Equine Asthma - HELP

[Luci.king]

Sorry for the long post!!

My pony has always had dust allergies and sometimes develops a cough, usually a week on a respiratory supplement clears it up and he’s back to normal.

long story short my pony wasn’t being looked after at my previous yard and lost a lot of weight, he’s 26 and loses weight when not having his feed managed properly. The yard kept him on dusty forage and bedding despite numerous requests. I moved to my new yard and in under a month he was back looking fab again but developed a cough.

I put the cough down to him being underweight on arrival, the stress of moving and dusty ground as it was extremely dry!

I got the vet out a week or so ago as he was very wheezy, heaving and coughing a lot. The vet prescribed him a 5 day course of steroids and dilaterol. 5 days past and there wasn’t any improvement, I spoke to the vet who furthered his steroids for another 5 days (has finished them now)

he’s having soaked hay which is of really high quality and there’s no visible dust coming off it when dry. He’s on straw bedding which isn’t particularly dusty either but is worse on shavings etc. He unfortunately has to come in on a night or in bad weather with him being old and not the best doer.

I’ve also started him on 10 piriton tablets a day (he weighs about 380kg) and omega oil.

Up to this ‘flare up’ he was fit and healthy and in full time work. I have now stopped exercising him for the past week and not sure when I should be reintroducing work. He’s a happy hacker and a light schooler.

I’ve included my findings below over reviewing him everyday for the past week, the no. Are breathes per minute. I also tried my salbutamol inhaler on him last night (Sunday) which seemed to relieve a lot of the wheezing.

Friday - 12 - slight heave

Sunday - 19 - wheezy - visible heave - cough

Monday - 18 - no wheeze - no heave

Tuesday - 12 - slight wheeze - slight heave - no cough

Wednesday - 12 - no cough, no heave, no wheeze

Thursday - 16 - no cough, no heave, no wheeze

Friday - 16 - cough, slight wheeze, heave

Saturday - 23 - slight cough, slight wheeze, slight heave

Sunday - 21 - wheezing, heaving, flared nostrils. Wheezing lowered after salbutamol dose

I’m really freaking out that he’s not going to come right and I’m going to loose him. Is this normal for some improvement then to kind of go backwards a bit? Is there anything else I can do to help him?

All advice welcome

[clanter]

has the weather been stable or changing as weather changes can trigger an asthmatic attack

[GoodTimes]

Hard to give any sort of definitive answer. Lung/respiratory issues are tricky, especially without any diagnostics.
It’s possible that years of subclinical irritation to his lungs have reached a tipping point.
Coughing in horses is never normal. Their cough reflex doesn’t kick in as quickly as ours since their conformation/physiology is designed so that mucous, etc should be able to head straight out from the respiratory tract and down to the nostrils. This is why horses should never be forced to keep their heads up for extended periods (think trailering, feeding from hay nets, etc).
Once a horse (or human) experiences lung damage it’s usually irreversible.

It’s also possible that he has some sort of infection. If the steroids aren’t helping you may want to get the vet back out and investigate this. You really don’t want to have to deal with pneumonia.

The other thing to consider is allergies that are manifesting as a respiratory irritant.
My horse falls into this category. Last fall he started having asthma attacks, seemingly random days where his respiratory rate would climb to 30-50 breaths/minute at rest, accompanied by wheezing and coughing. Steroids (dex) helped immensely. The attacks went away after the first few hard frosts which led us to believe that there was an environmental factor. We did intradermal allergy testing and it turns out he has several significant triggers. Some tree pollen (birch and poplar), a few different weeds (pig weed, cockleburr, goldenrod, russian thistle), three types of mold, yeast, dust mites, very reactive to staph bacteria, and house flies.
Some of these things we can control with management. Some we can’t. We’re hoping that allergy shots will be enough to control his symptoms, but I have steroids and antihistamines on hand for flareups.

Be careful with soaking hay. It can actually be counterproductive if you soak for too long, the water can become a breeding ground for bacteria, etc. Hay steamers are definitely the gold standard, but are expensive.

[Luci.king]

Yeah the weather has been unpredictable the past few weeks, from hot sunny days to humid wet ones and cold breezy ones! So it could be that that’s attributing to his flare ups

[Luci.king]

The vet has been back out again today.

he wasn’t as bad today, not coughing, and couldn’t hear wheeze from his nose but still heaving. Vet said breathing rate was normal but there was still a wheeze & crackle at the very back of his lungs. Shes started him on an inhaler twice a day and dilaterol for 5 days and said that should hopefully get rid of it. then if that works it’s just a case of managing it. She said he looks amazing for his age and would of never have put him at 26 and everything else looks and sounds ok! I’m going to keep him on piriton to see if that makes an improvement.

I mentioned about the possibility of infection but she’s highly doubtful he has one.

I’m really hoping it’s just a case of getting his asthma under control and managing it

[beowulf]

Years ago a vet that worked peripherally with the online database HORSE was collecting heaves horses for a study. She put them on 24/7 turnout and by the time she was ready to do the study IIRC 90% of them had completely resolved their symptoms and were not able to be used in the study. I remember reading that and thinking, damn. Is that really all it is?

Worth a shot. HORSE has the studies and vet excerpt on their website.

I would remove him from his stall. Barns have extremely high dust/allergen content, even when maintained to the best of their abilities. If it were me I would continue to hack him and try to keep him out and moving as much as possible outside of the barn.

[SusanO]

Here is the problem with 24/7 turnout for heaves - it depends where you are in the US. In the Southeast we have problems with summer pasture associated heaves ( SPAOCD/ SPAOD?). I am sure it is due to molds in the grass in hot humid weather. The horse gets bad about June and worsens until frost hits in October or November and then they can breath again. I had an old pony with this. Nothing helped until I moved him and put him in a place with pretty crappy pasture and I limited him being out to 12 hours per day. He went from gasping for breath to breathing normally in less than a month with no steroids. I took him back to the old place and he was in distress in 24 hours.

I got my barn finished and he moved home and did well except when it got really hot and humid so I had to limit his exposure to pasture.

I am not sure which kind of heaves she is dealing with. I found that changing their environment was so much more effective than lots of steroids. But you have to figure out what their triggers are first.

[WildGooseChase]

I have a Heaves/RAO horse. She is 20, an easy keeper, but wheezes and coughs just like yours.

Turn out during cooler/less humid hours, large flake bedding, soaked hay, and soaked feed have been the most helpful. The weather has a huge impact. When it’s hot and humid, nothing I do helps. At the end of the day, most heaves horses do well with regular exercise, turn out and a dust free environment, but sometimes need the help of steroids on the days were normal management isn’t effective.

[stb]

I have recently gone to large flake bedding in my barn and the reduction in dust has been impressive. Large flakes are harder to clean, and not as absorbent as smaller flakes, but the trade off is worth it to me. The air quality in my barn is much improved and the whole barn stays cleaner.

[PaddockWood]

I’ve got a heaves/RAO horse too. Skin testing revealed LOTS of allergies. What threw her over the edge a few years back was hay left to accumulate under fresh hay…all winter long. Those attacks were emergency calls. Boarding barn said they couldn’t remove the moldy hay. SO. Left that barn and the problems stopped.

Built my barn at home and brought her home last November and since then since then no problems but BAM a month ago or so she had a fairly bad attack. I was like WTF.

I went into detective mode looking everywhere looking for old, decayed hay…hiding under and inside things. And I found it! Small amounts. In several places. Symptoms went away. Then just this morning could see her struggling a bit again. So back to detective mode.

My point is the dust is obvious…what you’ve got to go look for is what is possibly causing it you have no idea lurking.

Pull up mats, pull away anything that could be hiding anything.

You might be surprised what you find. I sure was. My findings: under rubber mats outside, inside my Savvy hay feeder - trapped under their plastic insert, buried down in my auto waterer lip, under stall mats in the stall.

Now doing all feeding outside. Trying to keep her outside as much as possible. Not stalled but she has access to a stall.

It’s such a frustrating disease and scary too. Hope you find answers and get your pony relief!

[LCDR]

I took care of my gelding hunt horse with recurrent airway obstruction (RAO) from age 8 through 28 when he was euthanized because of colic. He had positive allergic reactions to all grass hay. Legumes like alfalfa were fine. He was also allergic to tree pollen, grass pollen, and ragweed pollen, which each peak at different times of the year. He ultimately did best on every other day IM corticosteroid injections (8 mg of dexamethasone). When the pollen seasons arrived, we upped the dose and increased frequency to daily. Sometimes it took 40mg for a few days to control symptoms, then we tapered back off. It was labor intensive, but he was able to hunt regularly.

Finding a vet to support long-term corticosteroid use might be difficult, but I had a medical background doing clinical research with corticosteroids for 3 decades and was able to reasonably argue my approach using benefit vs risk data…

BTW, dexamethasone was (maybe still is) available by mail order from Canada without a prescription requirement, at way lower prices than buying by Rx in the US. I’d order it by the case of 500 mg multidose bottles.

[Luci.king]

Thanks everyone, hay barn is kept fairly clean to be honest and there’s never any mouldy hay left around as it’s used so frequently, swept out then restocked. I’m actually in the UK so not sure if the treatment varies over here!

My yard have been so accommodating and he’s been out 24/7 at the moment whilst he hopefully heals! He started his steroid inhaler today and dilaterol for 5 days so I’m hoping to see improvement by the end of the week fingers crossed!!

I’ve switched him to large flake shavings (bedmax) and I’m going to go and dust his stable for when he comes back in!!

I’m really really hoping he pulls through this, it’s so frustrating and stressful!!