Jul 15, 2014 | Ailments
Dr. Bourke’s phone rang recently with a call from this mare’s very concerned owner. She found the mare squinting her eye late in the evening and wasn’t sure what to do so she called us. Dr. Bourke started the mare on medications that evening and the owner brought her in to Springhill Equine the next morning. Spice was holding her right eye closed, squinting, and didn’t want Dr. Lacher to touch her eye. A few treats were handed out to let Spice know we were here to help. Dr. Lacher placed a green stain in the eye and found it stayed stuck to the cornea on the outside half. The green stain is called Flourescein and it shows us where the cornea is missing its top layer.
In Clinic Equine Veterinary Services, Equine Vet Hospital, And Emergency Vet
Spice was started on additional eye medications to combat a wide variety of fungus, bacteria, and the pain that comes from a corneal ulcer. We always give a little treat with these medications so the horses thing it’s a fun game. Spice came back in a few days for Dr. Bourke to check on her progress. Unfortunately when Dr. Bourke re-checked her the ulcer wasn’t doing any better and was even a little bit worse. One concern we always have is how much of the eye medications get into the eye but in this case Spice was being given treats every time her eye was treated so she thought eye medications were wonderful! Dr. Bourke used a sterile Q-tip to sample the cornea itself and see what was going on. This picture was what was going on and unfortunately those straight purple lines are fungus.
Fungus
Fungus is a common problem in our hot, humid weather here in Florida. And summertime is full of hot, humid, and even downright wet weather! Those large eyes horses have just love to get stuff in them and horses love to rub them on things when the gnats get bad. This can lead to a small scratch and Voila! fungus has a way in. Because of the prevalence of fungus in Florida, Dr. Lacher and Dr. Bourke always start any ulcer on anti-fungal therapy. Dr. Lacher and Dr. Bourke start with ointments 4-6 times per day, atropine to dilate the eye and reduce pain daily, and Banamine twice daily to help manage pain.
Our Doctors then check in with a phone call, text, or e-mail every day to make sure things are going well and perform a recheck exam and stain of the eye. We know life gets difficult so to make things easier staying with us at Springhill Equine is great for complicated eye cases!
Sometimes even with great owner and easy-to-treat horses the fungus gets ahead of us. For those cases we place a special type of catheter in the eye that lets us treat them with more powerful liquid medications. We give these horses lots of treats with every medication! Staying at the hospital is perfect for these cases so Dr. Bourke, Dr. Lacher and I can monitor them every day. As the eye improves we slowly decrease the medications until we are back to ointments a couple times per day.
Questions about eyes? Give my Docs a call! This is Tony hoping your food bowl is full and your litter box is clean!
Mar 19, 2014 | Ailments, Feed, Leg issues, Pests
They were making a fuss around here recently about a groundhog and a shadow and warmer weather. I don’t know what the big deal was I see my shadow all the time and it has nothing to do with the weather. This did, however, lead to a conversation about Spring and horses. Turns out horses face some pretty unique challenges during the warm up from our frigid winter. I realize some of my readers from the north are chuckling about the weather but this cat thought it was plenty chilly.
New green grass. New grass is very high in sugar. This sugar can quickly bring on an attack of laminitis in horses who are overweight or have Cushings. These horses are prone to a syndrome called Equine Metabolic Syndrome which causes them to have diabetes type responses to sugar. There are some treatments available but diet control and exercise are the most important.
Parasites. Parasites love Spring and Fall, feel pretty good about Winter, and hate Summer. The best parasite control methods use fecal egg counts to figure out which horses carry the most worms. Now is the best time to do fecal egg counts. Use this handy chart to determine how long you need to wait after you deworm to bring us poop:
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Product Given
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Wait this long to bring us a sample
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Moxidectin
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16 weeks
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Ivermectin
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12 weeks
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Pyrantel, Oxibendazole, Fenbendazole
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9 weeks
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Weather changes. Rapid weather changes play havoc with our horses GI tract. The best advice our Doctors have is water, water, water! Adding water to your horse’s grain on a regular basis helps combat those cold weather colics. A small handful of salt when temperatures suddenly drop will encourage your horse to drink.
Encephalitis. Yep encephalitis. Spring is prime time for Eastern Encephalitis. Our mosquitoes are wicked any time of year but during the Spring they are likely to be carrying this deadly disease(99% of horses who begin to show symptoms later die of the disease). The vaccine for Eastern Encephalitis is extremely effective but only lasts for a short time. We recommend giving the vaccine every 4-6 months depending on the age and lifestyle of your horse.
Skin funk. Florida is famous worldwide for its horse skin funk. Well maybe not to regular people but definitely for horse people. Keeping your horses as dry as possible is the key! Since we all know this is next to impossible this time of year, there are several treatment options for funky Florida skin. Desitin or diaper rash cream is great for lower limbs, the zinc oxide helps heal the compromised skin while simultaneously sealing water out. Dilute Listerine or dilute vinegar may help with the thorax/ back funk but will not address a serious problem. For more severe cases (all of those sensitive skinned chestnuts out there) Springhill carries a medicated CK product that comes in a shampoo, salve, rinse and spray depending on where the problem is. Silly horses I don’t understand why they can’t just clean themselves…that’s what your tongue is for!
May your litter box be clean, and your food bowl be full!
-Tony
Mar 7, 2014 | Ailments, Feed
Dr. Bourke has been complaining recently about how much she has to feed her senior horses. I don’t understand what the big deal is, since I eat whenever I feel like it. Don’t horses do the same? I listened to her tell a story of this really nice family that had been effectively starving their older gelding because they didn’t know how to appropriately feed him. It turns out that older horses often need different kinds of feed than young or middle age horses, and LOTS of it!
All of the major feed companies make feeds specifically formulated for Senior horses. Nutrena Senior, Purina Equine Senior, Triple Crown Senior, and Seminal Senior are all examples. These senior feeds usually share the follow characteristics: They are 1) easy to chew, 2) easy to soak, 3) easy to digest, and 4) formulated as ‘complete feeds’. Complete feeds are products that can be fed as a horses’ sole source of food, replacing all other grain and hay. The major ingredient in complete feeds is usually processed alfalfa or another fiber source like beat pulp, so unlike traditional ‘grain’, you need to feed much larger quantities of it to provide the same amount of calories.
Dr. Bourke said that SKINNY senior horses, especially ones with dysfunctional teeth, need to eat between 1.5% and 2% of their body weight in senior feed per day. I did the math, and for an average sized quarter horse, this comes to 15-20 lbs of food per day!! But who feeds by weight anyway? Everybody I know uses scoops – some big scoops, some small scoops, some heaping scoops, but scoops nonetheless. Dr. Bourke said it’s really important to know how much 1 ‘scoop’ of your feed weighs. I brought her my food scoop, which turns out is only ½ a cup, and she weighed it for me. The amount was miniscule. I think I will complain to management. But back to horse feed. The ‘standard’ horse sized food scoop can hold 3 quarts, which is APPROXIMATELY 3 lbs of food. But again, this varies. If you have a kitchen scale, use this to weigh out one full scoop. If you don’t have a kitchen scale, put one scoops worth of food in a large plastic bag, and take it to your local feed store for them to weigh for you. The produce scale at the grocery store works great too!
If you need an approximate place to start, 15-20 lbs of food, assuming a 3 lb scoop, is 5-6 full scoops per horse per day. Think 2 full scoops in the AM, 2 scoops midday, and 2 scoops at night. Yes, that’s a LOT of food! Another way to think about this, is that if you are really feeding 20 lbs of food per day, you are going to use up an entire 50 lb bag of feed in 2 and a half days. It is important to remember that while it is safe and often necessary to feed this much senior feed, it would be VERY dangerous to give any horse this much of other kinds of feeds. These guidelines apply to complete senior feeds only. And as always, make feeding changes slowly.
I asked Dr. Bourke about hay, and she said that teeth-less old horses can’t chew well enough to get much nutrition out of hay. She said they can even colic or choke if given really stemmy stuff like coastal hay. She said that when feeding enough senior feed, hay isn’t required at all, but that if you want to give the horse ½ a flake or so of either alfalfa or peanut hay in order to give them something to munch on, that’s ok.
Jan 31, 2014 | Ailments, Disaster Preparedness, Leg issues, Pests
This week I have been consoling Dr. Lacher on a regular basis about her horse, Ernie. Ernie has developed a significant cellulitis in his right hind leg and Dr. Lacher is trying very hard to stay calm about (more…)
Jan 31, 2014 | Ailments, Breeding, Disaster Preparedness, Feed, Leg issues, Pests
There are many reasons why we might recommend placing a standing wrap on your horse’s lower limbs. Standing wraps are good for support of tendon her best show horse. (more…)
Aug 25, 2012 | Ailments, Disaster Preparedness
I try never to pass up the opportunity of a storm headed our way to talk about being prepared! So with Isaac headed our way here goes.
Have a plan. Look at your farm and decide if you will stay or go. Here in Gainesville, staying is often a reasonable plan but that means planning for no electricity, lots of water where we don’t want it (as a cat I hate this part) but no water to drink, and plenty of other fun inconveniences. If leaving is the better option, leave early. It is very important to get your animals out ahead of a major evacuation so you don’t get stuck in hot weather with animals in a trailer. If you are staying, think about everything you do in a day and determine what you need to do tasks such as feeding and watering, both humans and animals. Stockpile what you need to do these tasks for at least 14 days.
Take pictures and/or video of your property, home, vehicles, trailers, and anything else you can think of to document what you have and what it looks like. Gather important documents. Place both of these in a waterproof, secure location. Even better upload them to an internet application such as Dropbox and they will be available no matter what happens. An often overlooked step here is having an out of area contact. Pick someone your entire family knows who lives outside the area likely to be affected by the storm. Call your out of town contact and let them in on the plan and how things are progressing. More on how important this person is in the next step.
Identify your animals! There are several ways to do this and the more of them you use the better! All animals should have a halter, collar, or some way to catch them. These should be breakaway in case they get tangled in debris. They should have your home phone number, cell phone number, and your out-of-area contact on them. The easiest way to do this is write everything on a piece of cloth with a waterproof marker. Place in a Ziploc bag and duct tape on. Pieces of cloth with your information can also be braided in to manes and tails. Livestock grease markers work great to write phone numbers on the sides of horses and cattle. And the single best way to identify your animals is a microchip! Microchips helped over 90% of horses get reunited with their owners after Hurricane Katrina.
Storms are a constant threat living in Florida. Spending some time on websites such as http://www.fldart.org/preparedness.htm can help you formulate the perfect plan for your farm and family. We have disaster preparedness workbooks available at the office. And as always you can contact the humans at Springhill Equine for help formulating a plan for your horses. Most important though, may your food bowl be full and your litter box clean! So plan ahead and head to the grocery store now to buy cat food and kitty litter!
