I’m having a gastroscopy done on my mare this Friday and the vet wants her to fast for 22 hours. I’m really nervous about this. I have a pen set up for her but my mare is used to 24/7 access to hay/ pasture so I’m really worried about how she’ll do. She’s also a 3 year old warmblood that’s typically pretty high strung. I have ace on hand but obviously that only does so much. Anyone have advice?
Does the pen have wood anywhere she can reach? She might turn into a beaver.
My only thought is to find out how much the vet would charge to for a stall for 22 hours. It might be worth it to take her there early and let her fast under their care. Our local vet school hospital is actually quite cheap on daily boarding fees. They have plenty of stalls and like having patients for their students to do vitals on.
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22 hours seems like a long time to me. My horse recently had a gastroscope and the vet only had me fast her for ~10 hours. No food after midnight, we had a 9:30 am appointment, and the actual scope was around 10 am. Perhaps ask your vet if 22 hours is really needed? Beyond that, a muzzle might be useful if there is wood or anything else edible she might be able to reach.
Or, as Moonlitoaks suggests, having the vet board her before the scope may be worth the cost.
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[USER][/USER] no wood, I’m paneling off a little dry lot so she’ll be next to her buddies. Also yes, I thought 22 hours was long too but that’s what they wanted. I toyed with the idea of taking her to a vet hospital to have her fast and ultimately decided it would be less stressful for her to at least be here at the barn next to all her friends instead of trailering her to a strange place over an hour away and locking her in a stall. I feel like this is just going to suck and be terribly stressful either way though.
Equkelly… you may be pleasantly surprised.
I agree with you, staying home in a familiar environment would be less stressful than heading off to the hospital for in-house fasting. Are they cranky when being fasted? Sure… but other than some calling and perhaps some pacing while you dish out the others food, you may find it’s more stressful on you than on the patient.
Remind yourself why you’re doing this in the first place. I’m sure it will go just fine.
Thanks, that’s the idea… I thought about it and I came to the conclusion that if I took her to the hospital it would really be more for my anxiety and not her’s. But now here we are and I’m posting on COTH in the middle of the night worrying about it already lol.
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Just make sure that no one might take pity on the poor horse screaming for food and give her something without you knowing. Unless she’s on your own property, I’d get a number of signs ready to post on her pen indicating the fast and reason.
Also, are you doing the gastroscopy on the farm? If you have to take her to the clinic for the procedure, she’s got to trailer without any hay. In that case, it might be easier to trailer her over before the fast so she can eat on the trailer, and then do the fast at the clinic.
When I had it done I did some research on what some hospitals recommended for fasting. I think I did more like 14-16 hours and that was erring on the longer side. He was still mad but he lived and there was nothing in the stomach for the scope.
Maybe if you are hoping to see past the stomach some, more time would be good. My guy was so big that wasn’t an option for me.
Is giving her something liquid to coat the stomach a possibility? Perhaps before trailering, at least? Or even start nexium or gastrogard three days before the fast? Especially if she does have active ulcers, she’ll be one unhappy camper 
Like those above, I’ve only had to fast them overnight. 22 hours seems like an excessively long time.
Maybe this is true, but it since she’s high strung, it might be safer and easier for them to give her something to stay calm.
You know your filly best. 
I would seriously question thay timing and if they feel it is truly necessary would want it done in a hospital. I would be worried about colic to be honest.
You might be surprised. I have a worrier of a Thoroughbred who watched all of his friends eat dinner, night hay, and then breakfast the next day with no drama at all. The barn manager said he looked a bit confused, but didn’t complain. lol
That does seem like a very long time for fasting, but I am not a vet…is there any chance your vet misspoke or something?
You might think about pulling shavings out of her stall in case she tries to eat them. I didn’t experience that with my horse at all, but it’s a thought. And I second the suggestion to put a big sign on her door that alerts people she can not have ANYTHING to eat.
I would not start her on any sort of additional supplement or medication before the scope without asking your vet.
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Agreed on all these points, though a muzzle would slow the temptation of eating shavings.
And… there’s been plenty of times where horses have been fasted shorter periods of time and they’ve been found to have a bolus of hay still in their stomach. I can’t recall the specific condition… reduced/ slowed gastric emptying? But if your vet is thinking your horse has this condition, that would explain the “longer” fasting time frame.
I’d also be very reluctant to give any type of ulcer medication prior to scoping for ulcers. There are grades of irritation that would be easily masked by giving ulcer meds even for a few days prior to scoping. Don’t do it…
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Yep, she has been on a full tube of gastrogard for the past month and will get a tube like normal when she’s fasting.
She’s been on ulcer meds for a month, the whole reason we’re scoping is to make sure they worked so she’ll still get them. Depending on the results, we’ll hopefully start tapering off
While she’ll be mad, she isn’t going to die, or colic. Maybe in some sort of extreme case, but you’ll probably suffer more long lasting emotional trauma than she will. I would keep her in a stall, take her to her appointment, and give her a hay bag on the ride home. I would not give her anything to “coat her stomach” unless the vet specifically said it was fine. Why spend all the money on the exam and then blow it because you didn’t want to be mean?
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Ah… totally different story then!
Glad you’re scoping to check efficacy of ulcer meds. Updated us after? Thanks.
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Awesome–at least she won’t have loads of acid on any active ulcerations. That should help keep her comfortable.
Good luck, hope you get very boring results of “nothing to see here” 
So you didn’t scope before starting ulcer meds? How do you know she had them and be able to compare?
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At first her symptoms weren’t that bad but she was showing all the classic ulcer symptoms. Didn’t want to eat her grain, very touchy around her belly, chewing wood. So we did a week of GG but when she didn’t do much better we did the succeed test (while continuing the GG) and it came back positive for foregut and hindgut ulcers even after being on GG so my vet wants her scoped at 28 days of GG.
