Colic = Good??

Warning: long post ahead.

I think most horse owners would not agree with this statement. Nobody likes to get a call from the BO saying their horse is colicking or even better, coming yourself and finding your horse in a sweaty, heaving, rolling heap.

However, this may tell me something about my mare, and why she's been continuing to experience low-grade colic.

Well, I've experienced this with Stella three times since the semester ended the first week of May. They've all been minor bouts, the same she's been having since I bought her 2 years ago this July. However, the increased frequency had me worried. This is no longer an incidental thing because of lack of water in the winter, fresh grass in the spring, or heat in the summer. This is something else.

So I did a couple things. I brainstormed what I thought it could be. My list was a follows:

1. Parasites. This was number one because it's the easiest to treat and probably the least scary of all the possible causes of colic.
2. Ulcers. This is also not an end-of-the-world colic causer, but can be extremely expensive to treat and prevent, since horses with ulcers usually have them reoccurring and need to be on medication for lengthy periods of time, if not life.
3. Conformation. Let's face it: Stella's conformation isn't always her strong point. She is a beautiful horse with a fantastic brain but definitely has some weak points in how she's built. My idea was that her gut conformation is such that she is more prone to gas production and build-up, thus the frequent low-grade colics.

I should probably mention that her colics are never the "holysh*thookupthetrailerandcalltheclinic" types. It's more the "ohsh*therewegoagain" type. The symptoms are always the same, and I can tell immediately just by looking at her for 10 seconds or less if she's colicking. The past few times it's been when she's come in from pasture: she'll be blowing, beginning to sweat or already sweating, breathing heavily and eager to lie down. She does NOT roll or thrash. She lies down, looks uncomfortable, gets up, circles and while, continues to look uncomfortable, lies down again. This pattern usually repeats. I intervene with Banamine and some handwalking, but I limit it because it tends to wear her out quickly. Once the sweating has stopped and the breathing has returned to normal, I return her to her stall and let her lay down. She always does. And she does so quietly. Within 30 minutes to an hour, she's eager for food again and seems back to her old self.

I've kept record of every colic: there's been 8 since I bought her. There is not a SINGLE common thread between any of them (or so I thought...): they've happened at two different barns, in all four seasons. Her temperature is always around 100.1 to 100.5 (normal for her, she tends to run a little warm all the time). She's never dehydrated. She has never been stressed from exercise, trailering, veterinary work, etc.

The one things that's been more or less consistent? Weird weather. This is a mare that I've found is very sensitive to heat, but also very sensitive to sudden changes in temperature. She has never done well in heat, especially high humidity. She can't be turned out without shelter for any length of time, else she's miserable. She deals great with cold, so at first this didn't stick out to me. But, the last two colics came on days where it changed temperature drastically within less than 24 hours. The first time was a really hot day where it topped 85 degrees with 90% humidity after being in the 60's with low humidity. The second one was when the temperature dropped from being in the 70's to 45, cold and rainy overnight.

The theory has become (and the vet agrees) that Stella's gut conformation doesn't process gas as efficiently as it should, or produces too much, and that all of this is triggered and put into overdrive with sudden weather changes especially. Other things could trigger it, but the weather seems to have been the big factor. I'm going to Powerpac her anyway, just because it's cheap(er), and because I can. Ulcers were on the table for a while, but she's not in particularly strenuous work (maybe she thinks so, but not the level that competition horses are under), she's not overly anxious or nervous, and she responds positively to Banamine. A horse with ulcers generally wouldn't, as NSAID's tend to worsen them.

So we're running with that. I'm going to start her on Succeed, a feed-through supplement that uses a few key ingredients to support healthy gut function and that's been highly recommended by my vet (and, from the reviews online, is a great product.) It's expensive, almost $90 a month in Smartpaks, but if it helps I'm willing to give it a go.

In a way, it's good that she's been having these little colics, and that the timing has been so infrequent: it let me know something was wrong, but it didn't really ever threaten her health seriously enough to cause long term damage. If this works, she may need to be on Succeed for life, but it's a small price to pay if the return is a healthy, happy horse.