I have now lost two geldings to this painful colic situation. I haven’t’ been able to find any research or information on how to prevent fatty tumors from growing in the horse’s gut, and have been told that this is a very common way older geldings die. I have asked at Kentucky Research but gotten no answer. I have another gelding, now 23, and want very much not to lose him this way. Anyone know where to get information or research on the topic?
So sorry for your losses. I’ve spoken with my vets about this issue, and am not aware of any research out there on how to prevent it. The best advice they had was to keep an eye out for subtle changes in digestive comfort. The only hope is to find it early (some are visible by ultrasound, some are not), and get it surgically removed before it can cause damage.
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Lipomas are benign tumors that tend to occur in older horses.
I don’t believe there is any way of preventing their formation, unfortunately.
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Just like fatty tumors that many older dogs get, they are just something that happens. I don’t even think anyone understands why most are older geldings. Now that I think about it - is it really older geldings, or older males in general?
I lost the real JB to one as well. He was never fat (neither was the other older gelding I personally knew who died from one), and never had digestive issues/colic situations (beyond a few early years more then a decade prior, remedied by getting off sweet feed), so there wasn’t even anything pointing to its development. They are simply there, hanging out, until they start to cause a real problem. But those problems mimic so many other things. JBs was realistically hooped to be an entrapped spleen - it wasn’t.
I lost a wonderful mare to a strangulating lipoma 2 years ago. My vet’s feedback was that really there are no known contributing factors in terms of care, etc.
I’m sorry for your loss. It really sucks.
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Thank you - that’s what I thought. My first horse who died of this showed no colic-y symptoms,and then he was gone.
I lost my first horse to one. He had mild colic symptoms that progressed suddenly-- I did surgery on him which was initially successful, but then he developed complications 90 days later. It wrapped around his small intestine. The vets at Hagyard explained to me there is no rhyme or reason to why lipomas develop and there’s nothing I could have done to have prevented it. Sorry you had to have experienced this.
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I lost a 30+ yo mare to what was probably a strngulating lipoma earlier this year. So it is not just geldings. She was fine the night before.
I never really thought about this in relation to horses, but I had a dog who grew lots of lipomas. I found, entirely by accident, that she grew them only when on a kibble that contained chicken. If I kept her on food free of chicken, she didn’t pop any new ones, and her existing ones didn’t get any bigger.
Weird, huh? Makes me wonder if there’s some sort of allergy-ish trigger.
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that’s wild! And good to tuck in the back of my brain.
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