'll see what it shows up. It's really good to see that others have experienced this as the 2 vets I've had out to see my boy say they've never seen anything like it before, and no one on the yard has seen it before either.
I've tried haylage and also tried feeding hay off the floor but he jerks his head as soon as he goes near it however it' fed. He's much better at grass so I've turned him out 24/7 now, and he manages his feed from a bucket if I make it a bit sloppy. He's totally fine ridden so it's just the hay that he can't manage. He 's given up even trying to eat it now and just ignores it when he' s in for grooming /riding/feeding.
 
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