I hope everybody was able to make it out to my recent Colic Seminar. Boy, did I learn a lot! Apparently there are several common misconceptions out there about colic that are not based on reality at all. In case you missed it, I am here to share my wealth of cat knowledge with you, and to bust those colic myths right out of the park!

Myth #1: Colic is a twisted gut.

Truth: The term ‘colic’ actually refers to a series of signs of pain, and doesn’t necessarily indicate a GI problem at all. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my years as supervisor of an equine veterinary clinic, it’s that every horse colics differently. Some horses lay down and roll, but others paw and bite at their sides, still others simply don’t finish their grain and lift their upper lip (called the Flehmen response). I’ve heard of horses acting neurologic in their efforts to get comfortable, or even running erratically around their pasture.

This pain syndrome we call ‘colic’ can be caused by cramping, gas, a fever, a GI impaction, a urinary tract obstruction, severe pneumonia, stomach ulcers…. the list goes on. Basically, the vet’s job is to determine why your horse is colicking, and to make sure it’s not one of those rare but life-threatening ‘bad’ causes of colic, such as a twist (volvulus), strangulation, or displacement (a section of bowel is not where it’s supposed to be).

Myth #2: Horses twist their gut when they roll.

Truth: Not so fast. Have you ever seen a horse roll in the dirt, get up, shake off, and go about their day? I see the horses out in the paddocks do that all the time! I can also tell you that many horses go to surgery for a large intestine displacement or small intestine volvulus (180 degree twist) having never rolled.

Now, if you came to my wonderful Colic Seminar, you learned from Dr. Abbott that the horse’s GI tract, from mouth to rectum, measures over 100 feet. So there is definitely the potential for things to get tangled up in there. Here is the current understanding of what vets believe happens when horses actually ‘twist their gut’: Your horse gets dehydrated. This may be because there was a sudden temperature drop and he didn’t feel as thirsty as usual. Or, it may be because you were hauling to a competition and he didn’t have a water bucket in front of him the whole time. Or, it may be that he had a hoof abscess and he didn’t feel it was worth the pain to hobble on over to the water trough. For whatever reason, your horse became dehydrated, and now there is not enough moisture within his GI tract for his food (usually hay) to move along. So, it gets stuck. Now we have an impaction. Bummer.

Once your horse has an impaction, gas builds up behind (or on the mouth side of) the impaction. This gas-filled section of colon then tends to float up, and given the right circumstances, flip over top of the heavy, ingesta-filled section of colon. Now you’ve got yourself a ‘twisted gut,’ no rolling required.

Myth #3: Mineral oil is better than electrolyte solution.

Truth: This myth was busted LIVE by Dr. Vurgason at my awesome Colic Seminar, but in case you missed it, here’s how it went down. She put a fecal ball in a cup of mineral oil… it just sat there, unchanged, floating around, the whole time. She put another fecal ball in a cup of our top-secret electrolyte solution… and even before the seminar was over, it had almost completely dissolved and dispersed. This is the same solution our docs would administer to your horse via stomach tube if he were colicking. Shhhh, don’t tell anybody my secret recipe: it’s Epsom salt, lite salt, regular salt, and baking soda!

This amazing combination acts as a laxative, while also maintaining specific levels of certain minerals such as Magnesium, Sodium, Chloride, and Calcium to draw more water into the GI tract from the rest of the body. Mineral oil is a little old-school, but it does have it’s place. It will serve as a marker that your horse has passed the impaction when you see oil coming out his rear end. Other than that, we don’t think mineral oil is worth it’s salt.

Myth #4: There’s nothing I can do to prevent a colic.

Truth: While nobody can 100% prevent every type of colic, there are definitely things you can do to make it less likely that you will have a colic emergency. First off: water, and lots of it. Horses need to drink about 10 – 15 gallons of water per day just to maintain their hydration, and that’s not taking into account ongoing water loss such as sweating on a hot day. But as the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. What you can do, however, is add soaked beet pulp or soaked alfalfa cubes/pellets to his diet in order to get more moisture into him. You can also add about 1 tablespoon of salt to his feed twice daily to encourage him to drink.

In addition to water, your choice of hay and how you feed it can greatly alter your horse’s colic risk. Coastal hay has a known association with impaction colics. In my docs’ experience, the more fine, short, ‘cow-quality’ coastal hay is even more likely to cause an impaction. If you choose not to eliminate coastal hay from your horse’s diet, my docs strongly recommend adding about 1/4 flake of alfalfa or peanut hay for every flake of coastal hay you feed. These legume hays have laxative effects which help to keep the coastal hay moving through your horse’s GI tract.

Another common and semi-preventable type of colic we see is sand colic. By feeding your horse’s hay and grain in elevated feeders or hay nets, you can limit their accidental ingestion of sand. In addition, feeding psyllium in the form of Sand Clear pellets for 1 week a month can help to “clean out” the sand from the colon. Alfalfa hay can also help to achieve this goal by essentially raking the sand from the bottom of the large intestine where it likes to settle, and carrying it out in the manure.

If you enjoyed my Colic Seminar, you won’t want to miss my next See Tony Event: my First Aid Seminar, coming up on April 11th at 6:30pm, right here at the clinic. Hope to see all you cool cats there!

-Tony

P.S. If you’d like to watch the video of the colic seminar, or any of our other amazing videos, you can find them on our YouTube channel. 

Preventing Colic during Colic Season

As a cat, there is nothing I love more than sunbathing. The mid 90 degree temperatures of Fall in Florida have been less than ideal for this pastime. However, I am assured cooler temps will arrive one day, and my sunbathing can return to its normal schedule. What has arrived on schedule is decreasing daylight. With shorter days comes slower-growing grass, and with less grass comes hay season. Oh goody. Around the clinic we also call this Colic Season. Being the generous cat I am, I’m going to teach you how NOT to be a part of Colic Season.

Step 1: Go Slow

This is not something you humans are very good at. You are all about the ‘go big or go home’. When you start feeding hay (or even just feeding more hay), patience is key. It’s rather like my sunbathing. You must be patient! If your horse has only been eating pasture, begin by adding 5-7 pounds of hay per feeding. Coastal hay especially should be started slowly. Throwing a bunch of hay at a GI tract that’s been used to green grass is a recipe for an unscheduled visit from my Docs. Add an additional 2-3 pounds of hay every 4-5 days until your horse is leaving some hay behind. Absolutely DO NOT put a roll of coastal hay out until your horse is walking away without finishing their hay.

Step 2: Add some legumes

That would be alfalfa and peanut hay around these parts. These hays are salty, which helps remind your horse to drink. They also have a laxative effect on the GI tract. Both hays bring water into the gut, which helps prevent impactions. Small amounts of these hays does wonders, which is good because both are pretty high in calories. Four to five pounds per day can dramatically reduce the colic risk. As a cat who struggles with his weight, I understand keeping calories down, but a little bit of legume goes a long way!

Step 3: Get water into horse

The. Hardest. Thing. Ever. That saying, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink,” is the truest thing ever spoken by a human. Luckily humans are (sometimes) smarter than horses. My humans have found that you can feed a horse soup, and get them to eat it, thus making them drink, and they don’t even know it!! Especially when weather changes, but also when it’s a new shipment of hay, or you put a new hay roll out, it’s so unbelievably important to get those dang horses to drink. Get your horse used to eating soaked feed now. That way when it goes from 85 to 35 and back again in 12 hours, you can feed soupy food and know your horse got lots to drink whether they wanted to or not.

Other stuff to avoid colic

We usually talk about electrolytes in the summer to help replenish all the things in sweat, but in winter, electrolytes work great to help stimulate thirst on a cold day. Florida horses are really bad at drinking on those 2 or 3 truly cold days.

Beet pulp is also great at getting water into horses. However, don’t go starting beet pulp on a cold day because it seemed like a good idea that day. Beet pulp gets fermented in the large colon and make a lot of gas. If you want to use beet pulp in the winter, refer back to Step 1: start slow. It’s also important to remember you can add water to any feed, and you can even soak hay. All sneaky ways to get horses to drink!

We all agree cooler weather is amazing. With a few simple steps, you can also keep those beautiful Fall days colic free! Here’s another simple step: scroll down a little more, and subscribe to this blog. That way it will show up in your email!

Want more knowledge about colic? Take the deep dive with Dr. Lacher on our podcast, Straight from the Horse Doctor’s Mouth. Episode 2 is loaded with everything you could want to know about colic. You can listen right from our website on your phone or computer, or you can subscribe anywhere you download podcasts.