Re: RC: colic

[Lif Strand <fasterhorses@gilanet.com>]

At 08:38 AM 5/16/00 -0600, Marlene wrote:
> Hi all,
> We've got 1 horse that has repeatedly shown mild signs of colic - looking
> at
> his belly, a little antsy - but never anything further.  Continued
> passing
> manure and had decent gut sounds. 

We had a mare that had these signs.  One other symptom was that
about 45 minutes or more after she started eating  she'd show the
mild colic signs, but not always.  We were told that it was likely
that she had enteroliths.  We cut back extremely on her alfalfa and
the colic symptoms went away for a few years.  However eventually,
perhaps 5 or 6 years later, her mild colics returned, and eventually she
started having them almost every day once again.  This time since
she was already not eating much alfalfa (which we were feeding her in
winter to keep her weight up - we hadn't heard of beet pulp yet!) we
started her on a program of many small feedings rather than the 2 per day
that we usually feed.  We unfortunately did not have any pasture
available for her which I think would have helped.  She was 22 or 23
when she died (we didn't have a necropsy done and it was not obvious why
she had died - we were gone for about 4 hours, she was fine when we left
and dead when we returned, with no sign of struggle) -  we had
managed to keep her going for almost 10 years.  

So if your horse's mild colics have a pattern of starting after feedings,
I would be wondering about enteroliths.  Lif

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