Sep 21, 2015 | Events, Hay, Leg issues, Skin Funk
Patient of the Month
As most of you know Coby fell through the wooden floor of a trailer. We are quite pleased and impressed at the healing progression from day one and the use of Amnio Treatment. The picture from the right is the beginning to the healing progression to the left in the photo. He still has a lot of recovery but we are still hopeful that he continues on the healing path. Follow his story on Facebook with us for more updates.
Springhill Equine Facebook
Upcoming Events:
***Wellness 2016 Enrollment is coming up! Be on the look out for enrollment forms to come your way!***
Main Topic:
It’s almost hay season around here. Sure the weather is still warm but with the daylight decreasing our grass will slow down on growth over the next few weeks. This means our horses will need more hay. There’s good news and bad news on the hay front.
Good news: We have had more than enough rain this summer which means many pastures have done very well growing grass. You will be able to get by longer without hay as your horse grazes down what they have. This isn’t true for all situations, but check your pastures for actual grass and monitor how they are doing weekly. If you notice your horse starting to pull up grass by the roots, bare patches in your field, or weight loss in your horse it may be time to add more hay. Not sure what the right answer is for your horse? Have one of our amazing technicians: Beth, Charly, or Nancy come out and assess your pastures and feed program.
Bad news: We have had more than enough rain this summer which means farmers had to race against storms to try to get hay put up. Check with your regular hay supplier early to see what availability they have. Local hays may be difficult to get. Luckily farmers are farmers and they watch the weather more closely than Dr. Lacher (which is saying something since she has been known to check the radar every 5 minutes). So while hay may be a bit tougher to find most of them should be able to take care of their regular customers.
Coastal hay has a bad reputation when it comes to colic. Some of that is earned. Horses on lots of coastal and nothing else will often colic. Horses suddenly put on a round bale of coastal will colic (especially if this happens after 6pm on a weeknight or anytime on a weekend). Luckily there are easy ways to minimize your coastal hay colic risk.
Most important: gradually increase your horse’s hay. If your horse isn’t normally on hay during the summer now is the time to gradually start them on hay. Begin with 3-4 pounds of hay per day. Increase by about 1 pound weekly until your horse is leaving some hay behind. Once they are leaving hay you may put out a round roll of hay if that’s your feeding preference. Once your horse is on 8 pounds of coastal hay daily you should add in about 2 pounds of alfalfa or peanut hay daily. Alfalfa and peanut hays draw water in to the intestinal tract helping reduce the risk of colic.
Don’t feed coastal? We’ve got a plan for that too. Northern Grass and grass/alfalfa mix hays are excellent choices for many horses. Timothy, Orchard, and Brome hays are the most common grasses. You don’t have to worry about colics due to hay with these types of hays and they provide more nutrition than coastal hay. But they provide more nutrition than coastal hay and sometimes that’s too many calories. For the easy keeper or Insulin Resistant horse we don’t recommend more than 2-3 pounds of these hays per day added to a base of a coastal.
Want to get the most out of your hay dollar? Consider some type of feeding system. Slow feed hay nets come in sizes from a flake or two to an entire round roll. Hay nets have numerous benefits including slowing your horse down which makes your hay last longer, decreasing the calories they consume from hay, keeping them eating small amounts for longer, keeping their feet, manure, and urine out of the hay, and keeping them from stuffing their nose in the bale which often causes problems with allergies. We haven’t found a reason not to use these hay nets yet. One of our technicians, Nancy, began using them on her coastal round bale and got an addition 10 days out of the roll and her two older horses were able to stop taking medication for their heaves since they couldn’t stick their noses into the bale. If hay nets aren’t your thing check out YouTube for about a million different slow feed hay DIY options. Check out this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Ws8–3IOU for starters.
We are here to help you design the perfect nutritional system for your horse, your life, and your farm. Gives us call, e-mail, or text!
Erica’s Corner
UNCLE! Alright I have cried Uncle!!!!! I am done with rain. Despite my best efforts I can’t keep up with Angie’s rain rot. She gets a bath at least once weekly in CK Shampoo. It has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties. She spends a decent amount of time wearing my rain rot concoction mix on her top-line. And she has scratches, dew poisoning, small annoying crusts (whichever name you choose) on her pasterns that refuse to leave no matter what I do to them.
Trying to ride has been difficult at best. My property is on a hill and usually drains very well. Fortunately or unfortunately I also live on clay which is now so wet I could make an enormous work of pottery art out of my pastures. Poor Ernie has been riding up and down the road since it’s the only dry place around. He is very tired of straight lines….
I know one year it will be dry and I will look back on this summer of amazing grass growth with longing but today is not that day. Today I am hoping for sunshine and 50% humidity.
Tech Spot
Wow, It’s that time of year again for our Annual Open House October 10th from 10am to 2pm! Time sure does fly! We are looking forward to familiar faces as well as new ones.
This is the perfect opportune time to meet all of our staff, gain a little knowledge from our live demos, eat with us and win some wonderful prizes!Again, this year our big prize is a full year of our Basic Wellness Program for free! What a wonderful program to! Tony is super excited for everyone to come see what we have been up too!Hope to see you all there! Please RSVP via
Springhill Equine Email Thank you!!
Sep 15, 2015 | Ailments, Leg issues, Pests, Skin Funk
Tuesdays with Tony
AS a black cat I must say I am excited that cooler weather came for a visit even if it was brief. It was excellent napping weather after a very busy week of routine health care. Dr. Lacher and Dr. Vurgason were very busy with vaccines, dental, fecal egg counts, and general health checks this week. On the farm and in the clinic it was definitely jam packed. They seem to like these healthy horse checks. It offers them a chance to address minor issues they see before they compromise your horse’s health. There is nothing our Docs like better than giving your horse a happy healthy life. With all this rain it has been very difficult keeping ahead of the Florida Skin Funk. Frequent baths can help but with as much rain as we have had this year you would have to be bathing 24/7. In most circumstances a mixture of chlorhexidine, mineral oil, and dish-washing detergent can be sprayed on affected areas, left to sit overnight, and bathed off in the morning to removed really bad crusts. I have no idea why a horse would tolerate all this bathing, and spraying. I just lie on the pillow when it’s raining out and stare forlornly at the porch wishing I could be outside. For the worst cases the Docs use special medicated shampoos, and ointments that work like a charm.
I have been extremely busy delegating Open House tasks. It falls on the cat to be sure everyone has just the right job given to them. I then closely supervise the computer and phone items from my perch in front of the screen. I find it especially helpful to surreptitiously put my paw on the alt or ctrl keys while the humans are typing. The reaction when the computer begins having random responses to typing is priceless and keeps this cat entertained for hours. I do hope to see everyone at the Open House this year. We have some great prizes and the chance to meet me so I really see no reason not to come on out October 10th between 10am and 2pm.
Sep 9, 2015 | Ailments, Cushings, Disaster Preparedness, Laminitis, Leg issues, Pet Pigs
Well Tuesday was so crazy I didn’t manage to catch up until Wednesday! The day after a long weekend is always hard on management. I have spent the weekend ensuring sunbeams are properly tracked across the floor, making sure the chairs don’t move in the office, and knocking any stray papers off the desk. Meanwhile, Dr. Lacher was busy seeing emergencies all weekend. Actually you guys were pretty nice to her and she only had to see a few. Dr. Lacher and Dr. Vurgason don’t really mind emergencies when they are true emergencies. The only time I hear them upset is when the horse has been very sick for a while and the humans wait until 10:30pm on a Saturday night to call but I digress.
One of this weekend’s emergencies was a common Fall problem: laminitis. Why Fall you ask? Well let me answer. This time of year your crazy horses are getting ready for Winter. That’s right: Winter. The brain of the horse is tuned to seasons in a very particular way. It has to change the metabolism, hair growth, foot growth, and a million other little tweaks so that the system is ready for whatever the coming season will require. Horses, having evolved in cold climates, start getting ready for Winter around August 15th. To do this the pituitary gland increases its production of about 5,000 different hormones. All is fine and dandy unless your horse also has Cushing’s or is pre-Cushingoid. If that’s the case too many hormones are released and voila!! Laminitis happens.
The good news is these laminitis episodes are relatively minor, even if sometimes they don’t look that way, and are quickly controlled with some anti-inflammatories like bute or previcox, a little help from some thyroid hormones, and changes in trimming or shoeing. Knowing your horse’s ACTH levels if they are a suspected Cushing’s horse helps the Docs manage these guys if they experience a flare up.
In other goings on this week, Dr. Vurgason treated another one of those things called a pig at the office. They really are rather adorable until they open their mouths. I was grateful she anesthetized him so that she could perform a castration. Dr. Lacher saw several horses for lameness, along with a few dentals and other routine health stuff. I think she might get some kind of perverse pleasure from making her technicians run around in circles since she makes them do that a lot! She claims this is so she can watch the horses move after stressing different parts of their bodies but I have my doubts.
Aug 24, 2015 | Allergies, Coughing, Lameness, Laminitis, Leg issues
Please be sure to check your trailer floor for rotten areas. Many of you saw this horse on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds. Dr. Lacher and Charly pieced him back together and now begins the healing. He is looking at several months of bandaging but with some luck he will be back to good soon.
Main Topic:
The sun is just peeking over the horizon in the morning as you head out to feed your horse. You open the feed can, scoop out the morning ration, and dump it in the feed bucket. As you walk away you hear a dry, raspy cough. “Probably just the dusty grain,” you think and remind yourself to ask Springhill Equine about it the next time they come out to the farm. What does that cough really mean? Allergic airway disease.
Allergic airway disease has had a bit of an identity crisis over the years. It has been called: Heaves, asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), heaves (again), and currently Recurrent Airway Obstruction (RAO). All of these are our fancy names for constriction of the small airways in the lungs due to allergies. The allergic response causes an increase in mucous in the airway and makes the muscles around those same airways tighten up. It’s an unfair combination which makes it very difficult to breath.
So why the dry cough? These horses typically breathe in fairly well but can’t breathe out without pushing extra hard. We call this abdominal breathing. One way these horses manage to get a good breath out is by coughing. The other thing that leads to coughing is called airway hyper-reactivity. This means anything that touches the airway causes a coughing fit. Dust from grain and/or hay is the most common cause of coughing at feeding time for allergic horses.
Recently there has been a lot of research on these allergic airway horses. Sadly much of it has not progressed to finding new treatments, but we are learning more about the genetics behind allergies, what different symptoms mean, and how well currently available treatments do work. Most older research focused on the effects of allergic airway disease on the racehorse only. Here are the highlights of a few recent papers. If you hear your horse coughing on a regular basis chances are very good they have allergic airway disease. Allergic airway horses are statistically way more likely to have hit this wonderful genetic trifecta: allergic airway disease, allergic skin, and Anhidrosis (non-sweating). Dexamethasone works well in most allergic airway horses but not all. For the horses Dexamethasone does not work on, inhalers provide a safe and viable option.
Treatment is targeted at reducing the allergic response. Dexamethasone is a short acting (about 24 hours) steroid that can be given by injection or orally. Especially during the summer Springhill Equine Doctors will usually start horses on Dexamethasone to get symptoms under control. Typically the dose starts very high and tapers every few days until we find what makes your horse happy. Changes in the weather, pollen levels, and dustiness of hay or grain may require a brief increase in Dexamethasone dosages.
For horses who are unable to tolerate Dexamethasone or don’t respond to it, metered dose inhalers can be used. Steroid inhalers are used most commonly for human asthma. Inhalers present some challenges for horse owners. First how do you get your horse to breathe deeply when you want them to? Answer: you don’t. Second, inhalers can be very expensive and time consuming. To solve the first problem we use an extender which seals over one nostril that allows us to time the “puffs” with the horse’s breathing. For the second problem we discuss options with you, the horse owner, and come up with the best solution.
Once winter comes around Intradermal Allergy Testing can be performed. Allergy testing allows us to identify what allergens bother your horse. Once we know what bothers your horse most we can begin shots, which over time teach the immune system to tolerate those allergens. Allergy shots can offer real help to allergic airway horses but it takes time. It is generally well towards the middle of the second year of therapy before we see benefits. But those are fantastic benefits. We are able to reduce the length of time and dosages of drug therapy these horses are on.
Moral of the story: if you heard a cough, give us a call. The better we control allergic airway disease the longer your horse stays happy, healthy, and ride-able.
Erica’s Corner
Whew! There I did it. I took a breath!!! I am very glad to have Dr. Vurgason here and settled in. It means I get to sneak away to the beach for a long weekend. I am ready for slightly cooler weather so my non-sweater starts sweating again and a little less rain so her constant rain rot can catch a break but such is summer in Florida. The extra breathing room has also meant my two younger horses are getting ridden more. I have seen this as a blessing and a curse all at the same time. I love the way younger horses advance so quickly as they learn the big lessons of life but I hate teaching them! They are sometimes painful lessons for the rider…..
Tech Spot
Springhill Equine is here to help you through any and all lameness issues your horse might be having, whether it is painfully obvious or ever so subtle, we can help! Dr. Lacher’s extensive background in performance horse lameness coupled with all of our new technology makes Springhill Equine your one stop solution for lame horses and ponies. After performing a lameness exam, flexing and blocking if necessary we also can utilize our digital X-ray and ultrasound machines to pin point the issue and develop the quickest most effective rehab program for your horse. Once the source of the issue is revealed there are several new procedures we are performing to help speed up the recovery process and keep our horses performing longer including IRAP, PRP, and FES. If you are at all concerned about one of your’s limping or even just feeling a little funny please don’t hesitate to call!
Aug 18, 2015 | Ailments, Breeding, Disaster Preparedness, Feed, Infections, Injuries, Leg issues
Tuesdays with Tony
Whew what a week! Yesterday was Black Cat Appreciation Day and my hordes of adoring fans came by to give me offerings. I am sure you all appreciated the Black Cats in your lives yesterday but if not we may still be adored today.
Many of you saw the pictures yesterday of the hind legs of a horse who went through the floor of a trailer. Luckily the trailer wasn’t moving at the time. Dr. Lacher and Dr. Vurgason have a long road ahead of them taking care of that guy. The first step will be seeing how much of the skin survives the first week. About half of what you see will survive; the other half will need to be trimmed off. Next week sometime they will remove the sutures and re-suture the wounds to try to get better coverage. After that it’s bandaging, bandaging, bandaging. I think regular cat scans will also be in order to be sure all is going appropriately.
The rest of the week was jam packed. Last week something called a pig came in to the office. Some may think those are little and cute but I have my serious doubts about that. It made a very loud noise when I sniffed it. Dr. Vurgason loves these things called pigs so I will likely be supervising more and more care. I have put in a request for earplugs. Dr. Vurgason does routine pig care including vaccinations, castration, nutrition, and Wellness Care.
It was a very busy and diverse week here around Springhill. I supervised Dr. Lacher doing something called IRAP on a horse with a lameness in a hind leg. IRAP is this amazing stuff that actually comes from the horse. Dr. Lacher draws blood then does some special processing which increases the concentration of IRAP and then injects that back in a joint that has pain or inflammation. It about requires a PhD to understand but luckily I am a cat so naturally I know everything. The horse she used it on this week had an infection in a joint in his leg. The infection was aggressively treated and fixed but the body was over-reacting and causing the joint to be painful. IRAP will help calm down all that inflammation like a cat purring on your lap.
Meanwhile in the office, Dr. Vurgason did a few dental floats and some breeding work. Being neutered since I was a little tyke I know nothing of this breeding thing. They assure me my life is better but I have my doubts. I ended the week making sure Charly correctly drew blood for an Oral Sugar Test. This test determines if a horse is responding to sugar correctly or if they have Metabolic Syndrome. I told the horse I hope she doesn’t have it since it sounds like exercise and a diet are involved and those are two words I do NOT like to hear. In preparation for another busy week I am now..
Jul 4, 2015 | Feed, Hay, Hoof Care, Leg issues
The Naughty Pony
brought to you by Springhill Equine Veterinary Clinic
July 2015 Issue 51
Person of the Month:
Dr. Vurgason graduated from the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine
in 2014. During vet school, she worked in the Equine ICU, and participated in
numerous externship experiences across the country. She was captain of the Foal Watch
Team at Mizzou, and enjoyed a unique trip to South Africa to practice wildlife medicine.
Please join us July 22nd @ 6:30pm at Springhill Equine Clinic to Meet and Greet
Dr Vurgason and the Gainesville Police Department Mounted Patrol Unit
Main Topic:
The list of supplements available and the things they will fix is simply awe inspiring. I
recently flipped through the SmartPak catalog and came up with several new problems I
didn’t even know my horse could have! And I went to Veterinary School. What’s a horse
owner to do?
First apply a few rules. Just like human diets, quality is key. Using high quality hay as the
foundation of your horse’s feed program starts things off correctly. Next add in a
concentrate (grain) only as needed to fill in the gaps. For the average pony this means
having loose trace minerals and salt available.
However, a thoroughbred in the same field may require 6-8 pounds of a high fat, high
protein concentrate. For most horses this is all they need. Yep that’s it. Hay and a little bit
of concentrate.
The next rule is you should understand all the ingredients in the stuff you use. There are some very fancy words in the ingredient list on most feed bags but those words are often just the scientific names for vitamins and proand pre-biotics. This is an excellent time to use Google. If you Google tocopherol you will find this is a high falutin’ way of saying Vitamin E. If you Google BioThrive Formula E you are not going to understand what it is anymore than you do from the words BioThrive, Formula, and E. It’s like looking up the definition for some of those crazy Words with Friends words: no definition is available at this time but you can use it to play this game. Outrageous claims about the products efficacy and a name that means nothing is code for we put some stuff in a jar with a pretty picture and we have no idea what it does. Run away!
A corollary of this rule is that the quantities of stuff must make sense given the size of a horse. I’m going to pick on resveratrol for this one. There have been several studies done in rats which indicate resveratrol is the stuff in red wine that is good for you. The problem is the rats have been on pretty large doses of resveratrol in those studies. A company came up with a supplement with resveratrol in it. You feed 2-4 ounces per day of this stuff. Based on the rat studies horses would need to consume somewhere between 3 and 4 POUNDS daily to experience the same benefits. Fat supplements are another pet peeve here. Feeding a 1200 pound horse a 2 ounce scoop of a 30% fat supplement means you just gave them a little over one half an ounce of fat.
The last rule: Consult your veterinarian or an equine nutritionist to determine if the need for Fancy Supplement X is real. Sometimes it is, often it isn’t. For example, Dr. Lacher has a “special” horse who doesn’t sweat in the summer and is allergic to everything she comes in contact with. This horse gets alfalfa hay, pasture, and Purina Enrich for her concentrate. To help her sweat she gets Platinum Refresh and to help reduce inflammation in her skin she gets Flax seed oil. If you read the label on Platinum Refresh you would think every horse needs it to help “thermoregulate” in the summer. The truth is most horses thermoregulate just fine. Horses with the medical condition anhidrosis do have a problem regulating and therefore a supplement is needed to help.
We all want to do everything possible for our horses. Trust us we know, we are just as bad.
That’s why everyone at Springhill Equine looks in the mirror and says “Do I really need
this for my horse?”
Erica’s Corner
Holy hotness!! This vet, her technicians, and our patients have been incredibly hot already
this summer. I can tell you Icees and Gatorade are lifesavers this time of year. The horses seem to be handling the weather OK. I will say we see more colics as the weather heats up. It seems once they get used to the hot weather things level back out. The upside of hot weather is fewer lacerations since everyone is just standing around in their fields not looking for trouble.
My horses don’t know it but their vacation is almost over with the arrival of Dr. Vurgason. I
am beyond excited to begin introducing Dr. Vurgason to everyone. I may also be a little bit
excited to not work seven days a week and go back to showing my horses. Dr. Vurgason
brings a lifetime of horse knowledge along with a love of potbelly pigs and Disneyworld. I
hope you can join us at her official Welcome Party on July 22nd, 6:30pm at the Clinic.
Tech Spot
July in Florida means one thing for sure… afternoon showers!
While the grass and our gardens love the rain, our ponies’ feet do not. Consistently wet feet can cause thrush and mushy soles, which can eventually lead to very sore feet.
We all want our horses to be happy and comfortable and aside from keeping them in the barn, there are a few things we can do to help their feet stay hard through the rainy season.
We recommend picking hooves at least once aday, and we always start by applying Durasole or a similar product four times a week. If that is not working please feel free to call the office and we can get you a stronger product and assess different shoeing options.
