My horse had a lung infection and it took a loonnngggg time to get better, it may need more time. She was on ventipulmin for a good month and still coughed. We started antibiotics in late July and honestly it wasn’t until early fall I could ride and even then she’d cough here and there. Even after we finished antibiotics the coughing was practically the same. I was really worried she’d never get better, I did not think it would take months. This horse is IR so we did not want to do dex.
I think it was like December-January before it finally went away. My vet also said the lungs need to rest awhile, and did not advise even walking under saddle work for a month or more.
My horse never ran a fever but had a pretty bad infection. My other horse has RAO but her cough was never as bad.
You might check out Aleria by arenus. Really great respiratory supplement.
I have a mare that did a similar thing, but the cough was always dry. Almost a year in I tried Air Power out of desperation and it actually worked extremely well. It went from coughing fits at the lope immediately to maybe one or two coughs in the very first use. I dosed her before every ride religiously for several months and then it stopped completely. If I’m going to a show or riding on a particularly dusty day I’ll still dose her just to be safe, but she doesn’t cough at all anymore.
Just a quick update - we finally have a next appointment date, which is this upcoming Friday. Planning on doing a static scope but if the vets think it’s appropriate/necessary to do more while they are there (BAL etc) we’ll probably do whatever they suggest.
I’ll keep the supplement suggestions in mind. An old boarder used to feed her horse Aleria and I just remember it smelled amazing!
I can totally see horses having problems with round bales or maybe having a reaction to one particular round bale but I’m not sure that it fits:
-He had been living on round bales for a little less than a year with no issues prior to the start of this cough
I believe they were mid-bale when the coughing started, so he had been eating that bale for a few days before it started
There have been a number (5 or 6 probably?) of new bales since then and his cough hasn’t changed
I would think if he was susceptible to round bale issues it would’ve shown up before now but
What’s so strange to me is that he went from 100% fine to having this horrible hacking cough seemingly mid-ride. I see that people have had allergies and/or heaves come on suddenly but this severe, this fast, without any prior indications? I’m just having difficulty wrapping my mind around that but am keeping it as a possibility. I know, “when you hear hoofbeats think horses not zebras” but this just seems so weird to me.
Thanks again everyone! Fingers crossed Friday yields some answers
My horse’s allergies came on very suddenly and very severely this year. Probably even more severely–went from 2 coughs one day to extreme coughing 2 days later then within 5 days pretty serious respiratory distress. Allergy testing showed the biggest culprit to be Bermuda. Well, she’s been on Bermuda hay and grass since she was 6 (she’s 12 now). Both vets I’ve been working with have said some version of “allergies can start at any time for any reason at any severity”.
Thank you for elaborating. I get that, I do. In my obsessing trying to find any correlations I have noticed he is maybe(?) better when it’s cold out than when it’s warmer/springlike.
Thursday (high of 40 I think) I had tossed him quickly on the lunge to see how he looked after pulling his shoe and to see where is cough is at- no cough for a quick WTC each direction and only one cough in the field during the 45 minutes I spent looking for his shoe. Curious to see if he was improved, Friday (a bit warmer, mid 50s) I saddled him up, walked a couple laps around the indoor and as soon as I picked up the trot he was coughing. I hopped off and put him away.
Maybe it is allergies relating to something when it warms up but I really don’t know. If it is something relating to warmer weather, I have no idea how I can control his exposure to it. I don’t have experience with this kind of issue (allergies/heaves/ misc. respiratory issues) so that just makes me even more anxious about the whole thing. I’m not going to ride him until after the scope at least.
Allergies are weird. Like, super weird. Just as an example, I know a guy who just randomly became allergic to shellfish in his 20’s. He was having lobster at a nice restaurant, and quickly after eating his meal started having trouble breathing. They had to call an ambulance for him. He had eaten lobster countless times before.
Halfway through a round bale would not surprise me at all. The inside of the round bale is going to have very different bacteria and fungus than the outside, because it’s two different environments. Anaerobic vs aerobic. If that bale started the allergic reaction, then having an irritant of any sort from continuing round bales would keep that cough going.
And starting in the middle of a ride isn’t too strange either since he was exerting himself.
I’d really suggest pulling him from the round bales and seeing if that helps. If it does, then you save yourself a lot of money. If it doesn’t it probably didn’t cost much to try.
I was riding an elderly “thrown away” Arabian mare at my lesson barn for several years.
One year she developed this really deep racking cough that shook her whole body. She was outside 24/7/365 on middling pasture with round bales.
This coughing went on for months and months, to the point my riding teacher was considering putting her down. Well they had to change the type of hay in the round bales, and guess what, her cough went away in a short amount of time and never came back.
My riding teacher now tries to avoid rye grass round bales, because as long as this mare ate from the rye grass round bales she had this horrible cough. No other mare in the pasture had the cough, but the mare I was riding then was pretty elderly.
Their heads are sometimes burrowed into the round bale after a few days, causing them to breathe in more dust.
My pony is out 24/7 in a very bare (dirt/mud) pasture with round bales. He recently developed a cough during our ride. He always gave a cough or two during warmup but these continued throughout the ride. Vet said she heard just a bit of crackling in his left lung and diagnosed as mild asthma. I started Hilton Herbs Freeway Gold three weeks ago and his cough is gone! He’s never had allergies in the three years I’ve owned him. Maybe the current hay and weather is affecting more horses than usual.
Round bales are one of the first things they tell you to remove if you suspect any kind of asthma because they tend to be dusty and are prone to mold. But not every type of asthma is triggered by that. Certainly dust likely doesn’t help if you have any kind of respiratory distress. But removing the round bale did nothing for my mare as she is neither allergic to mold nor dust.
I do think it’s worth an allergy test to see if you can identify triggers.
I’ve been dealing with this for the past year. Last summer after the hay was cut, horse started coughing. Had to have about 6 weeks off. Nothing seemed to work- antihistamines, dex. He was fine to walk but once we started anything more would cough. He got scoped but there was nothing other than a mild irritation in his throat. I believe what was happening was that he’d cough, irritate his throat so he’d cough and so on and so on. We just could not stop the cycle. We used an injectable (Predef) and that seemed to stop the cycle of coughing and irritation. We were able to ride all fall and winter fine with no coughing.
Fast forward to this week and the coughing has started again. I believe it’s because… I was making plans for himself this summer. Joking aside we started him back on the Predef yesterday so we’ll see what happens.
From what I’ve read Predef addresses hypersensitivity in regards to allergies. It also helps with inflammation so I suspect that’s what reduces the irritation in his throat.
(Wildly unhelpful) update- two days before the static scope was scheduled, I hopped on horse to see where he was at after a week off and was able to WTC and give a pony ride without any coughing from him. Curious if it was a fluke, I rode him the evening prior to the scheduled scope and could.not.get.him.to. cough.
I notified his owners and it was decided to postpone the scope as he seemed back to normal. It’s been about a week and since then he’s been doing well. A stray cough here and there (maybe once at the beginning of a ride) but back to a less-for normal IMO.
The plan for now is to slowly ease him back into full work and see how it goes. If the cough comes back we will just go straight to the scope.
@crackerjack My understanding is that Predef (Isoflupredone Acetate) is a corticosteroid. It’s similar to dex in that it reduces inflammation, and has been proven to improve lung function similar to dexamethasone. Both drugs can affect the HPA axis, but Predef can also cause hypokalaemia.
You may already know all of this, but I thought other posters may find the info useful as well.
