Dr. Brian Eitelman, DVM, CJF, and Aggie Vet and Farrier Services provide veterinarian and farrier services in Parker, CO, Elizabeth, CO, Franktown, CO, Castle Rock, CO, Sedalia, CO and Larkspur, CO. To learn more, please visit us at www.vetandfarrier.com
In this episode, Dr. Brian explains how to treat and manage colic in horses.
With very few exceptions, every horse needs to be seen by a vet every time it is suspected of colicing. That’s a big statement, and it is true regardless of your horse experience. Here’s why: 1) Colics can be very deceiving. The quiet ones can be critical and the dramatic ones can be relatively minor. 2) Caught and treated early, most colics resolve easily. One to two visits and they’re back to doing normal horse stuff. 3) It doesn’t take very long to go from simple to complicated and life-threatening.
I know it is super frustrating to pay an emergency bill because your horse was just crampy but 1) there’s a lot of peace of mind that comes from knowing that’s all it is and 2) survival rates drop the longer you wait and the bill gets huge when you have to treat a horse for days because it developed a severe impaction while you were hoping he’d get through his cramps.
That brings us nicely to how we actually manage colic in horses. There’s not much secret here - it primarily comes down to hydration and pain management.
Let’s start with hydration. I’ve talked a lot about it in Part 1 but that’s because it is so important and also why just giving your horse some pain meds usually isn’t enough. Whether a horse is dehydrated at the beginning or will become so because it doesn’t feel well enough to drink, pretty much every horse needs help staying hydrated.
So, we do that most often by passing a nasogastric tube. The first step is assessing what is still in the stomach. When I place an NG tube, I’m hoping that I don’t really get anything back out of the tube because the stomach is empty. This means that either everything is still getting through OR that the problem is a long way down the pipe and just hasn’t had time to back up into the stomach yet.
An empty stomach means that I can still give fluids orally and that’s optimal. I can get more volume into a horse faster and keep it there longer than with IV. A big drink of water can also stimulate intestinal motility like after a big meal, and I can rehydrate impactions better and cheaper than with IV alone. I will also typically add electrolytes to the water because they’re usually in need of them and the salt component will help encourage them to drink on their own. I can also add mineral oil. For me, the oil mostly serves as a marker but it can also be a laxative. If I can get mineral oil out the back end or even better, manure coated in oil, I know the pipe is at least partially open and moving along. They can still have plenty of gas and manure past the point of the problem that is still working out its way out - so “oh he farted” or “oh she pooped” doesn’t always mean we’re in the clear. Also, because I know when we gave the mineral oil, it serves to tell me how fast things are moving through.
However, let’s go back to the first step with the NG tube. If I get a bunch of rancid fluid or old feed material back out of the tube, that means that nothing is getting past the stomach. This is a good indicator that we are dealing with a more serious colic, AND I now have to rely on IV fluids because adding anything into the stomach will just make it worse. IV fluids are a great tool but they are expensive, slow, and need to be given in a hospital to be done sufficiently.
How your horse responds to pain meds is also very helpful in determining how serious the situation is. It is a great sign when your horse goes from dramatic rolling to wanting to graze 10-15 minutes after I give them IV banamine. The minor colics tend to feel dramatically better with pain meds. The severe colics are compromised enough that they either can’t process the drugs correctly or are in more pain than the drugs can control.
The good news is that most colics can be managed right there on the farm and with prompt and appropriate treatment, most will do just fine. Short-term management again typically involves pain management to keep them from hurting themselves, enough water to get them hydrated and keep them that way, and trying to make sure that they feel good enough to drink on their own. If they’ll drink on their own, most horses are in the clear. Long-term management involves looking at the lifestyle and habits of you and your horse to see if there is a way to prevent this situation in the future.
That brings us to the end of Part 2. I hope you’re now experts in colic. If you learned something, please share it and help others, too. As always, thanks for watching.