WTF is wrong with my horse THIS time???

[IPEsq]

After listening to his belly carefully, vet thought that was also unlikely–I did think of that one.

I suppose because we have had the no forward behavior before, they want to think it’s orthopedic again. But they have no idea where to start.

Another horse had a trip to CSU in late December for enteritis of unknown cause. They kept him a week because he did have a very high fever. We had very high winds here before that, so they think it was stress, but he’s another case of mystery belly things at the barn recently.

CSU is having a client appreciation dinner tonight for the field service clients. There will be a talk on nutrition. If I can still register for it and get away from my office early enough to drive there, I’m going to try to make it.

[Calling_Duck]

What is the “zebra zone?”

[keysfins]

There is a saying in medicine, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras”.

So when you are looking at a complex vet problem, look for the easiest/most common diagnosis first. When you have eliminated all the “usual things” that cause the symptoms seen, then you should start thinking about “zebras”.

As in, what are some rare conditions, uncommon things or odd presentations that could explain the symptoms/test results/pony is still sick.

So if the OP and vets go through all the usual tests to diagnose the horse, and nothing is coming up that fits, then it is time to look at more rare or unusual conditions, or use a diagnostic tool or test that is not regularly used.

It does seem odd that two horses there show the same parking out behavior. IPSEq, is there ANYTHING that the horses have in common besides the hay?

[vxf111]

I think beowolf is on to something

[skyy]

Just weighing in on the bladder stone issue because DD’s pony had a big one a year ago - she never looked at her sides, never parked out, never acted like she had to pee and couldn’t, never acted different under saddle, never acted colicky. We did notice that she peed more frequently and needed to pee after every ride but really never thought anything of it. And then one day she peed blood. Vet came out, did a urinalysis (monster bacteria count) and off to the clinic she went where they found a bladder stone the size of an egg.

Good luck with your horse. I feel your frustration.

[jvk8]

I would add a good quality E & Selenium supplement. Shortage of E/Se can cause these symptoms (mild tying up).

[IPEsq]

I can certainly ask them again about a bladder issue or enterolith. His manure is still on the looser side this morning, but he’s bright and well behaved and friendly. I just groomed him a bit–did not try exercising.

It’s 3 horses parking out. One is my horse’s immediate neighbor in the stalls. The other one lives in the shed row. They are each in separate, individual turnouts. They all eat the grass hay and beet pulp shreds.

All of us to some extent have been experimenting with the rest of the diet. My horse and the one other one who has had symptoms the longest, we have mostly tried elimination/simplification except for experimenting with some additives like different brands of probiotics. Her horse was also on biosponge recently due to how loose his manure was.

The other horse (my horse’s neighbor) doesn’t eat any hard feed with the beet pulp. The owner was experimenting with magnesium supplements, and I can’t recall but our vet may have put her horse on Platinum Balance also. The diet changes for her were due to the horse becoming a bit of a handful for her (he’s new) / more spooky/excitable. Most of the things she tried didn’t make a difference, so I don’t think he was on any of those types of things when he started having the belly symptoms. I believe this horse is kept on a maintenance dose of omeprazole, which came from his previous show horse life in SoCal.

[IPEsq]

I don’t want to add any more Se than what’s in his vit/min supp already without testing him. We are in a high area. He already gets 8-10000 IUs of natural E.

[IPEsq]

Did some reading on enteroliths. CSU says excess magnesium and phosphorus are culprits (not calcium). And a risk factor is feeding 50%+ of forage as alfalfa (because of the magnesium, not the calcium). On a day he eats less grass hay, my horse is still only eating about 1/3 of his forage max as alfalfa.

If he does have one, unless it’s located in an easy to see or feel spot, who knows if we’d ever find it.

I know they can be serious–friend’s horse died from one that got huge and ruptured the colon overnight. Showed no discomfort up to that point. Just not sure what I can if he’s never really gotten colicky aside from just trying a standard rectal exam and ultrasound?

[findeight]

You haven’t done the rectal ultrasound yet have you? Have no idea but you haven’t looked under that stone yet, why not?

[LarkspurCO]

WRT the under-saddle behavior, sounds to me like he has your number. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities. This type of behavior can easily be learned or ingrained and employed by the horse without him having to work through any complicated logic.

@IPEsq;9028802

Color of Light:

He is eating:

Scant 2Qt scoop beet pulp soaked 2x day–Really like it to be more 1Qt, but I think they just get in a scooping routine… at least I stopped them from giving heaping scoops

1 flake alfalfa 3x day

2.5-3lbs of TC senior broken up to 3 feedings. Each with a scoop of Equishure (he used to get 1.5sc 2x day but now I do 1sc 3x day).

AM by syringe - Relyne GI

First 2 feedings:

• Platinum Performance Equine Wellness for vit/min
• Platinum Balance probiotics
• Equishure as mentioned above
• custom flax based HT supplement with Nutramino, 5g magnesium, copper, zinc, biotin
• 4-5000 IU Vit E

The beet pulp is primarily to help him eat up the powdery things. He used to need it for calories but not so much anymore.

Last feeding, soaked in warm soup (because I make it):

• Equishure as mentioned above,
• trying 1-2tbsp fennel seed this past week, per thread here
• RelyneGI
• approx 100mL flax oil

Holy moly, that’s a lot of supplements. Why so much vitamin E?

[UrbanHennery]

Have you tried switching to a different hay? I bought some hay earlier this winter that was tested and smelled good. Both my equines had loose stool on and off for the month I fed it. Bought the next 1/2 ton from a different barch(also tested) and the problem went away. Clearly there was something about the hay that their systems didn’t like.

[IPEsq]

He’s on a therapeutic dose of E because there is no fresh grass and as support for his cervical arthritis. All of his vets are ok with this.

He’s not getting a full grain ration (less than half, just for palatability), and a couple of the vets suggested I try the PP for a while instead of a full ration of hard feed. The HT supplement is to provide amino acids and to balance out the high iron content in our water and grass hay.

RelyneGI was added due to these symptoms after it being suggested for several months. I will probably not buy more once this runs out but agreed to give it at least 4 weeks trial.

[IPEsq]

I haven’t tried switching hay. Financially and logistically, it’s not very practical. We had a hard summer, not as many cuttings as usual…not a good time to try to buy hay. I’d also have no place to store how much he’d eat or be able to afford it on top of board and everything else. Then there’s making sure the staff feeds his speshul hay. In October, I talked with the BO about trying feeding him off of a different stack for a couple of weeks, and she told me that all the hay is the same from the same place, same cutting (even though, visually, I disagree with this).

We probably have days left on the current stack before moving onto the last stack before more gets delivered from storage. So, I guess we’ll see if anything happens with the change to the next stack.

I have considered trying a steamer as an alternative to buying my own grass hay.

If I had my own place, I’d probably buy organic weed-free Timothy from a farm up the road. Unfortunately, I don’t have a couple million sitting around to buy a farm.

[TWH_Girl]

Ugh, can’t even believe I am suggesting this (as I may as well be a founding owner of Smartpak), but- what about over-supplementation? Why not remove all this stuff he is on and see how he responds? Maybe, under advice of your vet, reintroduce one thing at a time gradually.

This may be something dietary related given the symptoms of other horses. Idk, I also think we sometimes over-analyze and over-treat our horses too.

I am not telling you what to do or how far to go with your horse, but it just seems like it shouldn’t be so difficult keeping a 6 yr old horse healthy. Maybe just stop with everything, let him eat hay, his grain and maybe a probiotic and rest him until late spring. It took me a long time to determine my 6 yr old was not going to be what I wanted in a riding partner, but it was also freedom in realizing that and making our move to next level.

I am not as smart as all the lab and technical people on this site and I am sure there is an answer there somewhere. I just know what my gut says.

[IPEsq]

I did do an elimination diet, changing one thing at a time. Taking away, seeing how that went, then adding nutrition back and taking advice of his vets. That’s how I arrived at the current diet, which he did well on for all of December and was making progress again.

He’s lucky he’s cute.
https://scontent.fapa1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15170751_10155162650235016_8634034816885000537_n.jpg?oh=d9c6c9e8157060f4b7e2bd077aa59411&oe=590BE46E

[IPEsq]

Oh wait forgot one more zebra that vets considered back in 2015. His inguinal ring on the R side doesn’t palpate 100% normal. And he’d rather you not touch him there. I’ve tested testosterone and that came back normal for a gelding. One of his vets at CSU had a case with an older (like 8 or 10?) gelding who stopped going forward and tended to crow hop a bit going to the right. Seemed like a hind gut thing or something behavioral. Turns out he had scar tissue adhesions from his gelding surgery that had turned into a problem for him. Unfortunately, the only way to really assess if that’s the case for my horse (as it was in this other case), is to do exploratory surgery. It had gotten to the point of looking for that zebra with this other horse, and they opened him up and found the issue and corrected it and he was fine after that. This is apparently pretty darn rare and so it has so far been put pretty low on the list, especially given that it involves surgery and we have determined there’s no testicle left up there to remove.

[sdlbredfan]

Just wondering, have any of these horses had any ‘saddle seat’ training in which ‘parking out’ is a normal part of what they do when halted? Morgans, Saddlebreds, National Show Horses, and some Half Arabians might have had this trained into them.

Also, have all 3 horses had IR (Insulin Resistance) and sub-clinical laminitis completely ruled out? The ‘founder stance’ is to rock back on haunches, and advance the front feet. Even if not a really severe case, that should be ruled out, if it was not already looked into. Let’s say, hypothetically, that if the 3 affected horses are IR, and if the diet is higher in starch and sugar than they can tolerate, that could cause ouchy front hooves. Just sayin…

[vxf111]

I’ll tell you one weird story just to say “sometimes you won’t find the answer no matter how hard you try.”

At an old barn, someone got a nice mare off the track. When the weather changed, she’d colic. The colics kept getting more and more severe. They couldn’t find any explanation. One day she coliced very badly, went to New Bolton and died on the table during surgery. The necropsy revealed that she had eaten an entire lead rope, snap and all, at some point on the track. It remained in her stomach and the tissue grew up around it, she never passed it. It gave her a very small/abnormal stomach and caused all the problems.

They would have looked and never found the answer. No one saw her eat the lead rope. Presumably someone just thought it was misplaced, not EATEN. Sometimes weird problems are… totally weird problems.

That being said, the fact that 3 horses now have similar symptoms and didn’t have it before makes me really think it’s something they’re eating. Something like calcium that can cause urinary/kidney stones? And maybe they’re not big enough/bad enough yet to be causing blood in the urine. I have heard of horses with stones who DIDN’T have hematuria, and the stones were only discovered when they were passed. So I think this sounds like a viable path to explore, as does the idea of enteroliths.

[IPEsq]

All 3 horses are warmbloods. One Dutch, mine is Hanoverian, and the other one I forget but possibly also Hanoverian. Mine’s got ears like a Saddlebred but the breeding and training history is known for all. Except for the Dutch, I know the vets have considered the thought of laminitis as a possible zebra and determined not the case. In the past I’ve also tested for PSSM/EPSM type issues. He’s been chronically sore in the lumbosacral area. I have been able to make this better with fitness before–but he’s got to go forward enough to get fit. The other horse with the worst symptoms definitely has things going on in his feet–has had MRI, surgery, special shoes. It was thought his parking out at first (for a long time) was due to his front foot problems. Then he developed GI symptoms recently. His bloodwork has also been a bit off on the WBC.

You know, V, it wouldn’t totally surprise me if my horse happened to be a weird case like that because EVERYTHING goes in his mouth. I don’t really see that happening to 3 horses at the same farm, though.