Well, not much of an update!I had the vet out and he looked at both
horses.He did find a lesion in one
horse’s mouth, and thought it looked like she can cut it on a pine branch
or something.Of course we have
concern about VS here, but since the bugs have been gone for a while and they
haven’t been closer than 100 feet of another horse, nor shared any
drinking water in a couple months, plus the actual look of the sore, was not
worried about that.And I’ve
seen this horse chow on the pine trees and she’ll just tear the branches
up.
The other horse could use a float (surprising since I had
her checked, but apparently not done in mid summer), but nothing else
indicating a problem in the mouth.
There was no sign of choke and he knew there wouldn’t
be clover in our pasture so he went through a couple bales of hay and didn’t
find any clover.It’s been
pretty consistent hay too.
The only other thing he could think of was the alfalfa.I’d been feeding the one mare with
the sore a half slice of alfalfa (suggested to help neutralize acid since she
had ulcers).The other horse
managed to snag a bit that was close to a doorway right about the time this all
started.But one other horse has
been getting a little and he doesn’t have anything unusual going on. It is fairly stemmy
stuff – we had been just shaking out the leafy parts for a while, but had
gotten lazy.It might have either
caused that mouth sore, or at least be irritating it.
So we’re going to stop the alfalfa for a bit, get the
one horse’s teeth floated, quit putting 12/12 in the feed of the horse
with the sore and go from there.
I hate mysteries!But at least the vet isn’t concerned that something terrible is
going on.
