Mare in heat and stifle pain

[ohmissbrittany]

Hey, I wasn’t sure if Horse Care or this place would be better for this issue. It’s my second spring with my mare, and I’ve noticed that her cycles in April/May tend to be particularly miserable… I took her for a normal 3-month chiropractic appointment and the vet/chiro said that sometimes being in heat, they will exhibit symptoms that look like stifle pain, because “the stifles get loose”. I tried googling but of course everything comes up as “estrus management- use regumate” or very literal “heat in the stifle” kind of results.

Does anyone have any experience as far as what is “normal” in terms of hind-end discomfort during a heat cycle? The past four days she rides fine, a little snippy about leg/spur application, no lame steps… but then on the cross ties kind of keeps shifting from one foot to the other, and is particularly titchy about the right hind.

Edited to add: for what it’s worth, I had her palpated for an ovary tumor, and vet said he didn’t feel anything too abnormal, just that with the back-and-forth weather he has seen some mares that are like, half-cycling and in and out of heat this spring.

Any experience/info you have is fantastic!

[rodawn]

Have never in my long and storied life ever heard of a mare’s stifles becoming loose because they have a heat cycle. If that were the case, mares all over the world would unable to walk every 21 days.

What is more likely happening is her ovaries are sore. This sometimes happens in the early spring with some mares. Raspberry leaves will make her much more comfortable.

I find all my empty mares want to wander over to the raspberry patch in the early spring and strip off a few mouthfuls of leaves for a few days at a time and then they leave the canes alone for a while and then they go back and nibble on them again. It seems that once the mares are either finally bred or past the end of June for those planned to stay open, then the want for raspberry leaves ceases.

[kdreger]

I agree with rodawn!
There is nothing the mare releases when in estrus that will loosen her stifles. Not to mention anything relesed will go into the blood stream and be systemic. I would be really worried about what other nonfact based voodoo ideas that practitioner has.

[Dressagelvr]

Yeah, time for a new vet/chiro if the person is spouting this bunk.

Why not put her on regumate in the spring?

[ahf]

There is a recognized treatment for horses with upward fixation that involves estrone given IM. It’s most effective in geldings. Estrone is related to estrogen. This may be where the vet/chiro got this rather strange and convoluted idea.

[Goforward]

ohmissbrittany, I have a mare with tricky stifles and she absolutely gets worse in the second half of her heat and as her heat has ended. So, you aren’t alone. I do wonder if it has something to do with how my mare carries herself during her heats, I don’t know, but her stifles catch/give out/become painful in the same rotation as her heats.