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Discussion on Chronic Weight loss an unsuspected cause..
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New Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 1:28 am:
Hi guys I finally renewed my subscription :-)
OK I am back to let everyone know what I have been fighting and discovering in the realms of Chronic weight loss.
By chronic I mean horses loosing 10lbs in weight every day with no clinically detectable cause.
A typical case is a horse is in good health, then may show a dry irritated skin. If you do a pinch test the skin shows a very slight dehydration. In a very short time the horse shows a reduced level of fitness and energy. Then the horse may start scouring badly. Some horses don't scour until much later others scour at the same time they start noticably loosing weight.
These horses have a standard diet, have their teeth done regularly and are wormed regularly.
The vet tests show nothing really wrong with the horse. Temp is normal, blood work is all within ranges. As time progresses the horses loose incredible amounts of weight. If you were a vet looking at the blood work you would swear the people are working the horse hard and not feeding it enough.
If you were to watch the horse for 24 hours the feed it is given has no effect on its weightloss.
A higher protein feed may help for a short time but too big an increase in diet could lead to IR and Cushings.
The cause is known to be a parasite only by the virtue that a worming paste is the direct cure for these horses.
As for which parasite, I can not tell you as all the tests we have had done at the vet lab and the univeristy lab show we have a parasite free horse.
That should be clue number one, a horse is never really parasite free they just have negligable numbers of parasites. On further tests once the horses have been treated they show a marked change in energy levels within 24-48 hours. Within a couple of weeks of return to health the normal equine parasites start to repopulate the horse.
Typical sets of symptoms that you can expect to see in an affected horse are.
Stage one:
Slight lack of energy
Dry skin
Dandruff
Rain Scald even without rain as the skin temp is high and there is a slight sweat.
Dry coat
Excesive coat growth in response to cold weather.
Stage two
Constant slight Dehydration
Lower energy levels
Hard to put weight on
Mscles will be ill defined and if you put pressure on them will feel like jelly
Reduction in muscle size especially between the legs and over the hips.
Stage three
Reduced Mane and Tail growth
Swelling of the abdomem
Horse looking at its belly like it has colic but only looking then walking on
Belly painful to the touch
Horse drags its feet when walking
Horse walks with a thud like a pregnant mare close to labor as the muscles stop functioning
Scouring
or normal manure followed by water
or projectile water
Stage Four
Chronic weight loss
Major muscle break down
Horse will stand base wide as the stay mechanism relies on muscle strength which no longer exists.
Tertiary sypmtoms of liver damage, kidney damage, swelling of the heart etc etc.
At this point the horses systems have just about failed.
The horse will still have a good appetite and drink well. It just seems to do them no good.
Blood tests at this point will show the stress on the horses system but still no indication of a cause.
In a lot of cases the horse is Euthanised with a post script of likely bowel cancer. No research is done as to the cause but as nothing else points to a problem Cancer is assumed.
Stallions seem to resist this more than mares and a lot more than geldings. I have records of a stallion that started symptoms 14 months before treatment. His last vet diagnosis was Chronic heart Failure. He was given 8 weeks to live by the vet, within those 8 weeks he responded enough to treatment to make a nuisance of himself of the clinic talking to the mares. This was something he had not done any any of his many visits over 12 months.
I also have records of a show gelding that won champion then 4 weeks later was in 24 hour vet care and died another 4 weeks later with no diagnosis as to the cause.
My own stallion showed only slight weight loss over the whole time we treated the mares. When we realised he was suffering the same thing they were with different symptoms we wormed him and he shed his entire coat in the middle of winter as it was too warm a week after worming.
Blood tests will show a horse within accepted ranges but the horse will look like a walking skeleton more and more. The things to look for in the blood work is a level of dehydration and elecrolyte imbalance. Also there is more proteins in the blood from muscles than from digested protein. There is also a form of anemia where the red blood cells that exist are all juvenille and cannot carry the normal amount of oxygen through the system.
In all the vets that have looked at this, it appears strange but nothing is out of range and would not seem to be related to the massive weight loss.
I have found records of the weight loss and death going back 17 years in Australia and at this moment this problem is prevalent on the east coast of Australia.
The reason for the increase in cases in Australia is the DrOught. The trigger for this parasites activity seems to be a DrOp in protein. This may be due to the food not growing as well. Early stages of old age meaning the food is not chewed properly to release enough protein, or in some cases a reduction in protein in the diet due to reduced work load or obesecity.
In the obesecity cases there may only be a slight change to the horses excesive diet. From that day onward the horse starts a downward spiral of weight loss, which is sort of accepted in the early days but once people discover the weight loss won't stop even if the feed is returned to the original or higher level no one knows what to do.
The fatter the horse to start with the more danegrous the problem is. The weight loss is more muscle reclaiming than stored fat usage so the horse may be still round but unable to carry their own weight.
The use of a Moxidectin based wormer is able to save horses even from stage four of symptoms. The use of the wormer is done at the weight the horse is currently which in some cases is close to half the horses original weight. The active parasites are removed from the gut allowing the horse to retrieve digested protein and start to rehydrate the body as per normal. In most cases you will have to follow up with a Moxidectin based wormer 14 days later as the dormant parasites have returned to the gut and the damage of their migration and their activity has usually impacted on the horse from about day 10 after the inital worming.
I usually dose the horse at this point at the weight they would normally carry ie the weight they are when healthy. This is done at only 14 days after the inital wormer due to the impact on the horses health the re-established parasites have on the horse.
For really bad cases I do it again at 28 days after the initial wormer. It is actually quiet easy to see the horses condition change once you have watched them recover then return to sickness the first time. The dramatic change that is recorded once the Moxidectin is administered is proof of a parasitic cause. The only problem is that all tests so far on blood and manure show no known parasite activity.
The other factor that the horses guts becomes intolerable to known parasites shows that the gut is the source of the problem. This parasite may be a relative to Giardia or similar protozaic types of parasites. The speed that the horse delcines in health shows that it is fast spreading and effective at stopping the uptake of protien.
In the Autopsy done there was massive inflamation of the gut wall. The wall in fact shattered at the touch of the scaple splitting along many lines of stress. The gut wall itself was badly damages but no parasites were visible.
This is much more prevalent on older horses, I always thought it strange that old horses plummeted in weight before the cold part of winter, I now know it is the DrOp in protein as the weather changes that starts the parasitic activity that kills the older horse or triggers Cushings.
9 years ago, I accidently treated my 20year old mare who was slightly under weight and had soft manure. I tried many wormers to no effect. Then I used a Moxidectin based one once and she came real good and had a nice foal at age 24. It was only last year I recalled her predicament and the reponse to the Moxidectin. She is now 29 and still kicking along though we have had a number of bouts of parasite attack. I would love the find the precise parasite and work out the most efficent way of controlling it. I just don't have the million dollars or so required to analyse something that is hard to find. Talk about expensive needle in a haystack work. I am happy that one or two doses will fix most cases as if the drug was designed for it. It also made me aware that a good worming routine can not be relied upon to get a horse free of parasites. The first question the Vets asked, "when was the horse wormed" this unfortunately meant the deaths of 2 horses because it could not posibly be a parasite. We took it on as a fight to find the cause and it was indeed a parasite or something growing in the gut.
I Hope this helps some with horses that are loosing rediculous amounts of weight. It is very scary to watch especially when the horse seems fine in all other ways. If you know your horse is on the correct diet, then look for another cause. We had 12 of 13 show symptoms after the first 2 of my friends horses died. The symptoms were non specific due to way each horse copes with the equivalent of a marathon each day. I have got over 100 cases through to health, and I know of 4-5 hundred more that died before the correct info could be passed on.
Reagrds
Darren
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 8:03 am:
Welcome back Darren,
What am I going to do with this mess above? Your stages of symptom could describe any of dozens of diseases including some very common ones including Equine Pituitary Dysfunction. I would suggest to you that the variation in symptomology is NOT due to some new and exotic disease but due to many of the common old ones we have already knew about. If it is moxidectin responsive then the problem is these horses had parasites.
If you are saying that horses should be dewormed regularly with moxidectin, well no argument here, but if you are saying that you have discovered some new and exotic disease there is little proof of that above.
DrO
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New Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 10:30 am:
That is part of the problem, having seen this happen to many horses in many situations I can rule out the standard Parasites as well as the Kidney, Liver, Heart Failure or Pituitary Dysfunction as the cause, only the tertiary problems.
I am quite happy to discuss the double blind tests done and the accuracy of diagnosis.
The standard diagnosis and the standard treatments used by vets are commonly fatal. If as you say this is just a normal problem you are relegating some 100 vets to the level of incompetence, a bigger call than I would make.
I have posted these symptoms on many lists and have saved many horses when the owners vets were stumped as to a cause.
Most vets have already written off the horses as the symptoms over such are short time frame are unexplained and in past experience lead to death. I have spoken to a number of the vets that declared the horses beyond help and then seen them recover.
The horses including my own have been on defined and correct worming protocols. The immediacy and definity of the reaction to a single product is amazing to see.
You have been quick to state the horses must have parasites which is correct when you consider that Moxidectin fixes the horse within 24-48 hours. The facts behind the matter are that these same horses have tested nil for parasites and in some cases wormed with Ivermectin products at 14 day intervals with no gain in health until Moxidectin is used.
No one in the industry can tell me which parasite is only controlled by Moxidectin for the last 9 years. This same parasite is immune to Ivermectin and has been for those same 9 years.
The cases I have tracked go back 17 years with the same series of symptoms. So the control of this parasite has been ineffective for at least 17 years.
If you have read up on a diet of mineral supplements by Pat Colby you will notice that the symptoms she describes are the same. Her very high levels of copper in the diet have the effect of controlling this parasite too.
Which parasites are controlled by high levels of copper in the body or is it an effective parasite control for most parasites?
I have had many people state it is just not possible that a single product produce such a reaction when all others fail. Once they are presented with the evidence they go through stages of asking questions about external factors from water to insect activity. In the end it comes back to what I see, a horse in a serious stage of distress can be turned around in a few weeks.
In your experience do you know of a parasite that while a horse is wormed in 8 week intervals can be healthy enough to win champion at show then 4 weeks later be in such a bad state that it is in 24 hour care at a vet clinic, then when that fails moved to one of the biggest vet clinics near Melbourne, with many many vets in attendence. This poor horse was put down with no known cause of its ill health. If this was simply a known problem then the sheer number of vets in attendance would have made a diagnosis simple.
Also a group of 8 horses were in identical state of weightloss at a farm checked by the local RSPCA. I described what they would see in the horses and they confirmed that the horses were in the precise state of ill health. Unfortunately for those horse the local vet could not diagnose a cause and they were put down.
The overall effect of this parasite which ever one it is, is to block protein uptake in the hind gut. You can watch the progression through the body in a short period of time. At first there is enough protein uptake to heal the gut as soon as it is damaged by the parasite. The horse then succums to the rapid dispersal of the parasite, the more the gut is damaged and the more the protein uptake is restricted the harder the horse has to work to heal itself. Fairly quickly the water transfer from the hind gut is affected and the horse shows slight dehyration and the manure becomes very wet.
I recently treated 2 horses bought from one farm, the first I saw personally and noted stage one issues and recommended Moxidectin. With in 2 weeks the horses gut had started to swell the manure was soft, the horse lethargic, all of this in a young horse wormed regularly. I treated the horse with the Moxidectin purchased by the owner. I then saw the horse 2 weeks later and the horse suddenly looked much better in coat condition and was nearly jumping the fence in the increase in energy levels. The horse also had put on a large amount of weight and appeared to have grown considerably in 2 weeks.
The other horse was remote and the owner had heard my comments on the look of the first horse. The owner of the second horse was aware of similar symptoms in her horse even after a recent worming with Ivermectin. The horse had also been tried on various diets to try and improve the condition. I am yet to hear a result but can be very confident that the result will match all the others.
When you sit down and examine the evidence there are only 2 conclusions A) that all wormers other than Ivermectin have not functioned properly for the last 2-17 years. B) That there is a parasite that is only controlled by Moxidectin.
Taking a leaf from Sherlock Holmes "if you get rid of all the things that were impossible, what was left was the answer, no matter how improbable".
I have looked at this thing from many angles and done double blind tests where even the people using the drugs had no idea what to expect. This eliminates the possiblity of perceived results. In each case where the horse was sick the only parasite control to work was Moxidectin though I do believe high levels of copper in the diet do control the parasite as per Pat Colby.
Pats diet was written in times of a DrOught and the improvement she saw in the horses can be directly matched with the results I see in Moxidectin use.
Which of the currently known parasites is controlled by Copper overdose and Moxidectin and just about nothing else. Which parasite has a less than 10 day larval stage and can multiply en mass and not show up in regular manure testing even by the university vet clinic.
The other thing I have seen is that horses once treated have an amazing level of feed processing. Some have been over weight in a DrOught when only being fed every second day, others have fed them selves and a growing foal with no hand feeding in a time of bad feed availablity. Another that has recovered is doing 80km a week endurance work with no hand feeding, just paddock grass.
This stuff is only annecdotal as there is no way to qualify the measurements, but they are to be expected when the horse has been fighting to work around the gut damage then have the burden removed.
The rest of the work can be measured, repeated and proven with ease. I would love to know what it is that is being measured.
The number of horses lost to this problem over the last 20 years must be staggering. I refused to accept the vet diagnosis that it could not be a parasite because they could not find one. I proved it was there but can not identify it. The owners of horses that came back from near death are also happy I went the extra mile.
I am quite happy to discuss any theories you may have, I would love to show the depth of the work done so far.
My current premise is that within Australia there is a parasite that is immune to all but Copper overdoses and Moxidectin. It has gone undiagnosed for at least 17 years, though my local clninc has defined it as old horse synDrOme by the pattern in the blood work.
The trigger for the rampant expansion of this parasite is a DrOp in protein uptake with no real consideration as to how much weight the horse currently has.
This DrOp in protein could be a feed change or the quality of the growth is affected by DrOught or in non DrOught periods old age can be the trigger for the parasite to take hold.
If you know which parasite fits this model I would love to know its name as most other parasitologists have no answers.
Regards
Darren
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Member:
Cara2
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Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 11:56 am:
Hi Darren and Dr O
Could it just be a an unknown pharmacological effect that the moxidectin produces a turn-around? I'm thinking of the cases in human medicine where a drug normally associated with one thing, is discovered by chance, to have other effects, beneficial or otherwise, eg. Thalidomide. The copper overdose I could half understand as different species require varying copper levels in their diet. Here in the UK we are warned not to feed sweet feed produced for horses to sheep because the copper level is toxic to our fleecy friends.
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 3:08 pm:
Darren, that is the problem: you don't have a diagnosis, you only have a set of cases where horses with non-specific and variable signs of poor doing that did better when wormed with moxidectin. At best this is accurately called a synDrOme but since your constellation of signs are so general and variable it is hard to squeeze it under this.
There are a set of rules for determining whether or not an organism causes a particular disease, those rules are called Koch's Postulates:
1. The specific organism should be shown to be present in all cases of animals suffering from a specific disease but should not be found in healthy animals.
2. The specific microorganism should be isolated from the diseased animal and grown in pure culture on artificial laboratory media.
3. This freshly isolated microorganism, when inoculated into a healthy laboratory animal, should cause the same disease seen in the original animal.
4. The microorganism should be reisolated in pure culture from the experimental infection.
In modern medicine not all diseases have leant themselves to all of these postulates and some modern techniques allow us to skip some of these (at some risk or misinterpreting what we see) but I cannot see where you have even one of these postulates. If you want to pursue this you don't start with the hypothesis there is some "super bug" out there that causes this because clinical signs like these have thousands of possible explanations, you start with finding the lesions responsible for the clinical signs. Find the lesions and often the cause becomes apparent. For instance if enteritis is the problem, thorough microscopic examination and culture should reveal a list of possibilities including possible resistant parasites.
In the meantime if a horse looks wormy I would treat it no matter what the fecal exam said. If you are having good luck with moxidectin, continue it by all means, it is what I do only I would use the praziquantel mixture as tapes are not well treated with moxidectin.
DrO
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New Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 6:30 pm:
Ooops wrong button.
Yes Helen we have tried to think of everything, we have tried every form of supportive medication for sick horses. We removed them one by one, until we came to the point that if you used Moxidectin and did not change the horses diet the horse recovered well. In fact you could get the horse back to health by cutting its feed, which may seem strange but the damage done by the parasite is extensive and heals well.
So unless Moxidectin has a direct effect on the Endocrine system that allows the horse to digest food better than ever, then it is a parasite.
We can show that this parasite does exist in healthy horses too but until it is triggered into agressive action it is almost benign. Minor little signs in things like poor mane growth, hoof strength problems may be the only sign.
The difference between good doers and poor doers could be parasite activity. In fact a lot of horse nutrition seems to be skewed to favour horses that have a low level of parasite activity. One computer system shows a horse should be loosing weight if its diet is entered into to the calculator. This means that science behind diet is making allowance for an unknown factor. As the horse in question is in prime condition.
I would not go as far as to call it a super bug, it is just a bug that is very small and has escaped notice so far. Some of the horses including the show horse do not look wormy before the onset of scours and weight loss. In fact most look healthy but loose weight at an amazing rate, so much so that the supervising vets have no idea what they are watching. A lot of horses have been diagnosed as being poisoned as there is no other definable cause.
We have had blood tests done on horses that appear in perfect health but the blood work shows the precise pattern of protein imbalance and electrolyte imbalance and anemia. The blood work is the same for all affected horses until the rest of their body starts to shut down, no matter the observed symtoms.
Due to the fact that the perception is that no unidentified bug could exist, there has been no effort made to track this thing down. The horses that responded to treatment all responded in the same way. So even though the pathology appears different the return to health follows a known pattern.
If Moxidectin had existed years ago maybe science would have isolated the bug. The fact the horses were untreatable back then means that the status quo has been maintained.
If this is just a known parasite why is it missed by vets and the university? Shouldm't the tests done show it is a parasite and which one it is.
All the horses that have died from it are classified as poisoned, cancer, kidney failure, liver failure or heart attack the rest are old age. Why does it not show killed by parasites on those vet reports.
If the vets do not think the horse is wormy what chance does the average horse owner stand of diagnosing parasites.
Just to put this into a chronic weight loss context, we are not looking at a poor horse getting healthy. We are taking a horse that was in prime health and within 4 weeks is a walking skeleton. The horse only has a week or two to live unless given the right treatment. Once wormed twice in 14 days that same horse puts on weight nearly as fast as it lost it.
If you want to isolate a symptom to this parasite it is the weight loss that starts at the thighs before any other part of the body. This makes clinical sense as the body can not digest protein so it has to pull protein from the closest muscles to heal the gut.
So if you said a horse loosing weight on the thighs for no nutritional reason should be treated with Moxidectin twice 14 days appart to save its life you would have the problem in a nutshell.
In fact if vets had that in their mind it would have saved countless horses over the last few years.
Regards
Darren
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Member:
Hwood
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Posted on Tuesday, May 24, 2005 - 9:16 pm:
Darren,
Do you have case studies for which you can provide references for us? Pictures? Without evidence, this all seems much too like a science fiction story.
I do recall one HA member who had a horse die, and the vets said her horse died of starvation, even though all of her other horses were healthy and in good flesh. I don't know where she lives.
Again, documentation is important and necessary to validate the information you have posted. What is your profession in Australia?
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 1:23 am:
I have a couple hundred pages of info, case studies and pics of other people horses before and after treatment.
It is funny you mentioned starving to death as that is exactly what it appears like. The only conjecture is that if you starved a horse it would live two or three times longer as the body would adjust to the lack of feed intake. The fact the horse has intestinal damage means it must strip protein to heal the gut as the gut is number one priority in the healing.
One of the blood tests sent to me actually had a comment from the pathologist "horse appears annorexic".
I don't know how to upload pics here, I do plan to put a lot of this stuff up on my own web site when I get a moment.
As to my profession I am a computer programer / networking consultant. So I am very well aware of scientific procedures and the influence of the human mind on the percieved results.
Hence the independant tests done by others are valued as confirmation that the solution is acurate and wholly effective.
In many cases there are a number of horses on the property but only specific ones are affected. One lady moved her horses about 100km to a new property. It rained lightly the day she arrived and this seems to be a trigger to the parasite activity. A lot of parasites react to rainfall so that is not unique.
The horse affected was a 24year old mare that immediately started scouring and loosing weight. A second horse also started to loose weight. She asked on an email list if anyone knew what it was. I gave her the things to look for and the methods of using Moxidectin. The two sick horses were treated and the response was immediate. There were about 6 other horses that showed no ill affects but, when treated a few weeks later with Moxidectin they picked up in energy as if they had had their food doubled :-)
I have had plenty of discussions with Equine Parasitology experts, they tell me it is not possible, but they cannot answer me as to why a horse would get so much better when given a toxin as the only treatment.
I do know it flys in the face of current science but that is what scientific discovery is about. You rule out all the things it can not be, until you are left with a narrow search field. I can say that only Moxidectin works, I can say the horses gut is badly affected. These two things narrow the field to a parasite. Beyond that you need some highly specialised testing equipment and some dead or near dead horses.
The good thing about this is you don't need to be a vet to administer this and even if the vet has given up on finding a solution the horse owner has one more thing to try. Many of the cases I have seen have been diagnosed by vets as incurable or nothing more than a need for more feed.
I have a feeling some people have been sent to jail for failing to care for animals correctly, this is possible something they had no control over if the vets cannot find a cause.
In most cases the vets automatically assume the horse is not getting enough feed as they appear to be starving. The problem is they get no protein from the food they are eating.
Regards
Darren
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Member:
Sctamaus
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Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 12:12 pm:
Hollywood,
I am the HA member you refer to. My name is Cheryl Gall and I live in Northern Indiana.
My post was "I think someone poisoned my horse."
Dr. O did read the Necropsy report and said he could have been poisoned, but not knowing what type leaves me at a dead end.
I just ran across this post, but have not had time to read the whole thing. It caught my eye where it said how rapidly these horses lost weight, which is exactly what happened with my horse.
Cheryl
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Member:
Christos
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Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 1:58 pm:
Darren, there's something that really bothers me in this story.
DrOught is tough, I know, but letting horses starve is criminal negligence in Australia too, I believe.
You say that this was not negligence but some unknown parasite. I'd be very interested, however, in what Australian authorities have to say about hundreds of horses dying of "unexplained" starvation during DrOught.
You are not a vet, of course, and you have no obligation to report such incidents. But what are the names of these 100 vets who watch horses starve to death and do not report it?
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 5:49 pm:
Actually christos the only requirement of any person caring for animals that are in poor condition is to seek veterinary advice.
My friends had the RSPCA inspectors arrive to see their thin horses. They said the horses have been seen by the vet, the inspectors can only walk away.
As for the names of the vets I have a few but when you consider that the number of vets that worked on the show gelding as he wasted away. It is not a case of negligence just a case of not knowing what the problem is. The cases of mistreatment are refered to vets for a professional opinion. The 8 horses at Ulladulla that were destroyed by the vet due to incurable weight loss are a good example of not knowing what else to do.
When my own horses were sick we had numerous vets out to find a cause in the end I had to do the research myself as the first 2 of my friends horses died under veterinary care.
This is not a case of mistreatment or malpractice it is just an undiagnosed problem.
The problem of weight loss is refered to the correct authorities the Vets. If they cannot do anything then no ones is to blame.
I just got an email from the lady in Tasmania whose horse was in and out of the vet clinic with gradual weight loss and related ailments. She is so excited that the damage has just about healed. Her vet could only classify the problem as Congestive Heart Failure he gave the horse 8 weeks before he should be put down. In that 8 weeks by luck more than anything I saw her request for info on CHF and I rightly guessed that the swollen heart was due to muscle fatigue and internal damage. We had the horse in better health in two weeks than he had been in 12 months. The fact he lived those 12 months seems to relate to the fact he was a stallion.
Regards
Darren
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 6:02 pm:
Hi Cheryl
I will try and find that thread.
I have heard of a number of cases of this in Texas and a couple of other places in the US. That is why I decided to post this info on the horsemans advisor.
In each of those cases in the US the vets conclusion was the horse starved to death in a real short time.
With out access to the history of those horses or the blood work I am loath to say they are the same thing. The fact that vets could not save the horses means it is worthwhile investigating.
In Australia all cases can be traced to the east coast of Australia. Any cases on the other side of the country are from horses shipped in the previous 6 months.
I don't doubt that it happens on the otherside of the country just much harder to find without the protein DrOp occuring.
The first horse of my friends that died was suspected of being poisoned by eating a trees bark. It was just the horse trying to self medicate. When they lost the second one the Autopsy could not show a cause other than damaged gut.
In the month these 2 died, another 2 died from suspected herbicide poisoning, 3 from cancer another 2 from kidney failure. One was operated on by the vets and diagnosed with african horse sickness but got better for a while.
Hopefully enough people will understand the symptoms and try the treatment.
Regards
Darren
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Member:
Christos
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Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 6:41 pm:
Again, Darren:
You say there's an unidentified factor causing an epidemic, yet none of these 100 vets sees it or reports it that way.
And you have found a simple cure, but either you haven't told these vets or they are inconsiderate enough to not even try it, let alone report it.
So the deadly situation goes on and a horse's only hope is his owner running into you in a message board.
What am I to believe here?
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Wednesday, May 25, 2005 - 10:56 pm:
Concerning this US epidemic that was discussed last month on these boards, consultation with Virginia veterinary necropsy labs, a state where this was suppose to be happening, there were no unusual deaths reported.
DrO
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Member:
Paul303
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Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 2:34 am:
Darren: I know this must be so frustrating for you, to find so much evidence for your theory, yet meet only doubt when you present your findings. But the scientific method requires so much more proof of "rule outs".
For example, there is a condition in humans called celiac's disease, which is essentially, an allergy to glutens. These people have poor nutrient absorbtion and extreme gut motility and often live in misery, diagnosed with irritable bowel synDrOme and treated for that. Once their allergy is diagnosed and appropriate steps are taken ( i.e. gluten free foods ), the recovery is miraculous.
There are also horses with hay allergies ( or dust allergies ) where once the allergens are minimized, improvement is rapid.
Perhaps you could enlist the help of a vet student who is looking for a doctoral thesis or a research project. You might be able to pique the interest of a parasitologist.
Use your computer expertise to find the people you need to back up all the research you have done so far. They should know all the rule outs you need to negotiate in order to clear the way to the parasite theory.
Much luck, Darren.
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 4:10 am:
Hi Christos you are currently correct the majority of the horse that have been saved are by the owners being brave enough to post a request for help on the internet.
It is amazing how many people will put a sick horse like that in the back paddock so no one will notice and hope that it gets better.
Many of the vets I have spoken too have the attitude if it was worms they would have noticed it :-/
I have actually been on the phone to a vet on site with a horse that had collapsed due to exhaustion. I have never personally met this vet but I explained what was wrong with the horse what treatments to give the horse and how to follow it up. It is a weird experience to be diagnosing over the phone to the vet. Her diagnosis was cancer but she followed the treatment program. The horse was up and around in 24 hours and well on the road to recovery within 2 weeks.
Most vets follow their training and say that the theory is highly improbable. When they see the results some accept it as an interesting event. Others will explain it away as something else the horse may or may not have had.
I have one vet who did his own research after seeing some of the work I had done. He was treating horses in a clinic for something else and noted that a couple of horses were showing slight dehydration. With the advantage of the clinic he was able to run I.V. fluids. This helped the horse for about 6 hours the horse then returned to the status quo.
Regards
Darren
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 6:34 am:
Cheryl I had a read through your sad episode.
The lesions in the mouth may be the same as the second horse my friend lost. Dr. O having seen the photos may consider it the damage associated with an exhausted horse crashing into the ground. The poor boy they lost would try to throw his head up to get up and his mouth would hit the ground.
Your vets description that the horse must have starved to death over a very long period of time is a common comment. This is not a good way to have a vet appreciate your efforts as the body of the horse tells them one thing and you the owner are saying something so different from what they see.
As for fluid around the heart and organs this is seen in most cases of this parasite infestation. The horses body is so stressed it falls back to basic defense mechanisms.
The horses also become susceptible to all manner of infections as their body shuts down.
My old girl actually wore a hole in her skin from her rug rubbing. The body was so stressed the skin was not nurished and repaired as per normal.
This hole took only a few days to occur, other horses showed colds and other maladies.
To give you some details of the show gelding who died from this.
The horse won champion at show then within a week was loosing weight and scouring. Within 4 weeks the horse was a walking bag of bones. Luckily for that owner the vet had attended the show and was aware of just how healthy the horse was a few weeks ago. He asked the horse come into the clinic for observation and study. The vet suspected a gut problem and decided to do a bowel biopsy. This was a bad move as the horses with the parasite have such a badly damaged gut that it cannot handled being cut.
One local horse that was ill was kicked by another and the intestines ruptured in multiple places. The attending vet went to do some repairs to the gut but no stitching would hold. The horse was put down and the horse and all veterinary equipment that touched the horse was burned with it. The property was put on quarantine. That is as close to a diagnosis as my local vets have achieved.
The horse at the local vet clinic could not hold the stitches used to repair the accidently ruptures bowel. The horse then suffered septecemia and was sent off to the biggest vet clinic near melbourne. Surgeons there managed to patch the horse up but it did not hold they then did a full resection to join two sections of bowel with healthier tissue. This worked for a week or so then these new repairs failed an the horse suffered another septic attack. The horse was patched up one more time this seemed to work. The problem was no matter what the vets fed the horse it lost weight and with all the medication they could not stop it scouring.
The vets managed to stretch the horses decline out a few weeks more than the average horse owner. The problem is with all their tissue samples, feed suplements and medications. They did not find a cause or a cure.
This sequence monitored by the vets is the same as I saw in the first horses affected by it at my friends place and matched the sequence of events that the owner of the local feed store 17+ years ago. Now if the people with access to the best feeds and medications cannot save the horses what chance the average horse owner.
My friends horse that was put down before she hurt herself was so thin the thighs were only as wide as the bone underneath. The horse never had appetite problems always drank her water never had a temp until secondary infections started to get her.
The day before she was put down was the first day she could not / would not eat. We knew she could not continue as she was and the decision had been made the week before.
The second boy had not lost a great deal of weight he was still not a walking skeleton but collapsed from exahustion and dehydration during the night. He had cut his gums from falling and was barely aware of what was going on. The vets administered fluids but these had no affect on the horse as it all went from his blood stream to his gut. Given the decisions again I would not have done the I.V. the fluids would have made his last hours hell as his body was not functioning properly.
The other interesting case I heard my local vets handled was a horse owned by a vet nurse from another clinic. They did exploritories on the horse and found fluid around the heart lungs and in the neck. The diagnosis came back african horse sickness. This is rarely survived and is a reportable disease, the symptoms were a good match but no mention was made of destroying the horse. The symptoms are also indicative of protein starvation, through various people a message was passed on to use Moxidectin. From what I can tell the horse was wormed just before going to the clinic. The horse was only at the clinic a few days and walked out a happy horse with no treatment given. The vets just assumed it was an unknown "episode"
Ok this is my guess as to what I would expect to have seen in your horse prior to his collapse. First the horse would have seemed normal, then you may have noticed his coat was dry or he had dandruff. Next the top line and areas above the hips would have seemed underweight. If you had looked between the thighs you would have noticed the thighs no longer touched. You may have then changed the diet to increase his feed. You may have noticed him standing around more rather than running he would only walk point to point unless pushed. As his weight DrOpped you may have noticed he looked like he had a grass belly.
Being a freezing cold time of year I doubt he would have looked like a walking skeleton. The muscles break down and would not be effective at keeping him warm in the cold weather. My first assumption is the horse died from hypothermia. My mini stallion could not get warm in winter even though he had not lost much weight. Once I figured out his muscles were wasting even though he had not scoured once, I wormed him after doing parasite testing and he shed white hairs all over the house yard one week later.
I have permission of the owner of the Congestive Heart Failure horse to publish his photo so people can learn from his experience.
The email I received a couple of days ago said "he is doing really really really well" I have asked for new photos since three really's sounds good.
Hey Dr O. I love the attachment feature :-)
Ok Jingles is an 11 year old champion standard bred stallion, in the pic here he is a shadow of his former self. His weight loss started 2 weeks after moving to his new home. He went to one show and won a few ribbons then he just lost the energy to do anything. After many visits to the vets he was diagnosed with CHF, the swelling you see had affected all his organs. The owners father was a nurse and we described the horses condition as the equivalent to a malnourished child in Ethiopia. This horse woman was at her wits end as to why she could not put weight on her horse. Jingles is the only horse to last 12 months without treatment so she must have been doing everything she could. Jingles is the horse where one of the blood work reports came back from the pathologist "horse appears annorexic".
Within a week of the Moxidectin dose the horse actually ran up the hill from the dam when called. He had not done this for nearly a year. This is compared to two consecutive doses of Ivermectin 14 days apart monitored by the vet which had no effect, some months before I heard of his case.
Normally you could not link a horse in this condition to a horse that had collapsed due to exhuastion then to a horse that appeared sort of OK but suffered multiple ruptures after a kick that could not be stitched. Then compare that to my mini stallion who had been slightly underweight for 5 months.
This is part of biodiversity each horse reacts to protein starvation in its own way. Hence the widely differing symptoms, in fact return bouts of the parasite were handled differently again by te same horses. A whole new set of symptoms were noted, in fact the body refused to give up muscle proteins which lead to chronic fatigue synDrOm in the horses.
Regards
Darren
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 7:37 am:
Sorry Christos to answer the other question you asked there is no link between vet clinics and no reason to suspect these isolated incindents are related. One clinic has 8 vets another has 6 the big clinic has over 20 vets. The other vets are at small 1-3 vet clinics.
Even if it was suspected the symptoms vary so wildly and the blood reports all come back close to standard so where would they start.
Playing with the attachment feature now :-)
Ok I have never had contact with the owner of this horse but was contacted by her friend after she saw a post I made on a cause for weightloss.
The treatment of Moxidectin was delayed by the owner not believing the cause and then using an Ivermectin based wormer she had already bought. After asking for follow info the owner used Moxidectin and reported back an immediate response.
I could make a good sales rep for the makers of moxidectin but they do not even believe their product does anything out of the ordinary :-/
Regards
Darren
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 8:54 am:
You have it exactly backwards Darren:
1) All horses react pretty much the same to protein starvation and do not have widely differing symptoms.
2) But all chronic systemic diseases lead to weight loss and loss of protein but will have widely differing symptoms and lab results depending on the failing organ's function.
DrO
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Thursday, May 26, 2005 - 6:31 pm:
Not meaning to pick a hole in that :-), but if as you surmise the reaction is the same then the cause would become self evident.
Symptoms of protein loss must equal lack of digestion.
If the blood work and treatment is the same for the widely varying symptoms then the systemic reaction to the problem must be the difference.
Just look at what the vets have written about the condition of horses they have seen.
Jingles has slight weightloss but much more swelling, Blue has major weight loss and slight grass belly.
I feel this is like the way people all react differently to extreme exercise, or they way their bodies react to a lack of food.
To be more pedantic injuries heal at different rates in different animals. Some heal fast some heal slow some heal to a better degree than others.
Now if you consider the bigger problem here is healing more than lack of protein uptake. This will increase the disparity.
Even the levels of antibodies in the system will change the way one animal will react to a secondary problem. This is set down long before the body starts to fail. This also shows why the horses react so different at the time of reinfestation.
It is interesting to hear your comments as they show the methods of learning.
This might be why this is such a long term problem, if you look for a solution based on all the symptoms you end up with no definable problem.
If you suspect a drain on the horse is causing the reactions you would be closer to a solution.
Consider this nutshell.
If you forget all other premises and consider that only horses treated with a certain toxin are the ones that start to heal within 2 days. This means discarding age, sex, nutrition, secondary infections, tertiary complications, breeding or just about any clinical signs beyond the fact the horse is loosing weight on a normal feed level.
Now if each horse treated showed different symptoms but each responded in the same way to the toxin.
You either have to think the toxin is the best cure all on the planet or that a specific problem was causing all the different reactions.
Now even if you can't find the problem due to limited scientific tools you at least have a solution. Inellegant it may be, unscientific probably, but when horses that would be dead within weeks are suddenly healthy again at least the solution is correct.
I would love to go through the records of all horses that died of sudden weight loss. It may help build a pattern.
One local horse was a 30 year old in work just a picture of health, over a very short period the horse wasted away and died, everyone just said it was the horses time to die. If people had understood this problem the horse may have lived many many years more.
One horse near here that worked everyday pulling a cart lived to 54 years of age.
Regards
Darren
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Friday, May 27, 2005 - 6:58 am:
No Darren, protein loss (muscle mass I assume you are talking about) does not mean solely digestive disorders there are other causes of which here are a few:
1) protein losing enteropathy where protein is lost from the blood to the bowel.
2) increased catabolism of tissue from chronic disease
3) less protein intake than required to maintain tissue.
DrO
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Friday, May 27, 2005 - 10:44 am:
Yes that is correct, what I am describing is more the second two.
Well OK it could be a mucosal disease affecting the lumen and causing leaking back to the bowel but I have not heard of a disease that can be cured by Moxidectin. Or even if it is a lymphatic problem leading to protein-losing gastroenteropathy why would a toxin be the cure. The other question would be how would numerous horses in disparet places have the same problems. I mean even some horses have perfectly normal manure.
Stage one of the effect is damage to the lumen and a disabling of the water transfer or affecting the regulation hence the dehydration when the animal has good access to water. At first the area affected is small and the rest compensates, then as the parasite spreads the transfer of proteins in the affected areas is no longer possible. So even though the horse is eating food it is no longer able to retrieve proteins from its food. It begins to starve to death. If a horse was on a diet of lower feed than required to maintain body mass, various mechanisms kick in to make better use of the available proteins. Stored fat is recovered fitness levels DrOp. The horse could continue for months on a low level of feed as that is how they survive a DrOught etc.
The problem here is the lumen is damaged and the surrounding tissue is damaged. The body responds to the wounds by suppling the necessary proteins and cells to grow new tissue. This is fine until the damage exceeds the replacement rate.
This leads to the next stage and that is massive catabolism usually from the muscles closest to the gut. Interestingly enough if a horse is fat the proteins are pulled in at a faster rate than the stored fat. The horses body is in overdrive trying to heal the gut. I imagine it is like trying to run a marathon every day. The food the horse is eating is not getting through to the body, any stored fat the horse has either can not be metabolised properly or is of no use as it is more sugar than building blocks.
I am not sure if you have a particular chronic disease in mind as the reason for catabolism, but any time healing is required on mass, catabolism can part of the process. The fact this starts at the hips is an indication that the problem is close by.
This comes back to my favourite question, which disease is treated by Moxidectin.
The level of catabolism is probably 3 times that of a starving horse as the body must repair the gut to stay alive but in the process part of the body is sacrificed. The first horse to die was an a series of anabolic steroids to no effect. I think a lot of horses are put onto an anabolic regime as a medication.
Once treated the animals are suddenly no longer required to heal damage. It is like they are on red cordial, they still look like death warmed up but get around as if they have not run a marathon. Even something as simple as walking is done with a bounce and muscular strength where 2 days before the feet just thudded down and they were dragged step by step.
I hate to think what all this does to the rest of the endocrine system.
For some reason vets think that the wormer is only a secondary consideration that can be overlooked. It is almost as if the horse healed itself in spite of being given a toxin.
I would love to continue this via email, I can send you the blood work I have and you can suggest some alternative causes. If you don't want to I can accept that too. It is not a money making exercise I know, I had the extra incentive of saving the lives of my horses.
Regards
Darren
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 9:18 am:
I am specifically not discussing what you have seen. I am correcting your misstatements about disease processes in general and here are a few more from your last post:
Yes horses every where have similar problems, though you say the symptoms in the horses you have seen are variable. I have seen no evidence for the statements you make on a probable pathology and the blood work does not provide that information, you want to know the reason for the changes. Yes it is true that horses heal themselves, that is what happens in the majority of illnesses Darren, the horse heals itself. We can help in some cases, we can improve the horses comfort level, and occasionally we make the difference between life and death, but mostly the horse heals itself.
Darren instead of taking the time to carefully discuss a single case you have chosen to make wild assertions about how you have figured out that horses die because they are not getting enough moxidectin and that dozens of veterinarians won't listen to you despite the fact you have saved hundreds while they have lost hundreds more. This seems a bit far fetched but if this is in fact the case I sit with the opinion I gave you in my very first post: you are treating parasites. If a fecal does not demonstrate what parasites then you must have a necropsy done on horses to find which parasite. To see a list of known parasites treated see Equine Medications and Nutriceuticals » Dewormers (Anthelminics) » Quest (moxidectin). I do not see how blood work or backhanded insults will change what I am saying. But the insult is hard to understand considering the number of hours I have already spent trying to put you on the correct road to understanding this.
DrO
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Member:
Christos
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Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 10:55 am:
Whoa, Darren, help me, a poor foreigner, with my inadequate English.
Are you saying in your last sentence that you're into saving horses while vets, including DrO, are just into making money?
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Member:
Sunny66
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Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 12:43 pm:
That's what I get from it Christos...
Darren, please apologize to Dr. O...I do know of one vet this may apply to...but CERTAINLY NOT and I emphasize NOT Dr.O! He has offered this service to save us money. Period. He has helped countless horse owners to help keep our horses safe, HEALTHY and happy.
Generalizations are a dangerous thing.
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Moderator:
DrO
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Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 4:25 pm:
Thanks for the support guys but let's be clear, Horseadvice is one of the ways I feed my family and put a roof over my head. It is true I did not always charge for this service but once it took my over my life I had to make a decision if I wanted to continue it.
More than any one other single event, I got into this because of the way the Potomac Horse Fever test and vaccine was knowingly foisted upon the horse owning public even though it was known the test seriously flawed and the vaccine not much better than nothing. In the areas it occurs it is a terrible disease but for most of us not a local problem, but the test said different and the result was a lot of unecessary panic and expense.
But this was the precipitating event in what was overall a frustrating time to have a scientist's perspective on equine medicine in 80's. In 25 years we have come so far. I am very proud of the general state of equine medicine today though I know it has not penetrated everywhere yet and I hope this site helps and I hope it makes me terribly rich, one day. But I get more satisfaction from the kudos and stories of where we seemed to have made a difference than the monthly bank statement.
DrO
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Member:
Christos
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Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 4:59 pm:
What b****y support are you talking about, Doctor? You don't need any support, your work speaks for itself.
And I wholeheartedly wish that it does make you extremely rich one day so that you can stop working and travel the globe a bit. It will help you understand the service you provide to us.
I'm just trying to help Darren sort things out a bit. If I could just get him to start studying the articles in just the time he spends writing fiction novels and may be ride a bit in the weekends, we'd surely have yet another fine horsefellow on this board.
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Member:
Dyduroc
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Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 6:04 pm:
Well said, Christos and Aileen!
DrO, I, too, hope this site makes you rich beyond your wildest dreams! The information, sharing and support on this site are only possible because of your hard work and dedication. Why shouldn't you reap the rewards?
I consider myself very fortunate to have the services of a veterinarian who shares your passion for equine medicine. His 'hands-on' presence coupled with the vast body of knowledge you make available are a win/win combination in my book!
D.
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Member:
Hwood
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Posted on Saturday, May 28, 2005 - 7:10 pm:
Ummmmmmmmmmmmm . . . and they all lived happily ever after.
The End ;-)
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Member:
Paardex
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Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 8:25 am:
Your articles and good advice already saved me a lot more money than it cost me.I too hope you will be extremely rich because of this site, still if you are going to travel the world enjoy your wealth and leave us behind I sincerely hope you will provide a successor and I will keep paying him happily.
Jos
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 5:14 pm:
Ok I have started on my latest test case called "Ginger Megs", I have taken photos and documented what I can. This will be a very interesting case for many reasons. I have been run off my feet as usual but every step foward is a good one. I might start a seperate dicussion so it does not get mixed up with this in a couple of weeks.
Sorry to Dr O. for pushing the point so hard I don't mean in any way to say you don't know what you are talking about. I am just pointing out you are not the first vet to make the suggestions you have. I have read all the documentation on worms and cycles I could find. I have looked back through years of history, I have spoken to many great horse people I have contacted numerous vets. I have studied how the gut works, I have hassled the manufactureres of the products in question for all their testing info. Before repeating the dosage at 14 days I wanted to know every test done on toxicity. I have demonstrated all this to the Vet in charge of monitoring the product and he has called in the parasitology guys from Sydney Uni. It all stopped when funds were needed to continue research.
I was just trying to impart what I have researched. It could save the many hundreds maybe thousands of hours digging into this problem I have done.
I am not saying the vets are making money causing horses to die, I dont even want to imply that. It is more a case of what they see is only part of the problem. In fact quite a few vets have not charged the full fees as they feel they have no answers. I just feel there are vets that when presented with an unknown situation fall back to text book diagnosis rather than pushing forward.
Is it normal for a horse to recover from Congestive Heart Failure or African Horse Sickness???.
I have a real good team of vets near me (some say the best in this country and I would agree) that helped with possible causes and humoured me with all my questions as I researched this from top to bottom. Including doing a Necropsy of my friemds horse, which showed no defined cause of death except wasting away.
When the horses I owned turned around from looking like skeletons back to healthy horses. This took quite a bit of work as we had no idea the life cycle or triggers. We just started to see results very small changes at first we thought we imagined them, most people with horses that sick could be forgiven for halucinations. Then we started down the right road, we had so many things going into these horses we had to figure out the key.
The original cure for sick horses included High protein diet, high fibre diet, probiotics, vitamin pastes and many other supportive medications as well as the Moxidectin. As more horses were treated we left off items to isolate the ones doing the work. With horses you don't have to offer a placebo but the scietific testing principles are the same.
I then passed on the info to any who would listen, working with these new individuals we have refined the treatment as well as tested many other products.
It takes a brave person to seek veterinary advice for something they think is their fault, it takes an even braver person to question their vets total knowledge and look for answers elsewhere. The purpose of Horsemans Advisor is to provide info you cannot get from your personal vet.
From reading Cheryll's post she had the typical situation of one horse thin and the others fat, it just seems to be a nutrition problem why would you need a vet, maybe someone knows of a better feed combination.
The horsemans advisor is a great place to turn to in the electronic age, I have recommended this place to many many people. So I don't mind Dr. O getting paid for his work as he does good work :-).
No one person can know everything, it is the sum of the groups knowledge that is important and yes contradictions do happen, but when you work through the differences you advance the knowledge.
I would have loved to have logged into the horsemans advisor and found a reference to the problems my friends were having with horses loosing weight.
It is a heart wrenching experience to stand by while a horse looks more and more like a walking bag of bones. While people tell you they are doing everything or nothing more can be done. It can cause countless sleepless nights knowing loved ones need help.
I do hope that those who feel this info is not worth the electrons it is written on do not go through what we and the other owners experienced.
Even worse, are those people who have lost horses and then too save the next sick horse by a simple solution. How it must hurt the heart to know something could have been done for the lost ones.
I am not in this for financial gain and you don't want to know the cost in dollars or lives. I do it because I wished there was someone who knew what to do, when we had no other options.
The joy I see with the horses saved is a good feeling too.
As for there being only one solution that is untrue as I believe I am not the first person to treat this problem. That honour goes back many years to Pat Colby, though the cause was not found the horses survived. The other treatment is a large quantity of copper sulfate each day. I will add this warning do not do this without reading about the process and the anitdote for copper sulfate first. I have stood on the shoulders of giants, well in this case climbed a ladder to the same height.
Regards
Darren
PS. Remember horses are our hearts, without them we are not truely alive.
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 9:18 pm:
On the whole I think we will have to agree to disagree, I can accept that.
If I can get the study started I will bring back the medical facts fore or against.
Regards
Darren
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Member:
Hwood
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Posted on Sunday, May 29, 2005 - 11:13 pm:
Sounds fair enough, Darren. I am sure that most, if not all, of us on HA are very interested in seeing the results of your study. There is no finding without seeking, so go for it.
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Member:
Suzeb
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Posted on Monday, May 30, 2005 - 12:41 am:
Hello Darren,
I have been worming my way through this discussion, if you will pardon the pun, and I am finding it interesting. My own gelding has suffered weight and condition loss over the winter and after some prodding and poking without being invasive it was discovered that the guy was just not getting enough food or an unbalanced diet.
Given his condition 6 weeks ago, I would have been hesitant to give him a wormer, without knowing the cause of the weight loss first. The guy checked out normal in all the usual suspects, so the conclusion was that we up the intake slowly.
It seems to be working, as he has plumped up a little and he is due to be dewormed.
I don't know where all this is going to go or what you may find, but I wish you luck.
Where I live, there has also been DrOught conditions and odd and unusual weather. You do wonder how this years' weather is going to affect "Dobbin" next year  . Lot of variables in the whole scenario.
Susan B.
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Member:
Unicorn
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Posted on Thursday, Jun 2, 2005 - 7:27 pm:
Hi Susan
It is good your boy is responding to an increase in feed. The ponies we had the worst problems with were on 2-3 times the feed a horse should need. Though I suspect the vets thought we only fed the horses the days they arrived :-).
The increased feed they were getting was not being processed so they continued to loose weight though their bellies did swell up like Jingles.
It DrOve us nuts until we started to get a result.
Regards
Darren
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