Intermittent very loose stool

[Hermein]

My boarder horse is a teenage mare that has had intermittent loose stools for several weeks. No food change, no loss of appetite, no weight loss. Last week, she had a mild colic episode–gas noises, no temperature, respiration normal. The next day, her face looked as if she was sickly and stressed, but no temperature then either.

I’ve started soaking her hay to get more water down, and I’ve been adding loose salt all year.

Her owner is in Central America & off the grid, so I hesitate to call the vet, although I think owner would be okay with it. You just hate to run up a zillion $$ vet bill for some quirky thing that really didn’t amount to much of anything. WWYD?

[Scribbler]

My horse will get loose manure when we change types of hay, and I’ve found the only solution is to put her on a course of pro-biotics. I find that if they have diarrhea for too long, it gets chronic, as all the gut bacteria have been scoured out.

However, I’ve known of a couple of horses die very suddenly of gut-based infections like c.difficile, salmonella, and e.coli. These all presented as a bit of diarrhea, a bit of not quite right for a while, then a sudden, major, systemic infection that looked like colic, but tested out to be bacterial in post-mortem.

With these horses, there was no treatment possible at the point they became obviously and critically ill. However, maybe if they had been diagnosed before that point, they could have had treatment?

I would certainly consult a vet, maybe get a fecal test for bacterial infection, rule some things out.

[silverdog]

I agree with Scribbler 100%. Horse at my barn coliced, seemed to get better, the clinic kept him one extra day and thank goodness. Temp next day, no white count. Two days later watery diarrhea and 1 week later dead despite every possible $$$$ trmt imaginable.

[IslandDQ]

I just went through this with a horse and hoping I’m at the winning end now. He’s always been sensitive and will have loose manure at times with weather, stress and feed changes but this last time was the worst it’s ever been and I was worried. It wasn’t clearing up and it was getting worse. With my vet’s advice I dewormed with Quest Plus even though the fecal came back clear recently in the event we were dealing with parasites coming off summer pasture. I also put him on a concentrated Pro & Prebiotic paste by Equine Choice and transitioned to their powder once manure firmed up. Went along well for a week and then wham…it was back.

I’ve had this hay since August a nice 2nd Grass/Alfalfa Mix and a nice 1st Timothy/Grass mix. The only thing I could think of was possibly he developed a sensitivity/intolerance to grass so I pulled the grass and got him on straight Timothy. Within two days, it was back to normal, well formed manure with no more liquid.

Our next course of action if hay change didn’t work was to do a blood panel and fecal tests and continue the feed trial to remove other things.

In time, if he stays stable I will try out adding some alfalafa back but I am planning on no more orchard grass for him! Sorry - that was long!

[Hermein]

Thanks to all responders. I’ve read some older posts on this condition, and probiotics seems to be the starting treatment. I think the owner will be better pleased with spending $20 initially, to $200–providing that I could get a vet call for that. It’s dropped into the 30s here, too, so I’ll worm for tapes, just in case.

[nu2u]

Feed change, weather change, sand…probios good, checking manure for sand and monitoring temp better. All that plus having a phone conversation with the vet best. They will probably want a sample to test for parasites

[beau159]

Stay UTD on dewormer.
Try pro-biotics.
Can also do blood work with the vet to see if anything abnormal comes back.

My old horse Beau would have intermittent loose stools too. Could never figure out what was causing it, and he was never sick because of it. Just made his tail awful messy. :yes:

[Scaredacoops]

Any chance the horse could be eating acorns? My horse exhibited similar symptoms and I finally figured out he was munching acorns falling into the pasture from overhanging branches.

[Beckham03]

A farm call and a fecal test shouldn’t be that expensive or you could take a sample to the vet.