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HorseAdvice.com » Diseases of Horses » Colic, Diarrhea, GI Tract » Mouth, Esophagus, and Liver » Choke: Esophageal Obstruction »
  Discussion on Choke?
Author Message
Member:
Brock

Posted on Friday, Mar 10, 2006 - 11:23 am:

When I went out to feed our two horses this morning, the 'chewing' sound coming from the QH was not quite right. As I stood and watched him eat, he seemed to just chew in the front of his mouth and then after a few seconds spit out the gob of hay and would not swallow it. I watched him do this 5-10 minutes. Went in, made my arrangements to get him into the Vet. My first thought was he had a foxtail stuck in the side of his mouth (even though I've never really seen any in our hay). By the time I came back out (45 minutes later) to catch/load him, he was swallowing albeit carefully. Took him to the vet this morning and he is "all clear" - no obstruction in the mouth. They put a tube down his nose into the esophogus (sp?) but he was sedated and therefore they couldn't get him to swallow the tube enough. All he ended up with was a nosebleed. He is still there. I'm to call in an hour or so and hopefully pick him up at noon. In the meantime they will give him some hay and watch how he eats. I'll keep you posted, but any thoughts on what this could be are appreciated. I have a hard time believing it is choke though, because this horse is not a 'glutton' ... does not 'dog' his food down. I always thought choke was caused by horses that ate too fast. Who knows what happened between his feed time last night and this morning, but something sure did.
Member:
Annes

Posted on Friday, Mar 10, 2006 - 2:10 pm:

Pam, a difficulty swallowing/possible choking started with my TB during cold weather. I discovered when his pellets were too cold/frozen this happened. I started adding warm water to his feed in the winter and it has not happened again - this was four years ago. It was an easy fix for my horse so I wanted to mention it in case it will help.
Member:
Anta

Posted on Friday, Mar 10, 2006 - 7:09 pm:

Pam,

I like Ann also had a horse, that seemed to suffer from choke or some sort of respiratory problem, he would cough when stabled or fed, with both hay and hard feed. I at first thought it was the hay that was at fault and changed it. then I started to wet his hay with the hosepipe and float his hard feed, to the point that the hard feed was almost like soup, since this regime was introduced, all symtoms seem to have disappeared.

I dont know if this helps but it had immediate success for mine,

Really hope this helps

Anita
Member:
Anta

Posted on Saturday, Mar 11, 2006 - 3:58 am:

Pam,

What I really should have added to the last post, was that I also had my boys teeth checked, and he was found to have two very sharp teeth at the back, which may have been a factor in the chewing problem, this was all done at the same time as starting to wet hay and float hard feed. The teeth issue seems to come up for so many problems with horses, My boy could not flex to the right properly, we tried bute, resting and numerous other methods to sort out this problem, he had had his teeth done regularly so did not think was a problem, vets conclusion, ex showjumper, probably old injury. Anyway lucky enough to have top event yard nearby, who have a specialist back chap visit twice a year, as he was here checking my other horse with known injury, asked him to cast his eye over this one. First thing he said was "bet he can't flex to the right" he had had a look in his mouth and far back, two razor edges to the teeth. Specialist dentist visit later, combined with very wet feed, we have a horse that no longer shows signs of choke or coughing and can bend to the right. Just a thought and I hope you get to the bottom of this, but this Teeth issue seems to come up for so so many problems.

Best wishes

Anita
Moderator:
DrO

Posted on Sunday, Mar 12, 2006 - 10:43 am:

Spitting out chewed food is not quite enough to diagnose a choke and in fact most "choked horses" will not eat and have symptoms as described in the article. So what was the deal remains uncertain. It almost sounds he hit a batch of hay he did not like. Is there any other information you have?
DrO
Member:
Brock

Posted on Monday, Mar 13, 2006 - 11:46 am:

I'm leaning towards the cause being either a batch of hay that he didn't like or a tooth problem. Although the vet looked at his teeth and said everything was fine, he is not an Equine Dentist. I observed him closely over the weekend and there were no signs or symptoms of anything being wrong with him. He crunched down his cookies no problem, ate hay, drank water and everything seems A-okay. I may have over-reacted, but better safe than sorry, right!
Member:
Brock

Posted on Friday, Mar 17, 2006 - 5:17 pm:

Well a $100 vet bill later and I think the mystery has been solved -- and once again, Dr. O is bang on. We were up in the loft putting some hay down and noticed our two barn cats have been URINATING up there (too lazy to go out in the winter) and you know what cat pee smells like (I can't imagine what it tastes like!!) I think he must have come across some hay that they had urinated on and it obviously did not agree with him. I have been watching him very closely all week and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this horse!
Member:
Mwebster

Posted on Friday, Mar 17, 2006 - 8:04 pm:

Great thread, and great sleuthing! And now that I've read it, I can connect: our barn cat is also lazy. Our horses paw at the hay that's been pee'd on, to separate out the uncontaminated hay, and we notice this "ick" body language and dump it into the compost pile where it is the perfect additive to the manure to "cook" (and btw, we started to separate pure manure from wet shavings more than a year ago, so now we have beautiful compost to stir into the gardens, and functional mulch which prevents weeds). We feed out flakes during the day from different bales (actually different deliveries) to ensure there isn't something the horses would rather not eat.
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