FEAST or famine?

As I write this at the tail end of a busy breeding season, I am delighted to see some confidence returning to the horse industry. Life is good up here in the far north and I must thank The Irish Field for the chance to visit the recent Dublin Horse Show.

But as I look back at this summer – poor enough as far as sun goes but it has been warm and of course damp, which provides the perfect conditions for growing grass. We are known as the Emerald Isle after all!

Being married to a dairy farmer, I am fairly well tuned into the vagaries of grassland management and that the premium rate phone calls on our bill are always to the weather man in southern Scotland around silage time.

While this abundance of grass has been a dream come true for the cattle and sheep farmers, it has been a double-edged sword for the horse folk. I have seen more cases of severe laminitis in ponies this summer than ever before.

In June and July the grass just jumped and even “bare” fields had rapidly recovering and therefore rapidly growing fresh grass. Horses are continuous grazers and bite the grass with their incisors whilst cows need longer grass to enable them to wrap their tongue around it and tear it off against the upper hard palate.

But as we all know ponies do not need grass up to their knees and our native breeds have developed to cope in harsh environments – as I say the Connemara ponies can live on fresh air and scenery!

Recently I was asked to look at a young mare which was lame and was reluctant to move. When I arrived on the farm, I was taken to a small pen in which the pony was standing.

OBESITY IN PONIES

The first thing which struck me as I got closer to her was the huge crest she had. When I put my hand on her neck, it was rock solid – pure, solid fat.

She was obese or condition score 5+! Her ribs had long since disappeared and there was no sign of her backbone at all.

I examined her and came to the conclusion that she had severe laminitis in the front feet and the hind ones were most likely affected as well. However she would not let any of the feet be picked up as she did not want to stand on the other three.

I decided that she needed high doses of painkillers to start with plus lots of cold water to ease the inflammation in the feet and a soft conforming surface to stand on so that the weight could be spread and eased as much as possible.

She also needed her feet trimmed and the toes shortened to make it easier for her to break over at the walk, but the visit from a good experienced farrier was for another day once we had the pain under control.

It has been noted that in the wild, a pony with laminitis will seek a stream with a sandy bottom and will stand in the running water to ease the pain and the sand moulds itself to the contours of the hoof thus providing relief.

After checking her for a microchip (which she had) and that her passport was signed thus excluding her from the human food chain, I started to draw up the painkiller into the syringe.

Then I looked at her again and began to question my estimate of her weight. As I had a student with me that day, I went to the car and produced my weigh-band. This is basically a tape-measure which has been calibrated to accurately determine the weight of either a horse or pony simply by placing it around the chest just behind the front legs and reading the scale where the tape meets itself.

There is a horse side and a pony side and I find this tool very useful. I was not however expecting the reading I got.

OFF THE SCALE

As I passed the tape around the pony, it just about met and she was off the scale! The pony scale on my tape goes to just over 600kg and I reckoned she was coming in at around 650kg! I turned the tape over and that is what it said on the horse side too. I could not believe it. Yet, as I said at the start, her crest was just solid and she looked like a stallion from a distance.

The owner was as taken aback as myself and he admitted that someone else had been keeping an eye on the pony and he had not actually seen her for a couple of weeks and was surprised himself at the condition of her.

He assured me action would be taken. She did like straw and whilst we did not try to move her that evening, by the next day she was much improved and was able to move into a large straw-bedded shed.

She does like to eat straw and in my opinion that would have been sufficient for her in the initial stages to start the weight-loss process and the long road to recovery and subsequent management. The pony needs to be gradually slimmed down and then slowly put into work to keep the weight off.

Thankfully this pony is improving and with the correct farrier on the job, she should be able to go into work in the not too distant future.

Another one which I saw around the same time was even worse as she was down and did not want to stand at all. Thankfully with high doses of strong anti-inflammatories, copious amounts of cold water and good nursing, she too is doing well.

The moral of this story is that we must look critically at our animals and realise when they are too fat as well as realising when they are too thin – I have written about that too!

We do seem to get the extremes up here. So if you don’t have enough grass or you want to come to the best part of Donegal, head north and you will be sure of a good welcome. All the best from Inishowen!

Anne Scott MVB MRCVS is a member of Veterinary Ireland Equine Council and is in practice in Inishowen Equi-ai Centre, Tulnaree House, Carndonagh, Co Donegal.

Email: hq@vetireland.ie