Heaves

[Leeana]

Hi,

I am wondering if someone can help me out and give me some information on Heaves. Signs, Syptoms, Treatments, How it effects the horse?

I have noticed that Coco couphes whenever he is eating Hay or grain and when he is outside and playing hard he starts couphing. Im planning a vet appointment either way.

I remember reading somewhere about heaves but didnt pay to much attention to it because it was a year ago.

Is it like Athsma (sp)?

Thanks,

Leeana

 

[countryrose]

we had a Morgan mare years ago that had it.

Absolutely no hay was given her, pelleted food only.

Hay dust is the worse. The kids were small so she was not ridden hard or long so fit our family fine.

The internet says they do much better on grass fields also. Shavings--no dusty stray and keep them away from other horses hay and hay dust.

And yes you can compare it to asthma.

I hope you can control it and enjoy Coco.

Good idea to have the vet in case it is bronchitis or pneumonia.

 

[nootka]

Depending on what your vet says, it may or may not be heaves.

On occasion, horses with a slight infection can cough,b ut the fact that they are doing it when they eat is not a good sign. It starts with allergies and hay is bad.

I had a mare here that was starting to cough when she would eat hay and my vet ordered me to change the hay, and to soak the hay I fed her. He recommended Orchard grass as it had the least allergens. After doing that for about two months, she quit coughing and I quit soaking her hay. She never coughed again in the five years subsequent.

Usually a horse with COPD (heaves) develops extra muscles around their back and sides where it takes them extra effort to exhale/inhale. They also may cough with increased activity or at certain times.

A good idea is to keep a horse like that in an outside shelter with little bedding as many of them are irritated by the dust in the barn and bedding.

Hopefully your vet will have a lot of great ideas for you. I know of a friend that has a gelding w/heaves and he lives very well on just pasture (the BEST for them) and supplemented with soaked orchard grass and a special pelleted feed since it had none of the components in it that he was allergic to (they did fairly extensive testing). He's actually allergic to corn so they had to do away w/that in addition to many types of hay and being in the barn.

It's manageable, but it has a lot of different levels of severity. Hope it's something easily fixed.

Liz M.

 

[littlehorse2]

[SIZE=18pt]Trisket has heaves. I soaked her hay when the weather warrented it (warm weather). Nad she also takes EquioPathics Asthma and allergy, you can get it from Jeffers it's around $15. If she's really bad she gets Dr. Beson's Breathe Easy. It's worked for her. The asthma asd allergy stuff she gets everyday. She hasn't had any coughing spells since the cold weather came. Also if he's getting pelleted food the dust might be bugging him, water it down. I hope this helps,[/SIZE]

Christy

 

[Leeana]

Im thinking its heaves, i dont think its very bad and i just started noticing it about 2 weeks ago. We switched beddings in his stall because i thought that was it, then he started couphing whenever he plays with Joey to hard.

Should i still let him out to play with Joey (they rouph play)? Or just limit the time or do nothing?

I'm guessing driving is out of the picture to ..right?

Coco does have extra muscling around his belly, mostly on the sides now that i think of it. I'm going to make a vet appointment tommarow and see what we can get done. I'll start soaking his hay tommarow. During the Summer they have grass mostly all day, so if this is it ...then that will work out nice.

Coco and i are having a bad year health wize :no:

Thanks everyone for the info!

 

[Marty]

Heaves is bad. But you do not know yet that this is heaves at all. Could be a respiratory infection or anything else. Could be just a cough.

Horses can develop this also from being in an ill-ventilated barn which irratates the situation more. Standing in dirty stalls, no air, etc. all can contribute to breathing problems. That's one reason that I told Jerry that no matter how cold it was outside, I didn't want him locking up the barn doors in the winter time without air-flow.

Do not attempt to treat this on your own or buy things etc. until you have tests and a diagnoses from a vet.

 

[Leeana]

Horses can develop this also from being in an ill-ventilated barn which irratates the situation more. Standing in dirty stalls, no air, etc. all can contribute to breathing problems. That's one reason that I told Jerry that no matter how cold it was outside, I didn't want him locking up the barn doors in the winter time without air-flow.
Do not attempt to treat this on your own or buy things etc. until you have tests and a diagnoses from a vet.

Hmmm i clean stalls Daily and the big barn door is open from breakfast untill around 7pm when i close it. There in pasture from 9am-6pm when its not raining or terrible out.

Thanks Marty, i'll start keeping the side barn door open more. I normally close them when it gets to cold but i will take your advice and leave them open for air flow. Thanks Agian.

 

[Marty]

UM....... didn't mean to insinuate that you had dirty stalls by the way; I do know that you clean yours daily.

I don't close up our barn doors all the way. I always leave them apart about 3 feet. On decent nights like tonite, they are wide open. The more air flow I get in there the better I feel it is for them. Just my humble opinion.

 

[Dandy]

When my daughter first started showing (11 years ago) we bought a 17 year old Western Pleasure Show horse. We did not do a vet check and he had heaves. The people never told us. They delivered him to us and knew our situation. We owned a barn at a saddle club and had no grass pasture only dirt paddocks. We commenced to feed him like we did our other horses, good grass hay and grain. Anyway, within a week he was weezing something awful. Vet said he had heaves. I called the people and told them what he was doing and what I had been feeding him, and their response was "we never fed him hay". Well, duh, they could have told me. Sooooo, we soaked his hay all the time, hosed down his stall once a week and did everything we could for him. We showed him for a year and when I sold him, I told the new owners about the heaves and that you had to soak his hay, hose his stall etc. He was a wonderful show horse, by the way. Anyway, new owners did not follow the directions and he died.

 

[HaazeMinis]

I agree with Marty. First, get a diagnosis with your vet. We have an older broodmare who we bought at an auction last year and she ended up being diagnosed with COPD by my vet in January. We never noticed anything all summer because she was outdoors alot as were all of our horses during my Chemop Therapy Treatments, so we never noticed anything except a little cough once in a while. Then during the Winter when we started putting the horses in at night we noticed she was breathing really heavy quite a bit and would occasionally cough especially when I changed her bedding.

We had the vet come out and take a look at her because I had a feeling she was "Heavy" and sure enough she was, so he Palpated her since she is a larger B Size Mare so we could figure out what to do about treament since Steriods is out of the question for PG mares. She has a foal in there

: so what we ended up doing is moving her stall to one that is near one of our windows in the barn and pulled the shavings from the stall and put chopped straw down and have only given her hay with no dust in it and make sure of it by breaking up the flake and shaking it out. Since our hay have very little or no dust in it she is doing very well by doing it this way and the chopped straw is not very dusy either and I leave a window open at all times for her. This is her last foal and had I known she had COPD I would have never bred her and the vet told us she had this for quite some time :no: and its unfortunate that the previous owners were not honest when they sold her.

Since we are not really set up with Run-In type shelters which would be best for her we are kind of stuck in this situation and since she would not touch pelleted feed (I tried) we just make sure her hay is not dusty. I also clean my stalls daily and my stalls are cleaner than my house.lol! :lol: So I am very picky when it comes to cleanliness in my barn and my vet said it was most likely the shavings that set off the allergies since she is so much better now.

She will never breath normally because to much damage was done already but she is much better and more comfortable than she was prevoiuslyl

: She will be heading out to my friends place for retirement in a pasture with Run-In Sheds when the warm weather comes to WI.

: She is due the end of April and we are hoping all goes well with her and then after the foal is weaned we will start her on Meds to help her breath easier.

Oh and another thing is you can just type in Equine COPD on MSN search and a whole bunch of Information comes up about it as well as doing a Forum search.

Good Luck and I hope CoCo doesn not have it! :no: It not easy watching them struggle to breath. It breaks my heart! :no:

Jeri

 

[kaykay]

Hasnt cocoa been sick on and off this winter?? I think there has been a lot of equine flu around and it takes MONTHS for them to stop coughing. Heavy horses dont really cough as much as they weeze and you can see their sides go in and out. This is because like a person with asthma they are using their muscles to push air in and out of their lungs. Good thing the vet is coming out but my guess its a residual cough from being sick

 

[Leeana]

Thanks for the info everyone!

Vet is supose to be out between 5:30 and 6pm tonight and im hoping its what Kay stated. He started getting it off and on after he got sick back in December. But lately it has moved to when he eats and plays hard.

I'm hoping the vet can give us some help, if it is heaves then we will just have to start soaking the Hay and make coco his own little run in area or start hozing his stall down from time to time.

Thank you agian!!!

Oh yes, if he does have it ..can i feed him soaked hay cubes instead of soaking hay?

Leeana H.