When to Call the Vet, Part II

In my first ‘When to Call the Vet’ series I covered colic and went through the steps leading up to a possible vet call. Before I switch topics, I want to go over yet another colic related episode at the farm.

Last night I got a knock on the door around 8:30PM from my assistant barn manager. She told me she thought Tom (one of the older lesson horses) was a little colicky and asked me to take a look. We went out to his stall to find him standing (she said he had been laying down, but had gotten up on his own) quietly. He but had not touched his grain at suppertime and the ABM had removed it along with his hay. His gums were a little pale, but he gave a pretty frisky toss of his head when I tried to check them and did not seem unduly distressed. I went back out to check him around 11PM and he was sleeping standing up. The next morning he was whinnying enthusiastically for his hay. Was this even a colic? I would probably classify it more like gas pain, but it could have turned into colic if his grain and hay had been left in his stall and he had proceeded to eat all of it.

This is just one of the reasons it is so important to have staff that are not only observant, but know what to do. And if they don’t know what to do, they find someone (hopefully the barn manager) who does. And if the barn manager doesn’t know what to do, they call the vet. Here’s an example of how this system worked to save Darwin’s life when he coliced:

1) A young apprentice noticed Darwin was acting abnormally (laying down at feeding time). She didn’t know what was wrong with him, but she told a regular staff member.

2) The regular staff member suspected colic, withheld Darwin’s grain, and promptly called the barn manager (me).

3) I treated the colic to the best of my ability and when I saw that Darwin was not responding, I called the vet.

If the apprentice had not told the staff member, Darwin may have gotten back up to his feet and, not suspecting anything was wrong, the staff member would have given him his regular grain. Without the staff member telling me she suspected a colic, I wouldn’t have checked in on Darwin until night check (which would have been four hours later). Meanwhile, during those four hours, he would have been struggling to digest four flakes of hay and three and a half pounds of grain while suffering from a painful impaction colic.

Your staff doesn’t have to know everything, but they should know a) when something just isn’t right and b) who to tell when they suspect something is wrong. Luckily, I have a wonderful staff, from the apprentices to my ABM, who adhere to this unwritten policy without needing to be told or reminded.

So what are some common tip offs that a horse just isn’t feeling up to snuff?

• Off their feed. Horses should be enthusiastic about feeding time. Especially about the stuff that comes out of the grain bin. If they don’t touch their food or only nibble at it, something is up.

• Lying down. For some horses, this is the norm. But if a horse that usually never lies down is stretched out flat in their stall, they warrant a closer look.

• Abnormal behavior. This can be a little harder to pick up if you don’t know how the horse affected normally behaves and I would not necessarily expect an apprentice to pick up on a horse acting a little oddly, but I do want my staff to know just enough about each horse for them to notice if a normally high strung horse is being quiet and subdued or if a normally stoic horse is acting high strung.

• Lameness. This is an entire series unto itself, but anytime you notice head bobbing, limping, or swelling, you know something isn’t right.

In a perfect world the barn manager would catch everything that was wrong and I would say about 90% of the time a good barn manager will, but with horses timing is everything. The sooner an illness is discovered the sooner it can be diagnosed and treated. If no one notices something is wrong, who is going to call the vet?

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.

Surviving the Winter, Part I

Winter. The time of year where you see what your barn is made of. When buckets freeze straight through to the bottom, the chance of your horse getting an impaction colic nearly doubles, and ice makes a very slippery path from barn to barn. So what is the best way to deal with winter weather (other than ship you and your horse to Florida)?



WATER. Last weekend my horse Darwin had a bad impaction colic. I ended up calling the vet out (twice) and after 20cc of banamine, multiple sedatives, two rectal examines, and two tubings with mineral oil, he pulled through. According to my veterinarian, horses automatically drink 30% less water in the winter. They are simply not as inclined to drink as much as they are in the summer, given the colder temperatures. Also according to my vet, impaction colics double between November and March. And not just because of water intake. Being stalled more than usual, increased grain (to keep weight on), AND lack of water all contribute to colic in the wintertime. But I’ll talk more about that later. Back to the issue of water.

Horses should have fresh, clean water available 24/7. Every good horse person knows this. Heck, even the bad ones do. When the temperature is above freezing, this is simple. The horses have water in their stalls in addition to water outside in their fields in the form of big tanks. But when it drops to 32 degrees water will freeze. Some studies have shown that if the water horses are drinking is not kept at 45 degrees or above, drinking the freezing water is just as bad as not drinking any water at all.

In an ideal world every bucket in the barn would be heated and every water trough would likewise have a heater. In the last barn I managed, this was the case and it was a beautiful thing to see. Lets just say it isn’t like that at the barn I manage now. If you haven’t built your barn yet/are remodeling your barn, please take this to heart. The easiest way to ensure your horse has access to warm water 24/7 in the winter is outlets! Yes, outlets. Every heater needs to plug into something and let’s face it, no one wants extension cords running amuck, especially through snow and ice that is constantly melting and then refreezing. Put an outlet above every stall. Put an outlet at every barn entrance. If you have pastures that are far from the barn, dig underground and put an outlet right next to the tank. It will be costly to start off with, but it will save you SO much time and energy in the long run.

Needless to say, our barn does not have a lot of outlets and the barn owner is (rightfully so) very proactive about barn fires which means extension cords are a big no-no. A few years back “solar” tubs where purchased and put in every field. According to my friend with the PHD they aren’t really solar tubs, but they do seem to work if the temperature stays above 20 degrees. Unfortunately they don’t hold a lot of water, but on the plus side I have the biceps of a weight builder from carrying buckets back and forth to fill them up and I haven’t had to step foot in a gym!

But even those do freeze on occasion (like this morning, when it was a grand total of 3 degrees out) and then what do you do? Yes, you technically could break out the ice with a hammer... but remember! Horses should not (and probably will not) drink ice water. So even though it sucks and you’ll be doing it several times a day, your best option is to simply haul out buckets filled with fresh water. Smaller buckets (as opposed to a tub) will also let you know how much water your horse(s) are drinking which, as we’ve already gone over, is quite important in the winter. Just make sure if you have to go the bucket route you are checking those buckets at least three times a day and refilling when necessary.

So that takes us to when your horse is kept in their stall. Like many barns, our horses come in around 4:00PM and remain inside all night. During the stall cleaning process the buckets are taken outside and all of the ice is removed. Right before the horses are brought in they are refilled. We do keep a hose in the bathroom, but more often than not it is just easier to carry the buckets to and fro from the hydrant. In freezing weather those buckets will ice over in a matter of hours. That’s where night check (usually done between 8:30 and 10:30PM) kicks in. The frozen buckets are dumped and refilled with nice fresh water. Even then, when I come the barn in the morning, the water buckets are frozen solid down to the bottom (see how handy outlets would be just about now?).

I have established a little routine I like to call the “anti-colic route”. Every morning I give the horses their hay. Then, while they are eating, I go around and fill up a water bucket in each stall about halfway. Some of the horses don’t drink the water, but about 95% of them do. The trick is to get it into their systems before you feed grain. If it is a particularly cold morning, like today was, I soak all of the grain in warm water until it is nice and sloppy. The horses get very impatient waiting for their mush (just ask Poppy) but it’s well worth it in the end. I know they are getting more water into their systems and it prevents them from bolting their feed on a dry stomach, which could potentially cause colic. With a horse that is prone to colic (Darwin), or the very old (Espa and Tom), or simply by request of the owner (Vera and Kinkaid), I soak the grain during every feeding, regardless of the temperature.

So far, knock on wood, my system seems to be working (with the exception of Darwin, but then again this is the same horse who managed to pin himself under the fence on Saturday when he being free lounged). Would it be easier to have heated buckets in the stalls and deicers in the water troughs? YES! But you make do with what you have and even if it takes two hours instead of half an hour, you make sure the horses are getting the water they need. In the winter, there isn’t anything that is more important.