It's all in the bedding...

At the barn I manage every stall is bedded with straw because it is hauled away for free by the mushroom farmers. At first I hated mucking out straw stalls as I had never done it before, but after nearly two years of daily practice I'm finally getting used to it. But what makes good bedding... well, good?

There are four main types of bedding (shavings, sawdust, straw, and wood pellets) traditionally used in horse barns and I will discuss the pros and cons of each. There are other types of bedding (peat moss, shredded newspaper, corn husks) but as I have never used these or seen them used, I can't really comment.

SHAVINGS. This type if bedding is, hands down, my favorite. It is very absorbent, it looks nice, it smells nice, it is easy to clean with a muck rake, and you don't have to bed it at deeply as other types of bedding to get the desired effect. Most shavings are made from pine and while 99% of horses don't have a problem with this, I have known at least two horses who were allergic to pine and thus to the bedding as well. It is also the most expensive of all the beddings and can sometimes be difficult to buy in bulk. If you can find a way to get shavings blown into your barn (and have a large area to keep them) that really is your best option. It will be less expensive overall and you won't be dealing with endless brown bags to dispose of. A barn I used to ride at as a child did this and it was great. It also saved on time for those cleaning the stalls. All they had to do was pile some shavings into a wheelbarrow and dump it in the stall.

SAWDUST. This would have to be my second favorite bedding. It is very similar to shavings with three big exceptions: it is much less expensive (and you can get it at a variety of places including directly from lumbermills at wholesale cost), it must be bedded twice as deeply as shavings to prevent elbow rubs because the texture is much more fine, and it can be a problem bedding for heavy horses due to the (you guessed it) dust. Still, this is a really economical option for large scale barns looking to cut down on their bedding costs and still keep the horses happy. Because sawdust rarely comes in bags, you will need a place to have it blown into (a shed or empty garage works; I have seen some barns use a corner of their indoor for the bedding but I am personally not a fan of this) but it is much less expensive than bagged shavings. My college used sawdust at their equestrian center to great results. They did have a few heavy horses, but avoided excess dust by lightly watering the top of the sawdust down once the stall was cleaned.

STRAW. As I said before, the barn I manage uses straw. It is not my first choice, but I've learned to live with it and even appreciate it on cold winter nights when I can pile it high in the stalls and the horses snuggle down into it. Straw is pretty expensive - often as much as hay - and can be difficult to store as it is usually sold by the bale and will take up as much room as your hay supply. Horses have also been known to eat straw (talking to you, Cami and Poppy) though I haven't seen one colic or have health problems because of it. Straw also isn't that absorbant and we have run into problems (especially in the summer) with urine building up in the stalls. I can clean a stall bedded in straw faster than a stall bedded in shavings, though this was an acquired art after a few months of experimenting with different types of rakes (FYI, pitchforks work the best). Straw also needs to be bedded pretty deeply to get the desired effect, which is not very cost effective. We have eighteen stalls right now that get bedded down with straw. On average, we go through ten bales of straw a day (less in the summer). That averages out to be around 3,650 bales of straw a year - yikes!

WOOD PELLETS. Ten years ago this bedding was almost unheard of and now it is used almost as much as shavings. Personally, I am not a huge fan of wood pellets. I think they can work really well for a small scale barn, but we tried to use them for a month at the college equestrian center and it was an absolute disaster. When I tried to use them once for Darwin he ate all of the pellets and had a big belly ache the next morning. Theoretically you only have to use one bag of pellets a week once you have the stall initially bedded down, but I have never found this to be the case. I don't like how the pellets are very hard for a day or two before they start to bed down and I also don't like how you leave the wet bedding in to absorb. But hey, I know some barns absolutely love wood pellets and would never use anything else... so to each their own.

When to Call the Vet... Part I

If you are a good, responsible horse owner than you probably have the veterinarian out to the farm to see your horse(s) at least once a year. This may be for a coggins test, routine vaccinations, or a general health checkup. Or it could be (unfortunately) because of an emergency. About a month ago I had my vet out for just such a case.

As I mentioned in my Winter Post, my horse Darwin coliced quite badly eight weeks ago. I was alerted to his condition by an apprentice staff member who, thankfully, told one of the senior staff members who then told me during one of my lessons. “Darwin is lying down. He won’t get up. We think he may be colicing.”

I handed my lesson over to the senior staff member and rushed up to the barn. There was my big 17H thoroughbred curled up in the corner of his stall, looking and acting absolutely miserable. His hay and water where untouched. The staff had known enough not to grain him once he started acting abnormal, but I doubt he would have eaten it anyway. I got him to his feet. He started kicking sideways at the stall wall and then promptly circled and went back down. It was then that I knew this could be a serious problem, but I didn’t call the vet quite yet. I have dealt with colics in the past and know there are several steps you can go through before having the veterinarian out. I proceeded to get Darwin back up to his feet and hand walked him in the indoor for about forty five minutes. Towards the end he was struggling to lay down in the ring and I brought him back to his stall. I gave him 3cc’s of banamine, pulled all the hay out of his stall, refilled his buckets with warm water, and waited. The banamine seemed to make him comfortable and he stayed on his feet. When I came back two hours later he was a little restless, but still up. At 11:00PM he was rolling and I called the vet.

To make a long, stressful story short Darwin was suffering from a very painful impaction colic. The vet gave him 10cc’s of banamine, a strong sedative, a rectal palpation, and a gallon of mineral oil that night and had to come back early the next morning to do the same thing because he was colicing again. Thankfully the second time seemed to do the trick and he had returned to his normal self by the end of the day.

That was an example of when (I believe, at least) you should call the vet. When your horse is suffering from what is obviously colic and you have tried everything to the best of your abilities (hand walking – check, small amount of banamine – check, take the feed away – check, warm water – check) and there is no improvement, you need to call your veterinarian.

But what other emergencies should you immediately call your vet out for? What, exactly, constitutes an emergency and what should you (or your barn manager) be able to treat yourself?

1) COLIC. This has already been discussed in detail, but I want to give you a different scenario. My assistant barn manager’s mare has displayed colic symptoms three times since she came to the barn. The first time I found her lying down in her stall looking crossly at her stomach, I immediately called her owner who left me with instructions to keep at an eye on her but unless she became very restless to just let her be and not call the vet. I’ll admit, I had my doubts at this approach (every time Darwin has coliced it started off as lying down but always rapidly progressed to the point where I had the vet on speed dial) but when I returned to do night check the mare was back to her feet demanding to be fed with a loud whinny. More recently she coliced again and this time it was worse. Her owner took the same wait and see approach, but this colic continued over the span of two days, not one night. This time there was hand walking and all food was stopped. Her owner gave her a small dose of banamine on the evening of the second day and said if this didn’t work, she would be calling the vet. Thankfully, the drug was just enough to help the mare out of the colic and she was peachy keen the next morning.

This is a fantastic example of the number one reason many vet calls can be averted. Know your horse. My assistant barn manager knows her mare to a T. She knows when she is feeling grumpy, upset, or in genuine pain. It also shows that not all horses are the same, nor can they be treated the same. Still, there are basic steps to treating any colic before calling your vet.

1) Diagnose the colic. Is your horse lying down? Are they biting at their stomach? Getting up and down repeatedly? Are there abnormal gut sounds? No gut sounds? Are they off their feed? If you said yes to two or more of the above symptoms, then there is a good chance your horse may be beginning to colic.

2) Take away all feed. This means hay and especially grain. Do not feed your horse until you are absolutely certain the colic has 100% passed.

3) Make sure there is fresh water available and monitor your horse’s water intake. When a horse is in the middle of a painful colic they will usually not drink at water, but once the colic has past they will normally guzzle it down. How much they do (or do not) drink is a good indicator of their pain level.

4) Walk your horse. Do not lounge them, do not turn them out in the field, hand walk them. Make sure the footing is nice and even. A barn aisle or a ring is best suited for hand walking. If you have a horse that is repeatedly trying to lay down, this is one of the best things you can do. There are several different theories on how long and often you should hand walk a colicy horse – my vet advised me to hand walk Darwin as long as he would allow it. Others will tell you to walk them no more than fifteen minutes, give them a break, then walk them again. If you are unsure of what to do, this would be the time to consult your veterinarian.

5) Give your horse banamine. If nothing else has worked, you can try to alleviate your horse’s symptoms with the common colic drug banamine. This is a muscle relaxant and pain killer. It can be injected IV, IM, and also comes in paste form like a wormer. If you have not given your horse banamine for colic before and/or are uncertain of how much to give them or how to give it to them, call your vet. When Darwin coliced last summer I called the vet at step number 4. I asked if I should give him banamine and she told me no, to wait until she got there. When he coliced the second time the vet left me with 10ccs of banamine and told me to inject it IM if he started to show colic symptoms again. When in doubt, especially about a drug, call your veterinarian. They don’t charge you for advice over the phone.

6) If nothing in steps 1 through 5 has worked for your horse, it is time to call your vet ASAP. Make sure to describe in detail everything you have done and to give a thorough history on your horse as it pertains to their current situation.

Once again, I cannot stress how important it is to know your horse. If I ever get to Step 4 with Darwin, I call the vet. I might not have them come out until I’ve tried Step 5, but I at least call them. If you have a horse that colics every few months on a smaller scale (one of the boarder’s has a horse this) you may skip right to step 5, give them 5cc’s of banamine, and they’ll be fine.

As always, I am not a veterinarian and the above is my opinion, not solid fact. Colic is scary, especially if you haven’t dealt with it a lot in the past. Keeping a cool and level head is very important. Monitoring your horse is also very important and when in doubt, even if you’re at step 1, your vet is only a phone call away.

Poppy is as Poppy Does

I rode Poppy today and she was pretty spectacular, especially given that I have only ridden her twice in the past two weeks. Having owned a thoroughbred for the past four years, I am constantly amazed at the differences between my old horse and my new. Darwin does not like to be ridden in windy weather because leaves blow up in his face. Poppy loves being ridden in windy weather because leaves blow up in her face and she gets to eat them. Darwin does not like to go out on the trail because of all the scary things that could potentially kill him (you know: trees, grass, scary branches…). Poppy loves to go out on the trail because of all the things she can eat (you know: trees, grass, scary branches…) People say that drafts just naturally have a quiet personality. I don’t think they necessarily have a “quiet” personality… I just think they’re so busy thinking about what to devour next they don’t have time to spook at anything.

I’ve been working a lot on trying to regulate Poppy’s tempo, especially at the trot. Like any green horse she has no sense of natural rhythm under saddle and either tries to run full speed ahead (she is surprisingly quick on her feet despite her size) or stops to admire the fence. For the first time she picked up the trot and went along very nicely on a medium rein with little contact and I didn’t feel like I had to post a million miles an hour.

Her canter transitions where also very good; she even picked up her right lead which she has been sticky on lately. The next step will be canter circles; we always start with the best of intentions but never seem to make it all the way around. We also attempted a x-rail… lets just say her jumping career is a work in progress.

The ride ended with a very nice trail ride (mainly because I didn’t have to fear for my life) and Poppy plodded quietly behind her frenemy Cami and Harry (Harry is the four year old wonder horse – it was his first trail ride and despite the dark skies, crunching leaves, and wind he was, of course, perfect). I’m planning on taking her out for some gallop work on Friday and am really looking forward to it. I need to start hacking her out with a little more consistency to really build up her hind end which will hopefully lead to an improvement in the jumping career. On a high note, she didn’t break out of her field today (YAY!) and I managed to get some tranquilizer from the vet so the next time the farrier comes out she will be all set to get her feet done. All in all, a very good day for Poppy.