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  Discussion on Nail in left hind
Author Message
Member:
Suzeb

Posted on Wednesday, Oct 29, 2003 - 3:54 pm:

Hello Dr.O and all,
This morning I was out to meet the vet and my horse for flu vaccines. I noticed that my horse was not wanting to put weight on his left hind. I checked for heat and swelling on this leg before picking up his foot. Seemed a little warm in heel area. Picked up foot to discover a nail or a staple (sharp at both ends) in his foot. There was only one puncture wound located at the rear of the frog inside the sulcii towards the seat of corn. Thank god my vet was there to see this and do something. She was originally out to give fall shots to the rest of the gang. What she did was to clean out hoof and remove nail/staple to see where and how deep this had gone. She pared out the area somewhat and applied copious amounts of betadine. Laser was given a tetanus booster shot. I inquired about antibiotics and she said no, not at this time. Also, we were given instructions to soak in warm water and epsom salts once a day, dry hoof, apply rolled up guaze soaked in betadine to the wound and bandage in vet wrap and secure with duct tape. She will be coming back out to the farm tomorrow to vaccinate the rest of the horses as someone did not tell her that she would be doing 8 horses and not 4. My original intention was to have my horse vaccinated for flu and strangles but the nail in his hoof threw a wrench into this equation. My questions are:
Should I vaccinate and then give antibiotics for the hoof if they are needed?
Is this a suitable treatment? Soak, pack and bandage.
I will try and upload the illustration of the rear hoof that I scooped from your site with a rather crude circle in red indicating the area of the wound.
My vet said if you are going to get a nail puncture, this was a good place. Penetration of the nail was about 1/2 centimeter and angled toward toward the bulbs of his heels. Any thoughts or additions to this would be much appreciated and thank you in advance. I will print out article and show vet and discuss.
Susan BilskyMy Pictures
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Wednesday, Oct 29, 2003 - 4:50 pm:

Hello Susan,
I don't really see a good reason to not do the vaccines. As to antibiotics my hat is off to your vet. If she feels that the injury has been completly exposed and that there is no current ascending infection the treatment you outline should be fine. Improvement should be rapid with noticable improvement in 24 hours.
DrO
Member:
Suzeb

Posted on Wednesday, Oct 29, 2003 - 11:49 pm:

Thanks Dr.O. My vet did not find anything ouzing, nor was there any bleeding. The plan is to soak, clean and bandage for about 5 days. I was concerned that if Laser did have to have antibiotics they would negate the effect of the vaccine. At this point I would sooner treat the foot and put off the vaccine for a couple of weeks.
Susan Bilsky
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Thursday, Oct 30, 2003 - 5:56 am:

If the nail penetrated to sensitive tissues, I would have thought that there should have been some bleeding when she pared out the nails track from the horn.

Because you where giving an influenza vaccine, I had not considered that aspect of antibiotic adminstration. For the big majority of vaccines, including flu, the antibiotic does not interfere with the vaccines action. The reason is because most are killed, or if live, they consist of viruses which are not effected by antibiotics. But there is one case where this might be a problem, if you are giving the live Strangles vaccine. Antibiotics might kill the attenuated Strangles organism before it had a chance to induce immunity.
DrO
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