Poorly pony :( any advice welcome

Clostridium test was negative, still waiting on salmonella result. She said the blood test showed his glucose was up which could mean cushings or a type of laminitis( my friend who part owns him said she thinks it began with an m)but she will retest that again. If it's not salmonella then it looks like he's eaten something so will be scouring his field in daylight. Dandys still pretty bright at the moment tho but she did say she fully expects he'll go downhill again before he gets better :(
 
If it is salmonella with all this rain something may have leached into your field from elsewhere and he's maybe ingested the bacteria that way? My pony had a profuse salmonella infection in his sheath last winter which we think came from the field via the mud as winter field at the yard I was at was overstocked and in a terrible state in the winter and being short and low slung he always came in with a mud covered undercarriage! We were trying to work out the source as the vet was asking me if I knew if any local farmers nearby sprayed their fields with human fertilizer and it had leached into our field, whether there was a source of dirty water/effluent/slurry on the yard, rats in the stable etc. He was treated very quickly and effectively with antibiotics but vet was worried about it being somewhere in a form that could be ingested by the horses as salmonella is not a nice bug to take in. A few weeks later we found out a possible source - something deeply unpleasant that had come up through the ground in a garden a few feet from the field and I think could have been easily washed into the field as water table was so high. Once pony was out of that field he was fine. I hope yours improves very soon and they get to the bottom of what it is.
 
I worked somewhere, where a horse had salmonella and it was from the geese that were in the field that he was in and the rain made it leach into the soil so that's how he picked it up. Is there any poultry near his field of been in his field?
 
LaMooch said:
I worked somewhere, where a horse had salmonella and it was from the geese that were in the field that he was in and the rain made it leach into the soil so that's how he picked it up. Is there any poultry near his field of been in his field?
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Interesting you say that, there is a duck pond at the bottom of the field ( been no ducks on there for a couple of years though ) and with all the rain we've had it's been overflowing at times . Just going up for another check so fingers crossed he's still bright and perky
 
Should hopefully get the salmonella result in a couple of days, was greeted by his nose over the door ( too short to get his head over lol) and snicker :) still looking good :)
 
I would check first thing there aren't any they can get to, they often fall out end up outside the fence or they bury in the ground and they dig for them. Your horses symptoms are very typical of acorn poisoning.
 
Thankyou, we're going to walk the field looking for bad plants later. We did check by the acorn tree when we moved them in a week 1/2 ago but will check again . He's still bright and hungry this morning, makes it hard not to get our hopes up
 
so do you think this was an outpouring of red encysted worms as the poo looked blood coloured, my shettie was wormed when I first got him and then a couple of weeks down the line he had terrible shits and I called the vet who took blood tests and I mentioned worming him again, ofcourse vet said no wait for the results, well me being me wormed him again in the meantime and his loose droppings stopped and then the vet called back to say there was nothing wrong with his bloods and she couldnt get good results from the poo samples as it was so runny, so my thinking is he needed to have a second dose of worming, never had a problem since 4 years now.
 
He's wormed regularly so he shouldn't have had a worm burden. It wasn't just blood coloured, it was blood and mucous. He's getting adlib hay in his stable plus he eats his straw but he's only been picking at things until the last couple of days, the vet just said that as the guts are long it takes a while to clear all the nasty stuff out but he should be back to normal in the next day or 2 poo-wise
 
The field is a churned up mess, there were a few in the fenced off bit but couldn't see any on the field side but doesn't mean they aren't there, just means they're buried in the mud and water
 
Well, it sounds like he's getting better so fingers crossed he continues to improve. I would have thought he'd have to eat a fair few acorns to have such an effect? Our old horse and my sister's horse both guzzler some acorns a few years back. So many that you could see the shells in their poo! The vet said though that acorns are only really a problem when eaten green. Once they are brown, which these were and would be this time of year I'd have thought, they're less of an issue.

The problem is with horses, sometimes you just never know what causes some things!
 
All dandys poo results are in and they're all negative, his white blood cells aren't up so it's not infection so it's got to have been something he's eaten or drunk . He's doing ok though , poop nearly normal but still not quite there ( loose lump rather than cow pat lol)
 
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