Vaccine reaction?

[WildLittleWren]

Has anyone had a vaccine reaction in their horse? Monday my mustangs both got a full set of shots and the intranasal strangles. Last night when I got home from work, my daughter’s gelding was sweating, lethargic, and not eating. I called the vet and she said to give him 2 grams of bute. I had to do so orally and mix with water to get it in him.

I have been checking on him every hour through the night and the only change is now he has white discharge from the nostril that the strangles was given, and he is only sweating on one side of his body (not excessively, but its wet). He still is not eating. Because he is not feeling well, it’s taken us half an hour each time to catch him to dose him (this is normally a fairly easy horse to catch), so I pulled him into the stall this morning. Poop is normal (no diarrhea).

Called the vet again. She said to give him another gram of bute and wait an hour and see if he perks up. If not I am going to request she come out. I am truly worried at this point. I have had many horses and have never had a reaction like this.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Should I go ahead and request she come out now?

[endlessclimb]

Why bute and not banamine?

My old guy reacts to the “carrier” of the vaccine, and gets IV banamine along with his shots 2x/year.

[WildLittleWren]

My vet told me that bute usually works better. I asked her, bute or banamine and she said to only use the bute. I have both on hand however for emergencies!

[DiamondJubilee]

Do you know what the full set of shots were besides the strangles? There was an issue with the rabies vaccine as the equine version was unavailable so vets were using the small animal one this year.

My vet warned me of the change and we took precautions, as in he only administered one shot at a time. So he came back to my farm 3 times to give my round of shots with about a week in between each one. He was very good with me and did not charge extra farm calls. He was just worried that they might have a reaction to the rabies shot.

It worked out well for me and all of my 6 ponies were totally fine. No reactions. But I have heard of a lot of adverse reactions though, similar to what you are describing.

[WildLittleWren]

@DiamondJubilee

Do you know what the full set of shots were besides the strangles? There was an issue with the rabies vaccine as the equine version was unavailable so vets were using the small animal one this year.

My vet warned me of the change and we took precautions, as in he only administered one shot at a time. So he came back to my farm 3 times to give my round of shots with about a week in between each one. He was very good with me and did not charge extra farm calls. He was just worried that they might have a reaction to the rabies shot.

It worked out well for me and all of my 6 ponies were totally fine. No reactions. But I have heard of a lot of adverse reactions though, similar to what you are describing.

Yes I will look at the paperwork in a bit. I know rabies was one of them. Now he is rocking side to side and front to back and quite frankly acting neurological. Sweating in a patch on his right side it’s all just so very odd. He is munching on hay but spooking at nothing and hyper reactive to everything. I have a call into my vet. Jingles please!

[DiamondJubilee]

Lots of jingles for your boy! Hope this passes quickly and he gets back to normal asap.

[WildLittleWren]

Vet called back. She actually suspects it’s from the rabies vaccine, because as you wrote DiamondJubilee, they are using the small animal rabies vaccine this year (would have been nice to know beforehand about the change!), and the reactions they have seen are similar to Champ’s. She said the neuro rocking etc is not neurological most likely it is because he has a sore neck. She said to put his hay up in a hay bag and his feed up so he doesn’t have to eat off the ground. I did that, and he’s eating! So prayers that this is all it is. She said next time she will give him IV banamine before his shots.

[DiamondJubilee]

Poor boy! Thank you for the update. I’m glad to hear hes eating once you put the hay up for him. What a good mom you are

Keep us updated on his progress. Hopefully he will make a full recovery by tomorrow.

If your vet can split the shots up the next time, it would help your guy I’m sure as well. Getting several shots at once is really hard on them. I usually split my shots up over 2 - 3 times and I don’t use multi vaccines (as per my vet. He says he gets more reacations with the multi type of shots especially with the sensitive horses).

[tipzythegreat]

YES

We had horses get spring shots (6 in 1) and intranasal strangles

The manufacturer, in hindsight, says to NEVER give intranasal and IM shots on the same day. My barn owner tried to sue for a bad batch, and they told us not to do IN and IM on the same day.

We had about a dozen horses get giant abcesses at the sight of the IM injections. They had to be cleaned and drained daily for weeks. There were huge globs of dead tissue that came out and so much puss… it was absolutely revolting. I’ll never forget that.

A few of the horses had no reaction. None of the horses died – but my barn owner is very experienced and was diligent about treating them. There was a lot of horses on stall rest – some couldn’t even walk depending where the injection was.

Check the spot to see if he’s got any sort of lump forming? Hopefully this is just a harrowing unrelated tale, but it was a nightmare at my barn!!! I hope I don’t scare you too much!

[2DogsFarm]

@tipzythegreat

The manufacturer, in hindsight, says to NEVER give intranasal and IM shots on the same day.

When I did the IN Strangles it was always on the same day as IM vax (Flu/Rhino, PHF, 5-Way & Rabies).
All given by my vet and over the course of some 10+ years. NEVER any reaction to the combo of IM & IN.
Is this a recent prohibition?

@WildLittleWren The one & only reaction to a vaccine I have experienced was to Rabies & this was back in 2008.
Both horses received the same series of vaccines, rabies was given in the neck.
That evening one horse was unable to lower his neck to eat (I feed both hay & grain off the ground) or even to drink from his water bucket - hung at his chest height. No swelling, only mild heat at the site.
I had to hang a haynet & tie the bucket higher for a day or 2.
Other & older horse exhibited no reaction at all.
From then on rabies was given in the hip & no more muscle soreness resulted.

[WildLittleWren]

Yes she believes it was the rabies. His fever has stayed down, he is now eating and drinking, and seems almost back to normal. I think we are out of the woods. I want to thank everyone who took the time to respond. I was panicking a bit!

[DiamondJubilee]

SO glad to hear!!

Another thing that my vet always mentions to me is to give the ponies 1gm of bute the morning of their shots (I always have him come in the evenings as I work until 5pm) and give them another 1gm of bute afterwards and then another 1gm of bute in the am again. He also likes me to lightly work them after shots are given. Nothing too strenous, but just a light work out. This has worked in our favour for years now and I do this every time they get their shots

Just some ideas, not sure if they necessarly work, but I have had some positive results using these methods.

[shortenmyreins]

@tipzythegreat

YES

We had horses get spring shots (6 in 1) and intranasal strangles

The manufacturer, in hindsight, says to NEVER give intranasal and IM shots on the same day. My barn owner tried to sue for a bad batch, and they told us not to do IN and IM on the same day.

We had about a dozen horses get giant abcesses at the sight of the IM injections. They had to be cleaned and drained daily for weeks. There were huge globs of dead tissue that came out and so much puss… it was absolutely revolting. I’ll never forget that.

My vets don’t do the IN strangles on the IM vaccination day for this reason. Something about the strangles is a live vaccine and droplets could contaminate the IM injection or site causing the nasty abscesses. Or something to that effect - I could be wrong about it being a live vaccine though.

My mare gets the IN flu/rhino, but she is usually the only one on the property who does. All the shots get done, then she gets the IN last.

[tipzythegreat]

@2DogsFarm I honestly don’t know – I just know that my owner went after the company that sold the vaccines to her, thinking they were a bad batch, and they had said that you shouldn’t do the IN and IM at the same time. This happened about 3 years ago now.

And yes @shortenmyreins I do think it had something to do with it being particularly strangles! Thanks for the info! Nasty abscesses indeed

[Kimstar]

@shortenmyreins

My vets don’t do the IN strangles on the IM vaccination day for this reason. Something about the strangles is a live vaccine and droplets could contaminate the IM injection or site causing the nasty abscesses. Or something to that effect - I could be wrong about it being a live vaccine though.

My mare gets the IN flu/rhino, but she is usually the only one on the property who does. All the shots get done, then she gets the IN last.

Our vets will do the IN Strangles vaccine on the same day as the other shots, however the IN Strangles is given AFTER all the other shots have been done so that the Strangles vaccine cannot contaminate the needles used for the IM shots. Contamination could occur from the Strangles vaccine if it was sprayed onto the skin/hair if given prior to the IM shots. If given AFTER the IM vaccines, chances of contamination are negligible.

[J-Lu]

My mare didn’t get a strangles vaccine, but she did react to a “6 in 1” vaccine when we moved to Houston (I think it was Fort Dodge). Perhaps the batch was different as supplied to my veterinarian? I used to give them myself but at this point, I was having a vet out to establish a relationship. I just had her vaccines separated (flu/rhino separated) by about a month in the future and she didn’t have that problem again.

[Palm_Beach]

@WildLittleWren

Yes she believes it was the rabies. His fever has stayed down, he is now eating and drinking, and seems almost back to normal. I think we are out of the woods. I want to thank everyone who took the time to respond. I was panicking a bit!

Glad he is OK. Like others have said, you may want to split his shots up next time. I have one that can’t handle the 7 way.

[The_Blonde_amp_The_Bay]

It sounds like he’s doing alright, yay! Hopefully he’ll be back to his usual antics soon. ♥

My two geldings almost always have poor reactions to their spring shots. Particularly when they were new to the states, the first series was really awful for each of them with swollen neck at injection site, lethargy, slight fever.

We now split up the shots so it’s not so much at once but they still can feel pretty lousy afterward for a day or two.