Ugh, Colic

[Terri]

Here we go again! Mico often has little "spells" of colic, lays down, acts punky, refuses food. Usually a little banamine and short walk clears him up within an hour. But this morning was bad. I fed at 6:30, he was fine. By nine, my boarder found him thrashing around in the mud. We got him up, he kept going back down. VERY few gut sounds. Banamine, walk, trailer loaded. He seemed to perk up , but by noon I could tell he was still uncomfortable. The vet came out, tranq'ed him, tubed him...etc. She said it appeared he had a lot of dried manure backed up, but it didn't look like a "serious" impaction. She told me to leave him in his stall while he slept off the tranq. then take him for a walk. So I went in, had lunch - 1/2 an hour later I was back in the barn to find the little sneak had managed to go down on his knees, snake his head under the stall guard and pull and bale of hay under guard into his stall and was munching away. He wasn't supposed to have any food! I took him for a walk, he pooped and seems to be feeling better. I'll give him a nice warm bran/camamile mash for supper (with salt). Sometimes I hate this horse!

[GeorgeGuns]

How very frustrating! I'm glad he's feeling better.

[jodiTowne]

Oh terri!!!! I am sorry to here this!! I hate when they get sick! Hope he feels better soon!!!

[Moniece Dickerson]

OMG Terri i'm so sorry he's not feeling good and being a pain in your back side!Colic is SO scary!!Ya know,with kids they get sick,you take care of them,and in most cases they're gonna be fine in a little while.With horses they get sick,you take care of them,and no matter what you do ONE thing doesn't go right and they're dead.Please call me to give me an update on him,I just pulled out my book and aparently as usual,i'm SO bad about keeping up with #'s,I wrote your # somewhere other than my phone book.I promice to put it in my book this time :oops: ;-) .Your friend,Moniece
I'll PM my # to ya in case you don't have it handy

[Carol Nelson]

Here we go again...change in the weather! Any of this nasty stuff drifting through the Midwest hitting your area yet? For sure they will go off when the weather changes. I had a filly acting suspicious yesterday...today a client calls me wanting to know what to do with her three babies who are all off their feed. I simply had to tell her, make sure they're drinking plenty, give them a shot of Banamine, and watch 'em. Yesterday, it was 82 degrees, today it's 42 with a stiff Northeast wind, and it rained on them overnight...
ya gotta be an Iron Horse to be able to take that!!! :roll:

[pnalley]

Terri,
My mare (then filly) Nieve used to have mild colic episodes evry time the weather changed. Or if any of her usual rituals changed (fed too early or late etc).

She was on a regular paste worming program in which the classes of wormers were rotated.

My vet suggested we try the daily feed through wormer. I put her on it for about a year. That was about 5 years ago, and she hasn't coliced since. It may be worth a try. It sure seemed to help Nieve.

[cowboy ed]

consider yourself lucky. a friend of mine had a horse who had colic and died last week.

[ErinC]

Here we go again...change in the weather!
YES for SURE.... and STRESS....
that's Mico.

:roll:

(( HUGS ))

[Blameitonbrio]

Terri, I am glad your boy is ok. Sounds like he decided when it was ok for him to eat and did something about it. :eek: Hope he continues to be fine.

[Terri]

Thanks everbody. Yes, Mico colics everytime the weather changes. Today is very mild, but tomorrow a nasty front is coming through. I should have seen it coming. I just checked him, gave him a nice bran mash with with Camomile. He sniffed it suspiciously (Rio LOVED it) and then ate it down. He was looking pretty good, but I didn't want to leave him for the night without knowing for sure he was "moving along" so I took him out in the front yard, lowered the trailer ramp, pointed and said "GET IN" I ended up with a pile of very satisfying results. He'll live.

Oh, thanks for the words of encouragement Ed.

[lisa l aka marci]

Ok Terri, can you teach Marci that trick? Me threatenng her with sending her back to Nola is wearing thin...... :D

Glad your boy is feeling better! Having lost one to colic I know how bad it can be!

[Minouri]

Terri,

I'm so sorry to hear you're going through that. Hang in there. You'll work it out.

I wish there were more I could say. Just that I care I guess.

[CarolU]

That is SOOO scary. I have one bad 'gut' horse, Santiago. If I keep him on probios he does fine. Not sure what it is, I've run every test at the vets, done everything for him, but probios are the only thing that helps...but nothing gets rid of it. I think some horses have IBS.

Got all my fingers and toes crossed he does OK and pulls through this fine. I've been where you are and it's so scary.

Keep us informed.

[Jasfino]

I hope he is ok Terri. There's nothing worse than worrying over them when you know they feel bad.

Have you tried a round of panacure? We had two that would always have symptoms like you described and since we gave them a round of panacure, they have not had any symptoms since.

[Terri]

What is a panacure?

[Pasogirlz]

How stressful. :-? I'm sure you will have him feeling 100% again soon.

[pnalley]

Panacur is a name of a wormer. You can do the Panacur Power Pack, in which the horse is wormed several days in a row to really clean out the worms.

[Terri]

He seems more his old self this morning, still alittle gaunt, but plenty of mess in the stall and out bossing the other horses around the hay piles. I don't think his problem is worms. We have pretty good worming rountine. He just tends not to drink quite enough sometimes. It has been warm and he has a heavy winter coat and if he is sweating more and going light on the water, his manure gets dry and stuck. I should have seen this coming, He was looking a tad on the sunken side the last couple of days. My boarder told me I was imagining it. I have large salt blocks everywhere! So now I will put handfulls of salt right in his food. He drives me nuts. He is a very needy horse!

[CarolU]

Terri, it might be water temp too. Zar won't drink enough cold water to stave off colic, so I have to heat water for her almost all winter.

Yes, I'd put salt right in his food. Sometimes some feeds have high such high calcium and/or potassium salts that the horse's system tells it it doesn't need salt, so they don't lick the sodium variety. A very safe way to make sure is to feed the salt right on the food.

Good luck. He's too good a horse to loose. What a worry.

[TrueStepPaso]

Sorry to hear this Terri....hopefully, he'll pull out of it 100% soon like he usually (always?) does....

[Terri]

Thanks for the advice Carol. I do use heated buckets in the winter. Haven't put them up yet, it has been weirdly warm. I know, I know you guys got snow and ice, but it is a balmy 60 degrees here and raining. But winter is supposed to show up this weekend and stay so the buckets are going up.

I was interested in your comment about calcium. I do give him very low dose of u-gard every day. Yes, he has ulcers - he is a mess digestively. But this is mainly calcium (horsey tums). Would that cause him not to lick the salt blocks? I am definitely salting his food from now on!

Yes, Abbey he has pulled through alot of these.

[Jasfino]

Terri, I'm glad to hear he is ok this morning. :D

The panacure wormer is something our vet suggested we do once a yr or every other yr in addition to our regular worming schedule to get the encrusted worms that the other wormers miss. I can really tell the difference on the two horses that always acted colicy. Their coats have improved.. and they even act like they feel better.

The theory is with the encrusted worms is that they somehow know when the conditions are favorable to release from the gut wall. It is usually when it begins to turn colder/wet. I noticed ours always had a spell during the spring, or fall. The colic is from the irritation of all those worms releasing causing the horse to colic. A friend of mine said her vet said that when the barometric pressure changes.. this is like a signal to release.

It may be just a theory.. but it really makes sense.

[Terri]

Hmmmm, thanks Jen, do you have a link or info where to buy it? I would like to look into it

[Minouri]

panacure

http://equineusaonline.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=224_226&products_id=1819

http://www.defhr.org/care/diet.htm
Worming:

Always check with your veterinarian to determine how to worm your new horse. At Days End Farm, after a couple of weeks and the new arrival is doing well they are given panacure or safeguard wormers (fenbendazole) for five days in a row, an amount based on their body weight.
Always keep an eye out for any incidences of colic as a result of the worming treatment. If it is going to occur, which I have found is very rare, it will usually happen within 16 to 18 hours of the worming.

This beginning program I have found to be very safe and helps to take care of the insistent strongyles. Three weeks after that Panacure/Safeguard program is completed, they are given strongid wormer (pyrantel pamoate), again based on their body weight. Three weeks later they may be given Equimectrin. Following that, worming is done every 6 - 8 weeks, alternating between Strongid paste, Zymectrin Gold (or other Ivermectin/praziquantelwormers) and Quest(moxidectin). In the fall and spring, after first and last freeze, horses are given double doses of strongid paste (pyrantel pamoate).

[Jasfino]

We purchased ours from our vet. He said it was the safest wormer out there.. as safe as Ivermectin. We got a weight tape to determine how much each horse weighed and wormed with the panacure for 5 days in a row. We had no instances of colic with any of ours and we wormed 14 horses from weanlings on up.

You can run a search for it online and see who has it the cheapest. I think it cost me around $45 a horse which I know sounds like alot but from what I have seen.. it has really made a difference.

I thought the ivermectin gold would take care of all the worms my horses had.. but my vet told me that panacure was the only one that would get them all.

[motorgypsy]

You can buy generic panacur by the way and it's a lot cheaper. Just look at the ingredients and find the generic with the same % of the active ingredient. You might try moxidectin (Quest which also comes generic) also. There are some small strongyles that other wormers don't kill that can literally kill your horse. This really does sound like it could be a worm problem.

As far as ensuring that he drinks a lot of water we feed a beet pulp based feed and add water to it during times that they don't drink a lot so they eat "soup" which they like quite well by the way. Triple Crown, Seminole and Purina make a beet pulp based feed or you can just add beet pulp to your existing feed and dump a couple of quarts of water in with it. But don't wear a white shirt out to feed because they love to wipe their yuky green mushes on your shirt after they eat the soup!!! :roll: :roll: :roll:

Glad he's doing better!!!

[Jasfino]

Quest in my opinion is not as safe as panacur. I would talk to my vet about it and see what they recommend given his symptoms.

I do remember our vet telling mom that panacur was almost like giving them mylanta to coat their stomachs while killing the worms. I liked that part about it. She was worried about the horses having to take so many doses of it. ;-)

[Terri]

I already feed a daily beetpulp mash. And oddly enough Quest is "up" next in our wormer roation. We were gonna worm on 12/1, but with this colic I thought I would give him a week to rebound. I've never had a problem with Quest, but I am very careful about dosing for the right weight. We will probably do it tomorrow. So we will see what that does.

We had a very nasty wind storm last night. They were all acting alittle "weird". And my friend's filly had a mild constipation colic on the same day Mico did. She was just alittle less dramatic about it. So I am suspicious of the weird weather we are having.

[Minouri]

I've used Quest....I've never used Panacure but I'm going to ask my vet about it. I bet it's fine. I like to research stuff before I use it and hear what people have said about it all over the internet. I wasn't implying that it would cause colic but I think it is important to be aware of all possible side effects when you try something so you know what to watch for. I like what I'm learning about Panacure and am thinking about using it with my boys.

Terri, keep us updated on your progress with him. It must be so stressful for you.

I'll make your hot chocolate a double....... :lol:

[Terri]

I'll make your hot chocolate a double.......

And don't forget the snapps!!!

He seems fine this morning. Poor Mico he has has such problems. He is also a bit of a dramatist. Every little hurt gets exagerated. He had a small stone bruise the two weeks ago and I called Erin cause I was sure he was foundering with the way he was standing (like on egg shells) and refusing to move. Once he got his leg caught under a fence and it swelled a bit. He stood like a flamigo for along time. I thought he broke it. It was fine 2 days later. Once he got hives. I hid some benedryll in his mash, he got one taste of it and DROPPED to the ground. Wouldn't get up till I washed out his bucket and put new food in it. THEN he got up and ate. So yes he was constipated on Thurs, but even the vet didnt' think it was THAT bad. And there he was thrashing in the mud like he was dying. He does have some serious health issues: he tends to colic easily, he has had colitis and we suspect ulcers, lyme disease and he had a vita E deficiency. But with him it is hard to tell when he is in "real" trouble or just uncomfortable.

[motorgypsy]

His mama didn't tell him the "cry wolf" story I guess!!!

Quest is fine if the dosage is correct.

There are areas where panacur (a very safe drug but don't know about any coating action since it's a worm killer, not an ulcer medication) has shown resistance so I would definitely include Quest in my rotation since it gets things none of the other ones do. We use daily wormer and have had great success with it so we'll continue to use it but I know there is disagreement on it. When both our 9 month old colts had surgery because they ate the fishing line they dug up the vets said they had no worms which was great to hear!!! We also didn't have the foal diarrhea with any of them. Soooo - if it works we don't change it!

Good luck with him - he's not a wuss - he's just SENSITIVE!!!! Has the soul of poet!!! ;-) ;-) ;-)

[Terri]

he's not a wuss - he's just SENSITIVE!!!!

LOL, that is exactly what my boarder says about him (and she used to own him!)

[Cindy]

I use safeguard instead of panacur to do the five day as I think it is a bit cheaper. They are the same product. You can get a tube of safguard that does 4 thousand pound horses. You want to double the dose for 5 days. I usually give 1500 pounds worth to an average Paso Fino so that takes 2 tubes. I would definitely suggest this. This is the only treatment that gets rid of the encysted small strongyles. After seeing how well it has worked on horses that have been wormed all there lives I have come to the conclusion that most of our horses live out there lives with a small infestation of small strongyles and never get bad enough to look "wormy". I have seen improvement in coats on horses that you never would have thought their coats looked bad to begin with. And I have seen NOTICIBLE improvement in some horses by the third day of treatment. You might as well try it as there is really no down side and it may just solve your colic problem.

[Jasfino]

I could really see the difference as well Cindy. I believe your right about the strong strongyle. Even though we worm on schedule it leads us into a false security that all the worms are gone.. when in fact they may not be.

I began to notice a few of ours would get colicy and actually lay down, refuse food, and it would always be one of the same three. Then I began to notice it seemed to happen in spells, until this last fall two coliced within two days of each other. The only thing that had changed was the weather. :?:

After we wormed them with panacur, within a week I could tell a difference. They acted brighter, more alert, and as you said their coats improved dramatically as well. I am a believer now in panacur.

I dont know about the coating action of the panacur. I was just repeating what my vet had told my mother. :D

[motorgypsy]

We went to a great presentation on parasites and the other thing that was brought up is that you can have five horses and only one will have parasites so you need to check each one. It's best if you can do a microscope check and a fecal separation but I doubt either one would pick up encysted strongyles which can be so nasty. Old horses do not become immune either. Many old horses have major problems with parasites and the ones they have may well be the really resistant ones.

[Jasfino]

Motorgypsy wrote
panacur (a very safe drug but don't know about any coating action since it's a worm killer, not an ulcer medication)

Actually according to what our vet told us.... it is. He said it contained something that was in the same family as Prilosec ( instead of mylanta...mom corrected me on that ) and that it helped to heal the ulcers caused by the worms.

[motorgypsy]

That's a new one on me. I'll check it out though. Never hear it from any vets although it is a good drug for sure.

[Terri]

Well, I really don't think worms are the problem. I've been throwing handfulls of salt in his food for three days now and yesterday, while standing at the fence with Abbey I was telling her how guant I thought he looked and she said "He looks good to me". And I looked at him and though, hmm, she is right he is looking really good today - rounder and and filled out again. So I think he is just the type of horse that needs to be reminded to drink enough water to stay completely hydrated. But we will worm this week anyway.

[motorgypsy]

You may well be right but you know the small strongyles that are encysted cause the problem when they "hatch out " if I remember correctly. Then after they migrate which causes the colic, the horse is fine again. This why they are so dangerous. So he could have gone through a migration which is now over. I'd surely do the Quest and then in a month or so the powepack. Truly a horse may be overly sensitive but they don't lie. If they say they hurt, they do.

[Terri]

Oh yes, he does hurt. So I am going to do the worming thing too. Thanks for all the suggestions, Carol is right, he is to good a horse to lose.