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Discussion on Choke or something she ate?
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Member:
ladycfp
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Posted on Saturday, May 19, 2007 - 9:08 am:
Our mares have their pasture fairly well eaten down and as a treat we take them to hand graze in the "good stuff" outside the fence. Last night we were on the way back to the pasture after perhaps 10 minutes of grazing when one mare came up from grazing with a skyward flehmen response. She put her head down as if to graze again but came right back up into a flehmen, accompanied by a bit of saliva. My initial thought was, she ate something she should not have eaten. We continued to the gate when this mare suddenly buckled her legs as if to go down. We prevented her from going down and hustled back inside the fence, urging her on as she continued to try to sink to the ground several more times. We then kept her walking while we got the vet on the phone.
The vet said it sounded to her like a choke, although I could not feel any blockage when I palpated her throat nor did we see any nasal discharge, just that bit of saliva with the flehmen response. The urge to roll seemed to subside after five to ten minutes. Per the vet instruction, we isolated her in a round pen with water for several hours to watch her and skipped her evening meal.
In reading here about choke, given her lack of nasal discharge, I am unsure. She has lately begun to cough a time or two after a canter across the pasture, if that has meaning. We have begun to feed hay cubes periodically in effort to make our dwindling hay supply last until we can restock at first cut. I normally wet the cubes before feeding but have not allowed them to really soak a while since I noticed they actually will thrash the loose particles out of their tubs in search of cubes while eating.
I checked on her several times in the night after I let her back into the pasture from the round pen and she was grazing normally. She seems fine this morning, and is ravenous so I intend to feed and watch closely.
I hope I have given enough detail to enable some feedback. Thanks!
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