Can you borrow a roomier trailer?
We will see! As for why our own vet cant get itâŠman, I wish I had a clear answer for you. They seem to think that they canât order it unless it was âfor a dog.â
If the trailer administration is our only option, I will do it. It still
makes me uneasy right now.
Thatâs an idea. 
I can ask aroundâŠ
Eh, I wouldnât be inclined to have it done while the horse was in a trailer unless it was bigger than a 2 horse with a box stall. And I would be worried that the horse would bang their head when the injector goes off. The injector does make a noticeable bang AND the recommended administration is to hold the injector in place for 10 seconds after it goes off. I think youâre better off having the field vet do it in familiar surroundings, after talking to someone who has done a few.
Mr Ay-rab is an old pro having gone through this 15+ times and never startled much, even on the first injection. Buuuut, we had him in a stall and put his nose in a corner so that he wouldnât jump forward. As long as he got his sweet feed treat after every injection, he was fine. Never had to sedate him. Buuuuut, I can certainly see doing that the first time as well.
Pecs or neck, either one works. OSU gives it in the neck. The key thing is to make sure they shave down to the skin at the injection site and that they hold it as mentioned above.
You donât want her to have a bad experience for her first injection. Find an alternative to the trailer.
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@oldernewbie is probably right. I talked to my vet and he mentioned the head bumping thing, too.
I asked him how he was able to source it and he said that they have a certified internist on staff that participated in a trial when in vet school and she helped the person that fills all the meds get it. Itâs possible it requires a certified internist. My vet is going to check for sure to see exactly how they got it. My vet is with a pretty large equine practice.
BTW, the directions say to hold it in place for ONE second, but I made my vet follow oldernewbieâs advice and hold it for 10 seconds. It was a little difficult as my guy jumped.
Can you find a larger equine practice within a reasonable distance?
@iberianfan well, at this point I have started calling around to hospitals outside of the state to see if someone would be willing to possibly send my vet the vaccine. The small animal vet in town countered today that they can not give the doses to my equine vet, but we can still haul her in to their clinic and have them give her the shot in the parklnglot (offloaded, probably). They did mention they have a smaller, enclosed/non busy parking lot in the back, so that could work.
It will also be about $1025 PER vaccine. I was expecting maybe ~2k for everything, according to what I read online, so this seemed steep â is that typical and I was reading the wrong information? How much did you all pay?
I am reaching out again to UC Davis, and am still trying to get ahold of the doc @oldernewbie used.
I paid $875/dose, plus vet call, plus sedation. Came to almost $1k per dose for 4 doses. Which is what I expected. In my case, still cheaper and less stressful in the long run than surgery every 6-8 months.
It is expensive, but can give you years with your beautiful mare. After the initial 4 doses, itâs once every 6 months,so easier to swallow.
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True. And, extremely true re surgery. We are already hitting above what her original asking price was with the first vet bill, and she needs to be seen in the winter for additional removals!
Trying out the vaccine will definitely be worth it. And I donât want to wait too long the head bump to keep growing, let alone what may be going on internally.
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Itâs possible that the vaccine will shrink current melanomas-it did on my horse- and negate the need for more surgeries.
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Argh this is soooo frustrating! As I mentioned above, Merial/Boehringer/Ingelheim are apparently inconsistent in their policies or people arenât up to date, I donât know which. OSU doesnât seem to have a bit of trouble getting Oncept, why would the vet school in CA have an issue? As far as I understand theyâve dropped the requirement that the administering vet be board certified. Jeeesh.
Let me see what I can find out.
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Thank you! I am baffled. I think part of the issue is also sitting in the transferring of the vaccine to our home vet. There seems to be some red tape and Iâm not even certain that it can happen between equine hospitals.
I suppose I could always haul her to Davis (about 3 or 4 hours away), but at that point maybe the parking lot here would be less stressful? 
If only this could be a simple farm visit.
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My vet sources Oncept from a local VCA, which is an emergency/referral hospital for small animals. You might check in with any small animal referral hospitals in your area. IIRC, itâs only fairly recently that regular vets can administer Onceptâpreviously it could only be given by boarded veterinary oncologists. Which may be why youâre having a hard time finding it.
I also pay about a grand each dose.
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See, to my knowledge the small vet here with the Oncept is also a VCA, but they wonât allow any outside doctor to administer these doses.
So, via one of the vets I have been talking to, I just filled out a few forms to see if Rani can take part in a clinical trial at UC Davis. This would be for Interleukin-2 (IL-2 cytokine) vaccinations, which seem to be having optimistic results on horses with multiple melanoma growths. If accepted, she would spend a week down there to start, and then for the next month it would a day-trip over the hill once every two weeks for additional measurements and therapy.
Iâm also speaking on the phone with @oldernewbieâs doc on Friday!
In the meanwhile, sweet Rani is doing well, settling in to the rhythm of the barn and being less dramatic with lines touching her hind legs (she is fine with picking up her feet, but we are holding off on the farrier until she learns that stringy things arenât going to bite her).
Trainer photo for proof from yesterday.
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Remembered to look at the bucket again, definitely Livestock Stress formula. I couldnât find an equine version on their site; maybe you meant different companies making Transfer Factor products? (Then again, I had trouble finding this formula unless I Googled itâŠ)
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Thank you for this! Iâm still trying to figure out what to feed her, aside from her hay. I feel completely outside of my element with all of the choices and factors that go into supplementation. 
And with my inclination to research the carp out of everything, well the iceberg just keep getting bigger.
May I humbly make a suggestion? If you put her on Oncept or take part of the interleuken trial, I would not supplement her with anything. Why? you ask? because either of these treatments are rather new or experimental, I wouldnât want to add anything to the mix that would interfere with their action. Mr Ay-rab eats a typical horsey diet of hay, grass, some pelleted grain, and water. That is by design. He is fat and healthy with excellent feet and generally good health. I time his annual vaccinations to be at least a month before his Oncept injection so that his immune system isnât overloaded with both the vaccines and his Oncept.
KISS (keep it so simple) is the principle here! It is my gut feeling that if anything quits working or doesnât work as expected, you donât want to complicate things by having another agent of unknown action in the mix. Supplements are problematic to me because they usually have a sketchy scientific basis. Your horse looks very healthy, so the principle seems to apply here.
/off soapbox now! /
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Ditto.
Oncept may not work if some of those other products may change how the immune system works normally, that is how Oncept was tested and the conditions it worked under.
If using other products is wanted, do run them by your attending veterinarian first.
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@oldernewbie and @Bluey Got it, that makes sense to me. Need to keep KISS in mind.
My fingers are crossed this week for news from the trial, however Dr. Burns put me in contact with another equine vet local to me who is likely to also have access to OnceptâŠwhich means a potential farm call and not a parking lot visit! We definitely have options now.
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Timely topic since I came here to see if anyone had experience with Oncept. We just recently found the first one under the tail of DDâs TB/Welsh cross. Within a few weeks two more small ones appeared so we are taking him down to New Bolton at the end of the month for removal and proceeding with the Oncept vaccine. Vet feels we have a good prognosis since they appear to be his first at age 12 and we hope to catch it before it advances. Weâre lucky to have NBC within minutes of us and the oncology place close as well. Hoping for the best 
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