RE: Weather Induced Colic

[Wendy Milner <wmilner@verinet.com>]

Toni,

>If anybody out there has or has had a horse that would colic when the
>weather would change I sure wish you would give me some hints on how you
>were able to stop or prevent the occurrence of this nasty little trick. 

>Taffy has coliced twice now (on Oct. 31 and just this past Saturday) with
>the exact same conditions.  A warm day with rain called for that night or
>early the next morning.  We went for a short ride (1 1/2 hours) very easy
>(mostly walking on flat ground).  Five minutes from home she stopped dead
>in her tracks and started pawing the ground.  Suffice it to say from
>there it was colic.

My experience with weather colic is due to cold weather, so, you mileage
may
vary with my techniques.

When the weather changes, my horses' drinking habits change (they don't
go
out for a beer on cold winter nights:-).  They also don't drink a lot of
that ice cold water.  My older horse has trouble the following morning.
What I've found works for her is to give her a hot mash each morning
throughout
winter.  I mix about a gallon of very hot water with her normal
grain/eq.sr mix.
This gives her a soup to warm her tummy and get a gallon of water in her
to start her morning off right.  She loves it.

With your case, warm weather with rain predicted, so probably high
humidity,
your horse may just be hanging out in the shade and skipping the trip to
the
water trough.  You could try making a mash and feeding it to your horse
prior
to riding.  Start with a half pound of your normal grain, and a few of
the large
cubes of chopped hay or a half pound of an extruded hay pellet.  Put
enough water
in the mix so that you have an oatmeal like consistency.  It may take a
few minutes
for the hay to break down and make a mush.  Let your horse slurp this
up.
Next time, add a little more water.  Then more water the next time. 
Eventually
your horse will drink a full bucket to get to the goodies.  Since the
weather is
warm, I'd just use luke warm water.

With a bucket of water in tummy, she is less likely to colic - if that
was the
problem in the first place.

Wendy