should i move her on....

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charliecrisps

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My mare was diagnosed with COPD yesterday, the vet has said to turn out 24/7 with soaked hay. This wouldnt be a problem except she is a companion for my veteran gelding... and he has to be stabled during the coldest months. They are inseperable. There is no way i could leave her out alone and him in alone... plus it wouldnt be fair on either of them.

Should i move her on to a new home with plenty of land ( we onlt have 1 1/2 acres so not much grass.. hay all year round!) I was thinking maybe signing her over to a charity and maybe taking in another from the charity?! Confused.... havent a clue what to do.
 
Could you not put up a field shelter maybe,so the gelding had some where to go into if the weather turned bad!
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You still have some other avenues to explore. I have a mare which has had COPD for years, I took her on knowing this. It has taken a while to reduce her symptoms but can be done. She and the horse in the stable next door are both on rubber mats with chopped rape straw bedding, which is dust free. they both have haylage and soaked feeds and at the moment are both just turned out by day, in at night. They won't live out until there is more grass. I tried Ventipulmin with no success but have almost eliminated coughing and wheezing with products from Global Herbs.

It took years of trial and error but I think we are there now. The trick is not to just give COPD appropriate treatment to your horse that has symptoms, but to all the stables around them too, to eliminate dust and spores.
 
Define COPD?

I have a gelding that cant eat hay, not even soaked hay, he has to have haylage overwise he coughs TONNES and his breathing deteriorates so bad that he weezes with every breath. Is this COPD? I ve never had a vets opinion, ive just had the common sense to rarely stable him and feed haylage instead.
 
I am not a vet, but your horse could potentially have it. Listening to the chest with a stethoscope would confirm, in chronic cases there will be breathing noise even when the horse is otherwise symptom free
 
I had a mare with COPD and was able to stable her by changing her environment - she was OK on paper and I used haylage ie horsehage (so no dust in it). It worked fine.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Define COPD?

I have a gelding that cant eat hay, not even soaked hay, he has to have haylage overwise he coughs TONNES and his breathing deteriorates so bad that he weezes with every breath. Is this COPD? I ve never had a vets opinion, ive just had the common sense to rarely stable him and feed haylage instead.

[/ QUOTE ]

That harsh, i dont think i can afford to go down haylage route for two horses. Would seem as though this is COPD. My mare had accentuated breathing, where in a normal horse you barely see the stifle area move, in a horse with COPD it is more prominant, and with each breath they 'tuck up'. I was told to monitor her breathing, and the normal range is about 8-12 breaths per minute- Hers was over 20 so not good :-( Came on quite sudden too... she statted to cough.. mostly in the morning and after exercise. I had the vet out straight away to confirm and apparently the soaked hay may not work and i may have to move on to haylage. Being cobs they would do too well on haylage though and eat it in about 1 minute and strave all night. Greedy gits!
Thanks to all the advice from everyone... after just one day on soaked hay she is down to 14 breaths per minute, and now i am off to try get the cobwebs down... seems i may not have to leave them out 24/7 as the vet said. I got them in at 11pm last night, which i will try and keep to now, a big change to the routine but thats about 4 hours less in the stable at least.
 
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