Went out to feed up this afternoon and found one of my horses unable to walk with any degree of comfort - think classic laminitis without the leaning-back posture. I first thought she’s been injured, but when she staggered up (of her own accord, a distance of 20m, I had her bucket of tucker in my hand) I saw that every limb showed significant edema. Not a tendon in sight.
She hoed into her feed and we called our vet who arrived minutes later. Got her out of the paddock. She was pretty bright but unwilling to move much and picking up each foot for examination and testing was difficult, but not impossible. Her RH was the worst.
In short:
- Elevated HR (80 bpm)
- Normal temp
- Mild discomfort to testers, but no drastic reactions (horse is NOT stoic)
- Good gut motility, no evidence of colic or gastric upset
- No other clinical symptoms - no discharge, cough, swelling, injuries, etc.
- Blood test showed no evidence of snake envenomation (primary candidate)
Mare was given anti-inflams, and had all four feet wrapped and padded. She was put into a small, softer paddock with her weanling for company and a bale of hay.
Has anyone seen anything like this - sudden onset of edema in every distal limb with laminitis-like lameness?
To answer the common questions:
- The mare is a Lipizzan X. She is built like one. She is round, but not obese or cresty. She is slimmer at present than normal.
- Zero history of metabolic disorders or lameness relating to laminitis. Her hooves show ZERO metabolic rings. She has had one abscess in her entire life.
- No evident heat / bounding pulse in feet
- She is on low sugar grass hay and a 300g scoop of lucerne chaff daily. No hard feed. No changes to her feed since her foal was weaned, no hard feed in six months.
- She lives on a 2ac dry lot, and I do mean DRY. No grass. None. No weeds. Nothing unusual has sprung up in the paddock, no other horse is ill or lame.
- She was fine yesterday. A bit colicy at teatime but not unusual for her around when she goes into season. She farted, and was fine.
- Australia. No EPM, PHF, EIA etc. No rabies. Not Hendra.
- No recent vaccinations, wormer, work. Hasn’t left the paddock in five weeks.
Our vet will get the results of an infection and virus screen in the morning (it is 11pm here) and we’ll go from there. We are stumped. At this point we don’t know for certain if it is a laminitic episode but treating her as such.
