On a Tuesday night in November when I fed horses, one mare only ate about half of her grain and wouldn't eat any hay, so I brought her in the barn. She didn't have a fever and had bowel sounds. I checked her every couple of hours until about 3 a.m. She was having bowel movements and urinating, drinking water, ate some hay and did not seem to be in any pain. Wednesday a.m. she ate her grain and seemed okay, so I put her out. I must mention that the mares have hay in front of them at all times. About 2:30 p.m. I looked outside and shewas just standing up in the corner like the mares always do. At 4:30 I went out to do chores. As I went out the door, everyone was down by the fence but the one mare who was still up in the corner. At this point she lay down and then got up and I thought she was coming down to eat, but she pawed the ground a couple of times, walked around in a circle and layedd back down. At this point, she was walking on all four legs. I assumed colic. I went an dgot a halter and lead rope, but she wouldn't get up for the halter, so I put it on her while she was lying down and then pulled and she got up, but she wouldn't put any weight on her right hind leg. She kind of put the toe down and hopped with the left hind leg. I had never seen a horse with colic do anything like that before, so I took her in the barn which took a while since she wouldn't walk on that hind leg. I put her in a stall and ran up and called the vet. She asked me if she was trying to go down and I said I could hardly get her to stay up, so said she would come right away. In the meantime I went down and checked the mare and she had layed down again, but I got her up again and tried to walk her. She would hobble around for me, but I needed to call my daughter and tell her not to park in the driveway because the vet would need to get through. I went up and called and when I got back to the barn, she had cast herself. I got cotton ropes and tried to roll her over and almost succeeded, but at the last I didn't have the strength. Shortly, my daughter got here and helped me roll her over. I got her up and made her move, still on three legs. It had been about 45 minutes since I first saw her lie down. The vet pulled in the driveway and and she saw me leading her back into the barn. She came in and looked at her gums and said it didn't look good. She wanted to check for some kind of torsion with the foal that might cause her hind leg to be useless. She said she almost acted like she had broken her pelvis, but there was absolutely nothing in her lot she could do that on. She wanted to do a pelvic, but the mare started to really tremble, like she was having a seizure and I got her in the stall just as both her hind legs gave out and she sat down. The vet said she was near death, so I said put her down. I couldn't stand to see her suffer any more. After she was gone I told the vet I wanted to know what cause this, so she did and autopsy. Her insides looked brown, not red or pink like they weren't getting blood and the vet said it look like she was toxic from something. She took samples of the intestines, and placenta, which didn't look normal and definitely didn't smell like aminiotic fluid either, and a piece of the foals liver to be sent in to the lab. After waiting for two weeks, the results came back inconclusive. My mares are all together, eating the same hay and grain, same worming schedule, everything the same and the others are fine. I had one person tell me is sounded like placental insufficiency, but I still don't know anything and you can imagine I watch my other mares like a hawk. Any input would be appreciated.
Anne Posted From: 151.213.153.49
Posted on Saturday, January 10, 2004 - 06:51 pm:
Wow, such sad, shocking news. I am not an expert on the vet stuff. I'm sure these members will give you some reasons on maybe why or something. What an awful thing to happen. How many months pregnant was she?
She was 9 months pregnant and due for her last Pneumabort shot in three days. The vet said that the foal had been dead for a while. I wonder too, why a mare doesn't abort a foal that dies? Is it just the way their bodies work in reproduction? The worst is not knowing what could have caused it. She was romping around and bucking in the mornings when I went out to feed up to a couple days before this happened. I don't expect someone to just tell me what happened without ever seeing the mare or the condition she was in, but just some ideas on what might possibly have been the cause for this would help.
Sorry to hear about your loss, is it possible the mare died from a blood clot? We had this happen with one of our mares who displayed the same symptoms.
She actually got cold feeling to the touch-she lasted almost 2 days. She also had a one month old foal by her side.
The cause of our mares death was a clot in the cranial mesentary artery. It is caused by large strongids at a young age. With our mare she just wasn't wormed at a young enough age or maybe the wormer used was not that effective. The large strongids cause massive scarring and slows the flow of blood to the intestine and stomach which could cause the discoloration your vet saw.
This is just an idea. It is terribly tragic and a horrible thing to go thru. So sorry for your loss.
Thanks Heidi! I was beginning to think I was the only one who ever lost a mare so suddenly with no explaination. The mare was foaled in Minnesota at a well known breeding farm. I think she was well taken care of until something bad happened. The person I bought her from didn't know the story because he had bought her at a sale in Minnesota. This mare was covered with scars. Hind legs, shoulder, over right eye, right nostril, etc. You could tell that they had been serious injuries, but horses have that wonderful ability to recover. You couldn't get near her with a spray bottle, but I didn't manage to wipe on fly spray,etc, and get her to accept a fly mask last summer. She had been used as brood mare all her life and she was eleven. She was empty when I bought her and I bred her the following spring.
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