My colt was born July 3. Severely contracted tendons. He had three oxy tet treatments with little improvement. I took him to UC Davis where he spent 8 days being splinted and got toe extensions. He came home one week ago and I started him on the Rejuvenaide Plus (double dose). There is improvement but he is still in splints and just had new toe extensions fitted & applied.
Any other suggestions?
I am attaching 2 photos. One with the splints on, the second was taken this morning when we changed the splints.
He is by Rotspon out of a Diamont/Prinz Gaylord mare.
No suggestions, but lots of jingles for you and your little one!!!
Give the splints a chance to work. Did you look into dynasplints? They have a specific splint that actually fits under the foot. I have a filly that had an aquired flexural deformity that caused her to be walking on the front of her hoof wall in a very short amount of time. 4 weeks in a Dynasplint and rejuvenated and lots aggressive PT of her fetlock joints and she did rather well. So well in fact that she is currently schooling 4ā6. Best of luck! I can try to answer any questions you may have about my experience.
Jingles for him!! A dear friend lost a foal to pressure sores from splints like that. Hoping for a great outcome for him
We put cotton ācastsā on them. Get the big rolls of cotton that you use to wrap horses legs. Wrap the cotton around the then put Vet wrap over it. It helps to get the tendon below the back of the knee to relax - that is what causes the knuckling over. Also put the foal on Foal Aide.
Weāve had mixed results with Dynasplint. On some foals it stayed in place - on others is spun around and created more problems.
dkapper@prognutrition.com Contact Don Kapper of Progressive Nutrition, he is a wealth of informationā¦Start him on Rejuvenaide, Don will tell you how muchā¦
I follow a wildlife rescue group on Facebook and apparany deer are born with this problem quite often. Obviously they are tiny compared to a horse, but they put the fawns in a sling for several hours a day. This helps stretch everything from the shoulders down. I was curious if anyone knew if this has been tried with a foal.
Good luck with your baby. Iābe been following a story on facebook of a mini foal with severely contracted tendons that has made an incredible recovery.
Ise-were you using the digital dorsiflexion splint? Iām not sure how it would spin. It has a boot that actually fits over the hoof. Iām having a hard time looking at the pics, due to blurry and size, but it appears this split may be what is needed. Is it the DDFT that is tight? Anyway, if you want have a look at this website
www.dynasplint.com/digital-dorsiflexion
My mare is the 2nd set of picture examples shown. The first picture isnāt even the worse that it looked, I just didnāt take any pics in the very beginning. (This was before cell phones with cameras on them)
Gen, PM Jackieblue. She is the guru when it comes to this sort of thing even though she doesnāt work there anymore.
[QUOTE=Aaspen;7087353]
Ise-were you using the digital dorsiflexion splint? Iām not sure how it would spin. It has a boot that actually fits over the hoof. Iām having a hard time looking at the pics, due to blurry and size, but it appears this split may be what is needed. Is it the DDFT that is tight? Anyway, if you want have a look at this website
www.dynasplint.com/digital-dorsiflexion
My mare is the 2nd set of picture examples shown. The first picture isnāt even the worse that it looked, I just didnāt take any pics in the very beginning. (This was before cell phones with cameras on them)[/QUOTE]
Thank you. Sorry about the quality of the photos. Cell phone pics with a moving target. He is not stable while standing without the splints on. I looked at the link you posted. He looks very similar to the before photo in the final set of photos at the bottom of the page.
Gen I have just been through this exact same thing with a Furst Nymphenburg colt. If anything he was worse than yours. He was totally knuckled over on both front limbs.
I tried 3 lots of oxytet with little or no effect. Toe extentions were applied and he was splinted and wrapped like yours. We would cast his legs including the hooves, wait for them to set whilst holding the leg as straight as physically possible, and then cut them up the sides and remove them. We wrapped the leg with alternate layers of soft padding (soft ban) and crepe bandage and finished with encasing the whole lot with vet wrap. Over this we put the two halves of the cast back together and bound it on with vet wrap as tight as possible. There was a gap down each side of the casts due to the additional padding but very little movement in the limb.
He wore the casts for 18 hours a day. For the other 6 hours the hard casts were removed but the wraps underneath were left on. As soon as the casts were removed he would find it difficult to get around. Once I put the casts back on each day he would do his best to have a little run around.
He and his mother lived in an outdoor covered area against the barn wall (one and a half stables big) with a very deep but quite firm bedding of wood peelings. They were right in amongst the comings and goings of the yard and able to see plenty of things and other horses etc. They were in here for 3 months. Even with all the fresh air and very regular mucking out this got pretty yucky. Every 3 weeks I would dig all the bedding out down to dirt and replace it with totally clean fresh stuff. This was a hellish job but necessary to keep the environment as clean as possible.
We recast the legs 5 times in 3 months. And altered the toe extentions accordingly. At first there was so little improvement. He learned to carry his weight on his hind end and to do little pirouettes to get around. It was heartbreaking to watch but the vet and I were committed and the vet was sure it would come good in time. He was right!
The colt grew stronger and the limbs relaxed substantially but when the wraps were removed he would still knuckle over. The hard casts were eventually removed but the limbs were still wrapped for most of the day.
Just as I was getting pretty despondent about things one limb just āall of a suddenā had a good pastern angle. Once the pastern angle reaches a certain point the horseās bodyweight does all the stretching and physio for you and the progress from this point was phenomenal. The other limb relaxed shortly after. All of a sudden we were scrambling to remove the toe extentions and trim the toes back to assist breakover. It was such an enormous sense of relief!
Pressure sores. Yes, there were sores. At first the hair went a bit wrinkling and then fell out in clumps. One limb had superficial wounds around the leg under the knee and on the fetlock. The other limb had a much deeper wound on the front of the cannon beneath the knee. This wound was a real yucky mess. Fortunately the wraps were removed shortly after the wounds appeared. I had to wrap the bigger wound for a further 6 weeks to keep it clean and to stop him chewing at it.
Now he is 7 months old. His limbs are pretty close to perfect. Any misshappen hoof (from the toe extentions) has been trimmed off and they look excellent. There is some wrinkly hair from all the bandaging around the back of the fetlocks and a smattering of white hairs on both limbs. There is a small dry scab where the large deep wound was and some thickening of the skin around this area. He is completely sound and the first time I saw his spectacular trot I got a bit weepy
There is barely anything to see from all the drama of the past months.
The vet has assured me that there will be no residual affects, his ability to perform and his ongoing soundness will not be compromised.
Can I send you some photos so you can post them here?
Thank you so much for the success stories!
Without the splints he does knuckle over substantially, even with the toe extensions. UC Davis recommended the splints be changed every 48 hrs. It seems others have had success with different timing.
He has some pretty nasty bed sores on his hips and elbows. Under the bandaging he has one sore on his fetlock.
Kerole, This is a really nice piece of comprehensive writing about your experience. I found it helpful and very interesting. Hoping that Genās beautiful boy responds equally well. Thank you for the good report!
Diane Halpin/Laurel Leaf Hanoverians: Facebook
Kerole, what a great post! It should be stickied to the top of this forum, for all those whose foals are born with contracted tendons. Most foals seem to have some sort of angular limb deformity at birth, and I think contracted tendons are the hardest to deal with. You have written a great outline of what you have done; thanks.
Gen - many years ago I leased a mare of mine to a friend who bred her to his stallion. The foal came out with both knees pointing in the wrong direction - to the back and not the front. The vet recommended euthanasia
He opted to get a hard PVC pipe and slit it up the back wide enough to allow cotton wraps and his leg to fit in there and then he got wrapped into place with Vetrap. They changed the dressings twice a day and he would sit down beside the colt and stretch and massage his legs for literally hours a day and then back on the pipe would go
He also made a decision around the 2 week mark that he was going to do something radical. If it worked - the colt would live and if it didnt - he would die. It was that simple. He lives in a very hilly area and he simply turned the Mom and baby out (without the pipe on) and the baby struggled to move around, really struggled on the hills and it was painful to watch. But - each day, he got a little bit better and within a week or so he was trotting and cantering for short stretches and didnt look as painful as he did in the beginning
He ended up being sold - he didnt feel with such a rough start that he would amount to much ā¦ he is kicking himself in the ass daily, as he is now eventing at the Advanced level very successfully and none of the foals that he has sired have had any leg issues at all
If you would like I can email you his contact information. He took a ātough loveā approach to the colt and in his case, it paid off very very well ā¦
Good luck with him Gen
I had one born, perhaps not so severe as yours, with a perfect outcome.
Keep fighting for your little one.
Here are a few photos of Keroleās colt. What a remarkable recovery! There is hope for my Prince.
We removed Princeās splints this afternoon, did some massage work on him. He will stay naked until tomorrow morning when we will reapply the splints. The toe extensions stay on.
Not sure if I already mentioned this, but while at Davis the mareās milk dried up. So Prince is getting milk replacer (Foal lac). I noticed that Progressive makes a milk replacer and a milk pellet. Has anyone had good luck with these products? I can order the milk replacer from them on line but can not figure out how to add the milk pellets to my cart.
I realise that having the mare dry up may have seemed like one more hassle to deal with but it may be a blessing in disguise under these circumstances.
My mare had an udder like a cow. It would regularly squirt milk like a watering can while she dozed standing. The foal had waaayyy too much intake with very very little energy output due to being incapacitated (splinted etc) and locked up 24/7 for 3 months. He packed on an alarming amount of weight over those months, becoming quite squidgy and top heavy. The vet and I became increasingly worried about too much body weight on his already compromised limbs. As soon as he was able to be out on a small area of pasture I weaned him.
Gen, at least this way you can monitor his energy intake over the next months.
JackieBlue = Morgen Flynn. Sheās the EXPERT.