Scary Night – Distressed Horse & Vaccines

[sean518]

So last night after bringing in my horses, I was grooming the fillies and all of the sudden one of them started coughing and stumbling around a bit. She started sweating, had her ears back, and was clearly in distress. Thoughts of colic immediately sprang to mind and I ran and called the vet for an emergency visit. By the time the vet had gotten to me about 30-45 minutes later (we live pretty far outside town), she’d stopped sweating and seemed visibly better. I’d been walking her in the barnyard the whole time, and she’d pooped twice. She was coughing from time to time and making a little hiccup noise in her throat the whole time I was walking her, and at one point she brought up quite a bit of mucus from her nose (it was clear, not sickly looking). The vet examined her and took her temperature and she seemed fine on all counts, so she gave her a shot of Banamine just for good measure. So it didn’t seem to be colic, but who knows. She ate the same handful of grain, hay, and supplement that all three of the other horses ate, and they had no problems. She’s about a year and a half old now. Did she have something stuck in her throat and just got very dramatic about it? I checked on her later that night and again this morning, and she’s fine now. I always feel very scared when thing like this happen with the horses, it’s very stressful not knowing what the problem was.

Then this brings me to my next point, as the vet asked me if I’d given the horses vaccinations.
What do you all vaccinate your draft animals for, if you vaccinate at all? What are the pros and cons? I generally feel that I’d like to avoid vaccinations for myself, but should I feel the same way about my horses? So far they’re limited to my farm, so they don’t get much outside exposure, but they do share a fence line with the Amish neighbor’s horses, and the two groups do meet up to examine each other pretty often.

[CharlyBonifaz]

Did she have something stuck in her throat and just got very dramatic about it?
sounds just like it…..

[Big Horses]

Yup, what Charly said…. we had an old Clyde gelding do the same thing…twice…this summer. Second time I figured he was a gonner. Lots of mucus and plenty of distress. Poor guy. Wound up tubing him and he was on just wet mash for a couple days. Vet said he most likely scratched the throat when he choked the first time…. kind of like getting a chicken bone caught in your throat. At any rate, he’s ok now, but we watch him.
John

[john plowden]

Sounds like a choke to me – you can slow down their eating by putting several large round stones in the feed bucket – We vaccinate for rabies,tetanus, eastern/western encephalitis and rhino –
John

[karl t pfister]

Same vaccinations as Mr Plowden We just took some horses up tp Acadia National Park Me. for some great horsing around ,and they required rhino .I had not run into that before . karl

[near horse]

We do same vaccines – once added West Nile virus one but not anymore. I think John might have hit on it with slowing down food intake. She might be wolfing food down and inadvertently aspirated some into her windpipe.

[sean518]

Okay, thanks for the confirmation and the vaccine info!

This morning when I went out she was splayed out on the ground and scared the crap out of me. But she was just sunning herself, it’s been a while since they’ve been able to do that.

And, of course, the beat goes on. One of my mother’s minis that we board got a 1″ long splinter (looked like a piece of a sumac wood) stuck all the way down vertically, just above his hoof. Splinter might not be the right word, it was pretty thick. How do they do these things??

– Sean

[Big Horses]

@sean518 29376 wrote:

How do they do these things??

– Sean

Very simply….. they’re horses!!

As far as vaccinations go, we give the babies a tetnus shot, but other than that, we vaccinate for nothing. If we see symptoms of anything, we treat it right now, and aggressively. Never had a problem in 3 generations here, and we used to have over 100 head at a time.
John

[near horse]

Very simply….. they’re horses!!

Yep – one of mine pulled some antics the other day. I was laying in some drain tile to keep it from getting too swampy near their gate. I had just pulled one of those “sock things” over the tile and was going to get the tractor and backfill the trench. It was only 50 feet away! As I was hopping up in the seat I saw Red had gotten ahold of the sock at one end of the tile and was lifting the tile up 4 or 5 feet in the air! I had to holler to stop! And he dropped it and looked at me like “Oh. That’s not for me?”

Dang him.

[jac]

Been away a while and just getting bak in the groove guys so I a bit late in on this one… we have a gelding that seems to choke on his feed when its mixed with soaked beet pulp.. did it twice now and both times it was if there was beet pulp in there. I put it down to the fact it seemed to make the mix sort of doughy.. donno but the rest are ok with it…
John

[Ed Thayer]

@near horse 29382 wrote:

Yep – one of mine pulled some antics the other day. I was laying in some drain tile to keep it from getting too swampy near their gate. I had just pulled one of those “sock things” over the tile and was going to get the tractor and backfill the trench. It was only 50 feet away! As I was hopping up in the seat I saw Red had gotten ahold of the sock at one end of the tile and was lifting the tile up 4 or 5 feet in the air! I had to holler to stop! And he dropped it and looked at me like “Oh. That’s not for me?”

Dang him.

You got to love the them huh? if they can get into something they sure will.

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