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I have not been around much. I read, but don't feel like I have much to offer as a poster. Maybe someone will be able to use this information.
I have a couple of horses here. One is an older QH mare out of Easy Jet. The other is a foundation bred mare that is 10. As much as I hear about how stubborn Hancock bred horses are, she is not.
Sunday morning she suddenly started having bizzare hind limb muscle fasiculations and hypermetria, which looks like goose stepping for a lack of a better term. At first I thought she was colicy, but as the morning progressed, the neurological signs got much worse. Soon she was spooking and running blindly from a clap of hands 50 yards away. The fasiculations and hypermetria became much worse and she became ataxic too. Then she started a weird head Bob and weave, hyper salivation and teeth grinding or chewing. The nostrils were pulled back lime a flehming response minus the elevated lip.
By thus time it was looking bad. She did not respond to banamine or dexamethasone. She was not febrile, but she was sweating in patchy areas. So rule outs included infectious like epm, eee or rabies, toxic, or a weird hypp type episode. I was at a loss. I call some equine vets I know, sent videos, ran blood, so on.
No one had any definitive diagnosis. By night, I was considering just putting her down.
I gave her until this morning, and she seemed a tiny bit better. By lunch, she was walking normally and eating. I can tell she is just not quite right, but she is almost there.
Anyway, the hay looks clean, the other horse showed no symptoms, and this one is recovering. It almost has to be toxic, but I have no idea what would have done it.
The only thing in the lit that might even cause anything remotely like this is jimson weed. They have never touched it before, and the symptoms were not quite right. There might have been a single plant in the bale that caused it, rye grass has a weird toxicity that could be like this and I may not see rye in with fescue .....who knows.
If anyone has any thoughts, I could sure use some help. I hope we are on the downhill side, but an acute case of epm may yet be an issue. Just another reason to kill every damned opossum I see. Coons, foxes, yotes are on that list too.
PS typed from a phone. It won't let me go back and correct for some reason
I have a couple of horses here. One is an older QH mare out of Easy Jet. The other is a foundation bred mare that is 10. As much as I hear about how stubborn Hancock bred horses are, she is not.
Sunday morning she suddenly started having bizzare hind limb muscle fasiculations and hypermetria, which looks like goose stepping for a lack of a better term. At first I thought she was colicy, but as the morning progressed, the neurological signs got much worse. Soon she was spooking and running blindly from a clap of hands 50 yards away. The fasiculations and hypermetria became much worse and she became ataxic too. Then she started a weird head Bob and weave, hyper salivation and teeth grinding or chewing. The nostrils were pulled back lime a flehming response minus the elevated lip.
By thus time it was looking bad. She did not respond to banamine or dexamethasone. She was not febrile, but she was sweating in patchy areas. So rule outs included infectious like epm, eee or rabies, toxic, or a weird hypp type episode. I was at a loss. I call some equine vets I know, sent videos, ran blood, so on.
No one had any definitive diagnosis. By night, I was considering just putting her down.
I gave her until this morning, and she seemed a tiny bit better. By lunch, she was walking normally and eating. I can tell she is just not quite right, but she is almost there.
Anyway, the hay looks clean, the other horse showed no symptoms, and this one is recovering. It almost has to be toxic, but I have no idea what would have done it.
The only thing in the lit that might even cause anything remotely like this is jimson weed. They have never touched it before, and the symptoms were not quite right. There might have been a single plant in the bale that caused it, rye grass has a weird toxicity that could be like this and I may not see rye in with fescue .....who knows.
If anyone has any thoughts, I could sure use some help. I hope we are on the downhill side, but an acute case of epm may yet be an issue. Just another reason to kill every damned opossum I see. Coons, foxes, yotes are on that list too.
PS typed from a phone. It won't let me go back and correct for some reason
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