I have a young (4 yr old) mare that has struggled with colic and we think hind gut ulcers since July. To try and summarize this: no colic issues prior to this year when in late May she started being gassy and bloated, she had a serious colic in July and spent 3 days in the vet hospital, blew a vein so was being treated for that, came home looking decent. Got an extensive feed change, and we thought there might be some issues with coming in season as an ovary was twisted after all that – which we fixed and she has been on regumate, equisure and succeed since then, none of which seems to have made much of a difference in anything. She tested for hind gut ulcers with the succeed test and her colic was hind gut ulcer like – lots of diarrhea, gas, discomfort but no twisting, weird peeing behavior. When we first started the misoprostel she improved a lot, except for some bloating on the left side. Kept improving, stayed good for about 2-3 weeks after we stopped it and then the bloating and gas got worse again, treated her again, was a little better, changed her feed again, got a bit better, then basically the same thing. She’s now back on the misoprostel and sucralfate (away from the other meds) but not much changed, so we have just finished a panacur power pack, which has eliminated bloating on the right, still slightly bloated on the left.
To be honest, I’m running out of ideas and am out of money. She has had 4 vets consulting on this, so my questions are really a last ditch – throw it out to the universe to see if anyone has experienced anything similar. And yes, I have spent hours looking at the COTH posts on hind gut ulcers and colic. So, has anyone had a horse with bloating just on the left side? That side is almost always bloated to a greater or lesser extent. They did an ultrasound in the hospital and did not see anything abnormal. If you did have this, did you ever figure out what was causing it? Have you had success with something other than equisure and succeed? She’s on another supplement from my vet with turmeric in it but again, not much difference. My only other thought is once I can save the money, to do a food allergy test. We did do elimination diets for soy (which did nothing) and alfalfa (which we put her on after the colic) and taking her off that helped with the right side bloat but not much with the left. If you did food allergy testing was it accurate and did you do a blood test or the old skin testing? I’m open to any suggestions, as I may have to make a really hard decision about a lovely little mare with an amazing temperament and good talent that I’ve known since she was a baby.
