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  Discussion on Fever - Looking for ideas of a source
Author Message
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Thursday, May 28, 2015 - 12:00 am:

My horse spiked a 104.5 to 105 degree fever on Saturday. The horse has not been out in a while, and we rode about 3 miles in the high sierras. (She is not stalled and does move about around 5 acres.) She is in heat and very aggressively showing to anyone who might care. We came back from dinner, and she wasn't very interested in the peppermint that I offered her. However, she was not off feed and was eating her hay. This is very unusual behavior for her as she is a pig and aggressive about food. So I took her temperature and sure enough she was running a fever.

I did not treat the fever as it had not reached dangerous levels, and I didn't know what was causing it. It was normal in the AM, and she was brighter.

Sunday she remained bright. No other signs except that she seemed a little stiff and uncomfortable on her feet. However, nothing dramatic like founder. Just shifting her weight here and there. So I gave her a little banamine for a 1,000 lb horse. She is a 1,500 lb Friesian. She seemed more comfortable with this. We took a short walk to a meadow in hand several hours later, where she ate grass and looked completely normal for all intents and purposes.

No swelling. Drinking and eating. No obvious signs of illness.

Monday she had a 101.5 followed by a 102.4 fever. No signs of illness other than the fever. It DrOpped to 101.8 in the early evening.

Tuesday AM 100.8. We return from the Sierras and have the vet take blood.

She had pigeon fever in early 2012. You can review the saga here on Horseadvice.com. One concern I had is that she might have an internal abscess, and I wanted to rule that out. She had a hoof abscess about 2 weeks ago. I didn't know if it was possible that it introduced something into her system. It took a while for her to go sound, and it had a pocket at the heel. I disinfected it a couple of times and it finally closed up, and now looks hard with no sign of infection.

We do have ticks, but I could not find evidence of one.

Our horses are in our backyard on 3 acres. Closest horse is several miles away.

We have been nowhere in about 4 months.

The blood work so far is completely normal. Fibrinogen normal. Waiting on Pigeon Fever Titers.

The vet is also testing for Anaplasmosis.

She looked a little stiff in the back legs tonight, but then I had my husband walk/trot her a couple hours later and I'm not sure. I may be trying to find something that is not there.

Apparently there are several cases of EPM in the area. We have a pond in the middle of her pasture and lots of critters that come in. But EPM doesn't typically present with a fever?

Is there anything else that I should be exploring, or just call it day and assume that it was some viral event that is over?
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Friday, May 29, 2015 - 12:22 pm:

Well, we found a tick. I should say, my husband, found a ticket on her belly just in front of her udder. So I missed it after 4 days of checking, along with the vet.

Still waiting for the Anaplasmosis results.

Oh, and I think she has an abscess in the hind foot that I thought she was stiff on. So it wasn't my imagination. She is now heavily lame on that one hind leg.

Temperature 101.5 this AM.
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Friday, May 29, 2015 - 3:46 pm:

103.2 mid-day. Ehrlichia test is negative.
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Friday, May 29, 2015 - 3:47 pm:

Still bright and eating. Soaked the lame hoof, looking for evidence of an exit point. None yet.
Member:
moxshi

Posted on Friday, May 29, 2015 - 7:24 pm:

Encouraging that she's still eating and not acting sick, Laurie.

I read that the symptoms of anaplasmosis don't typically start until 1-2 weeks after the tick bite, and I guess you don't know how long the tick was there, but maybe it's size would give you a clue as to how long it might have been on your mare.

I've dealt with abscesses before, but don't remember fever being associated with them. Can you find the location of the abscess by tapping on the sole of her foot with the back of a hoof pick? If you find the spot, you can always dig it out and let it drain.

Hope her fever goes down soon.
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Saturday, May 30, 2015 - 8:12 am:

Hello Laurie,
Foot abscesses can cause fevers but they are usually low grade (~102). Your biphasic fever pattern sounds like a flu-like virus but is not diagnostic. Treat the fever while monitoring for localizing clinical signs is a logical course. The article associated with this area has more on this.
DrO
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Saturday, May 30, 2015 - 3:01 pm:

I have had our Friesians present a hoof abscess with fever. She is at 102.8 today. Bright. Eating. Very lame. I can't locate a potential exit point. She is only walking on the toe, with no weight on the heel. They typically blow out the heel. My guess is that we have two things going on. Something that spiked the earlier higher fever, that my guess is gone. And now we are dealing with a hoof abscess.
Member:
rtrotter

Posted on Saturday, May 30, 2015 - 3:25 pm:

This is a tip from a recent KC La Pierre Hoof blog.

Wrap the foot with a wet Animalintex poultice pad.

See what you get tomorrow, may get worse before it gets better.

I hate Abscesses!
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Saturday, May 30, 2015 - 5:41 pm:

Unfortunately, I have many abscesses under my belt. In fact, this horse went to UC Davis when she was just over a year old with what both vets thought was a stifle problem that just ended up being an abscess. But it looked like a scene from my friend Flicka. She was prone on the bottom of the stall, moaning and groaning. The vets there were all over her, trying to find it, but in the end, even with all the poultices and wraps, it still took about 10 days for it to resolve. I've had a few that we were able to get to pop, but for some reason, most of the Friesian abscesses have come out the heel. I can feel a spot softening in the back.
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Saturday, May 30, 2015 - 5:48 pm:

OK, here is the best part: It's a nice hot day. So I elect to stand in the pond with my horse while I try to clear some tules out. I'm in muddy, marshy water while she stands more in the sandy part. I also threw some water on her to cool her off. Then I hosed her off, and started to feel something on my legs. Leeches!!! OMG!!! I was reasonably calm, and grabbed some fly repellant and sprayed it all over my legs. They had a dim view of this. So I probably won't be using this approach to hoof softening in the near future.....
Member:
rtrotter

Posted on Saturday, May 30, 2015 - 6:22 pm:

Sounds Like another Flicka story, Didn't Flicka put herself in a cold stream to get rid of a fever. On a more modern note, even though it was many years ago. I had a 2 year old filly that kept spiking a pretty high temp and her normal temp never went below 101, she'd start to train down and then get some sort of respiratory thing, which we treated with antibiotics( I don't do that any longer). Any way she was getting over being sick again and the vet said it was ok to turn her out. She was out for a very short time, but was running around like a looney tune. I brought her in and took her temp, she had almost 105. I decided to try something different to get her fever down, so I treated her like my mom treated me when I was a kid and got really high fevers. I got two manure buckets and filled them with ice and water and stood her in them, I gave her a cool alcohol bath about every hour or so and a hay bag to keep her occupied and we kept at it for a very long time. Finally her fever started to go down and finally ended up at 99 deg and then stayed there. I figured I had nothing to lose and it worked. Prior to this she had been given bute to take her fevers down, so while it worked, the bute and the antibiotics never got rid of whatever was causing the problem in the first place. Nowadays, we know, that antibiotics won't get rid of a virus, which is what I think she had, only a fever kills a virus, but the trick is to manage the fever so it works in your favor. I felt I minimized the laminitis issue with the ice filled tubs and therefore her fever broke and came down naturally. and for what its worth she did not get sick again.
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Saturday, May 30, 2015 - 8:59 pm:

I was concerned about laminitis as well. That's why I gave her some banamine the next day when she looked like she was ouchy on her feet. The vet gave me some antibiotics just in case something got wild over the weekend, but I won't give them to her unless I can find some really compelling reason to do so. When she was UC Davis looking like she was down for the count, they wouldn't give her anything stating that it would just frustrate the abscess.

Rtrotter I had the same experience with the recurring temperature on our other Friesian. She went up and down, and then finally really up and it turned into some horrible snotty nosed, upper respiratory, off feed thing. Then it broke and she was fine. That is what I have been waiting for. She was at UC Davis at the time, and they gave her alcohol rubs and put a fan on her.

This mare is walking more flat footed on the sore foot, and it is getting mushier at the heel. Still bright and eating.
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Sunday, May 31, 2015 - 4:41 pm:

Abscess popped where I thought it would. Out the heel. Her temperature throughout the weekend was between 102 and 103, but it is now normal.

So what the hell? Would the beginnings of a hoof abscess, with no signs of lameness generate a 105 fever? We only went about 3 miles, max. My dog with two new knees and another dog who has a weird walk after spinal surgery made it with no ill effects. In fact, I'm fat and I could have made it with a heavy backpack. So I can't believe that we over did it. I could roll into a virus if I could figure out where she would have gotten it?
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Monday, Jun 1, 2015 - 7:01 pm:

She has tested positive for the Pigeon Fever bacteria. One of my original thoughts was that the first hoof abscess, which took a while to close, might have been infected with Coryne Pseudotuberculosis either due to its close proximity to the ground, or by attracting an infected fly. The titer reading is 1:32.
Member:
rtrotter

Posted on Monday, Jun 1, 2015 - 7:29 pm:

That is so interesting, I would have never thought of pigeon fever, although it does make some sense from the abscess point of view. I am not familiar with how high the titers are in an active pigeon fever infection or if like Lymes the titers are always there but the infection is not active.
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Monday, Jun 1, 2015 - 7:33 pm:

This is what made me check for Pigeon Fever: https://www.horseadvice.com/horse/messages/4/406350.html
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Monday, Jun 1, 2015 - 8:20 pm:

Just got off the phone with my vet. She thinks that it is possible that the titer reading is from her past exposure to pigeon fever. She is wondering if the hoof abscess is the sole reason for the high temperature even though it would be unusually high for a hoof abscess.
Member:
moxshi

Posted on Monday, Jun 1, 2015 - 9:01 pm:

Just spent the last half hour reading your pigeon fever escapade, Laurie, and I'm emotionally exhausted. I hope you're not faced with it again.

I don't remember fevers with any of my horses that had hoof abscesses, but it IS an infection, and the body will fight it.

Hope you don't have to worry about pigeon fever again, although you certainly have a handle on what works best to treat it.
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Tuesday, Jun 2, 2015 - 1:40 pm:

Wasn't that wild? Myntje's boob is still big. I'm really bummed that they pulled the vaccine off the market. Hopefully, it will get fixed soon.
Member:
lsweeney

Posted on Tuesday, Jun 2, 2015 - 1:43 pm:

I found this mare's first hoof abscess. Her temperature was close to 103 on this one. https://www.horseadvice.com/horse/messages/4/66775.html
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