Hypocalcemia?

[Field-of-Dreams]

We had to run Pinkie to the hospital tonight. She wasn't well at all- in fact, I thought she would die before we could get her to the vet's! She was dehydrated, could barely stand and could not walk- her hind legs had locked up. We literally backed the trailer up to her. She managed to get her front legs in, but we had to lift her hiney the rest of the way. Made the 45 minute drive to the hospital. We lifted her out and she managed to walk inside. Her blood tests came back hypocalcemia (sp?) Vet ran all kinds of fluids and calcium into her. She looked MUCH better in an hour or so. But she had to stay the night. Vet also thinks she'll lose her foal. It's her first. She only has three weeks to go... poor baby.

Anyone with any experience with this? She looked so awful when I found her I thought she was on her way out. Thank God for our wonderful Vets.

 

[Allure Ranch]

I had a mare "Faith Farms Khemos Glimpse Of Glory" have it about three years ago.

 

She was acting a bit strange in the early morning so I thought that maybe she was possibly trying to colic. (Gas/Impaction) Needless to say that wasn't the case. By late that evening you could literally see every muscle in her body contracting and she could not walk at all. We rushed her to the vet where they pumped her full of IV fluids and calcium. She had a foal "Allure Ranch Spirits Loyal Guardian" on her side at that time and she was already breed back in foal.

 

When she returned home from the vets they sent us home with a HUGE tube of calcium that we had to administer daily. We ended up taking her back into the vets every couple of days for them to run blood panels and make certain that she was continuing to improve. It was about two before we noticed an improvement in her health.

 

We were told to keep her isolated from the other horses so that we could monitor her intake on feed (Strategy at that time) and we also told to give her plenty of alfalfa. Basically we kept food in front of her the entire time. We left her foal on her since they were concerned that it would stress her if we weaned it. She ended up foaling out a beautiful black pinto colt the foaling season.

 

I hope your mare "Pinkie" manages to pull through.... its a pretty serious condition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Riverrose28]

I have a mare that had an episode in 2008. Thankfully I was home. I looked out the window to check the horses and it looked as if she had the hiccups. She had a two month old foal with her. I called the vet and she told me to give her some electrolits while I waited for her to arrive. Well now I keep two containers of water with this mare all the time, one plain and one with electrolits if she needs it she will drink it. When she had hypocalcemia I also had to administer calcium orally. I only breed this mare every other year, she has a foal now and has been fine. Sorry to hear about your horse, hope she gets better soon.

 

[kaykay]

We went through this last fall with a mare that had never gone hypocalcemic. Some refer to it as "thumps" With foaling season coming its good to bring this to light.

I had read about it for years but never had it happen. Bailey had a 3.5 month old nursing foal and I found her on the ground, got her up but she was barely able to walk and had a weird gait. Got her in the stall and her nostrils and mouth were clenched. Called my neighbor who came rushing over. Asked her if she thought it could be thumps and she said no way. Called the vet she works for and she also said no way. Both thought that because the foal was older it couldnt happen. That vet couldnt come until late afternoon and I knew Bailey would be dead by then.

The only vet I could get was an Equine Dentist vet. Thank god he came and thank god he listened to me. I begged him to infuse her with calcium. He said "you know if thats not it we will kill her" and I said yes but if we do nothing she will die too. By this time she was declining rapidly. When he listened to her heart beat he knew we were in big trouble. We infused her with calcium and the change was dramatic.

We pulled blood before we infused her to know later if that was it. Test results were shocking and when he emailed me he was just astounded that she even lived. He also felt bad because he researched that we also should have IV'd her with sugar water. Hey live and learn! I now have calcium on hand. For sure both my neighbor and the vet she works with were just shocked when I emailed them to test results.

Never think just because a foal is older it cant happen. Also Bailey was on grain and alfalfa hay so really odd that she went calcium deficient.

I have been told once they do this they often repeat it.

Heres her results and she can see how skewed they are

Bailey Blood Test

Best wishes for your mare and foal

 

[Field-of-Dreams]

Thanks, all. She must have been OK during the night, as the vet promised to call if anything went wrong. I will not breed her again- she's my doll. She will go back to the showring, maybe even try some CDE later this year!

 

[WhiteTailsMinis]

I"m sorry to hear of your incident with your mare - I'm sure it was extremely scarey and I hope she makes a full recovery.

I do thank you though for posting because thanks to LB and folks brave enough to discuss these things - it helps the rest of us with alittle bit of education to know what might be if we see these similar symptoms. I had no idea really - this gives me some insight as to causes should I ever come upon a mare with these symptoms.

With the frequent mention of foals and nursing - does one assume that nursing foals dimish the calcium supply in the mare? Is there a prevention by giving the mare something extra while nursing? And I saw mention of foal age ....... that too is associated with the risks?

Sorry for the questions but experiences here can help some of us that might not have ever experienced this in a mare before ~

 

[Lucky-C-Acres-Minis]

We too had a run about with this, but unfortunately lost out mare.

We had turned out our two girls and their 3-4 month old colts in the morning, all were fine when we turned them out, gave them their grain which they were munching on, as well as their hay and they were on pasture. Ran into town for a couple hours and when we got back we found our pintaloosa girl Lexi down by the gate (away from her foal, and the other pair) with her head hanging low, wringing wet with sweat and breathing extremely hard. My initial reaction of course was colic, so ran and got a lead rope and tried to get her to walk while my mom ran to call the vet. That's when I started to suspect something other than colic, she wasn't kicking her belly, trying to roll, bite her sides etc. Vets told us to load them in and get them to the clinic ASAP. Looked her over and pulled blood, ran a blood test and found she was VERY, deathly low on calcium (vet made the comment had a COW been that low, she'd been dead) So they IV'd her calcium and made the decision to leave her there overnight so they could keep a constant flow to her and try to pull her out, also decided to pull the colt and wean him as he would only pull her down again nursing. Was heartbreaking to load the little guy into the trailer without momma and put him back in the stall without her, but looking back, I truly think he "knew" something was going on, wasn't a whinny or cry out of him the entire ride home nor in the stall, no running around frantic looking for her.

Vets told us that they would call us if there were any problems or if we needed to rush her to the main campus clinic. Through the night no call, about 5:30-6 am the phone rang and my heart sunk, was them telling us she'd taken a turn for the worse and if we wanted any slim chance of saving her we needed to move her now. When we got down there she was laying down on her chest, how she had the strength to hold her head up I don't know. She had started head pressing as well so had skinned her forehead

I was ready to put her down right then, but my dad looked at me and said "We got to try", so we loaded her onto the trailer and made a mad dash for the hospital. Unfortunately, we lost her by the time we got there.

It was one of the toughest things I have been through and still to this day, 3 years later, it haunts me and I still cry.

Needless to say I keep a VERY close eye on mares during lactation to try to prevent this again. I'm sure I feed my girls "too well" and if I notice a foal is pulling a mare down and upping her feed doesn't help, then I'll wean.

With the frequent mention of foals and nursing - does one assume that nursing foals dimish the calcium supply in the mare? Is there a prevention by giving the mare something extra while nursing? And I saw mention of foal age ....... that too is associated with the risks?

Yes, a foal nursing will pull the mare's calcium level down, during lactation so much of that calcium goes into milk production, that at times the mare's body doesn't keep enough for herself. The mare we lost was a HEAVY milker, she didn't have a huge udder prior to foaling, but once she foaled and that foal started nursing she milked like a cow. Our vet recommended good feed, good hay (told us a good mix of alfalfa/grass) would help. If we noticed a mare starting to get pulled down by her foal, increase her feed and if that didn't help, to wean, especially if the foal was eating grain/hay well. Our little guy was 3 1/2 months old, MUCH earlier than I normally wean, but he did fine, he was drinking water, creep feeding and eating hay well and continued to do so after losing her, we did not supplement him with any milk replacer or milk based products, and he grew normal and held his weight etc.

 

[Kim~Crayonboxminiatures]

My Frosty Chip was prone to this, but she never got bad enough to need an IV. I always caught it really early when she would develop the "thumping" diaphragm. I treated her with electrolyte paste and liquid calcium per my vets intstructions. She would develop it in the fall when carrying a foal, don't know why, but I put her in daily powdered electrolytes to help prevent. She wasn't a good drinker when it got cold outside, which I think was a factor for her. Sharing so all can be aware it can happen at any time to pregnant and lactating mares.

 

[kaykay]

What a lot of the vets I talked to dont realize is that it can strike when the foal is older. Both vets I talked with mistakenly believed it only happened to pregnant mares or mares with a new foal. They both insisted that by 3 or 4 months there isnt much calcium in a mares milk so it wouldnt cause this. Obviously that line of thinking is wrong.

Also I forgot to add always wean the foal immediately if you run into this. This also helps the mare make the turn around.

The odd thing with my mare is she was on quality alfalfa hay and feed and had not lost weight but still did this. You just never know?

Also important to note is once treated they often do it again at day 2 or 3 after treatment so you have to be very watchful

 

[3EagleFarm]

I hope your Pinkie is doing better soon! How scary! Please keep us posted!

 

[Becky]

To those that have used a supplemental calcium paste, what have you used? Meant to get some this year before foaling season started. What I have found are in the large tubes for cattle requiring a dosing gun.

 

[Karen S]

Hi Jane & Lucy,

I ended up loosing one of my good producing Shetland mares in 2009 to this problem.

My Story:

In February 2003 I purchased CH Mickey’s Angelina from a lady close to Dallas Texas. She really didn’t know what she had but had advertised this mare along with a few others for sale. Drove to her home and looked at this mare. She was in poor shape but could look pass her condition. I purchased her, brought her home, nursed her back to health and decided to go ahead a breed her to my stallion after I took her to the vet and had her checked out. She was given the green light to be bred. That same year we took her to her first show and that was the ASPC National Congress. This mare took all of the top honors and only lost out in the Grand Champion mare class all while she was bred.

Spring 2004, she gave me a beautiful silver filly. My husband works second shift so lets the mare and foal out one night into the pasture to graze as we keep the mares and babies up in a smaller lot until I feel they are ready to be introduced into a large herd environment. The next morning she was no where to be found. We searched the pasture and found her locked up, with grass in her mouth, trembling, eyes rolling, shaking; she looked like she had been starved for several months. She was trying in her way to let us know she was in trouble. I’ve never ever heard of an animal giving out such a distress call (throaty) as she did, but she knew we were trying our best to get her the help she needed. After about 30 minutes of helping her walk stiff legged to the barn, I pulled up the trailer and just like you Jane/Lucy has to pick up her front legs and put them in the trailer, then the three of us literally picked up her back end and shoved her into the trailer. We put her foal in beside her to keep her quiet.

We stopped at the vet which was the closes to us and said they couldn’t do anything for a mare that had West Nile…I was so angry…how can you stand there and tell me this mare has West Nile when you haven’t even pulled blood? I then took her to the emergency equine hospital on up the road. That vet knew immediately what was going on. Hooked her to IV with liquid calcium, DMSO and some other meds to help get her system to unlock. It took about twenty minutes, just enough time for us to get the grass out of her mouth. He looked at the foal and asked if this was her first or second. We told him her first. This foal was 30 days old. We pulled the foal off her that day started it on foal-lac pellets and she never had any problems with a growth problem. In the meantime the mare stayed at the vet hospital for three days to the tune of $1800.00.

I then was asking all kinds of questions…can it happen again?...is it herediatary?..is there anything I can keep on hand?. All good questions…yes it can happen again…no not hereditary…keep some kind of calcium on hand to feed….

2009…happened again….been five years since the first spell. She had not had one in the between time. We were doing all of the right things, but one other twist was thrown into the mix….she may had gotten into some oleander (which is very poisonous to horses)…so now we are fighting two things. This time her foal was two months old and the size of my yearlings. The vet wanted to see the foal and asked where she was. We went into the barn as I had her between my two yearlings to keep her company. The vet said which one is she? She basically was the same size as my yearlings. I had already decided to wean her and she had been removed that day. The vet felt she had an advanced case of the calcium deficiency and hadn’t ingested enough of the oleander to cause the oleander poisoning. This time the drench to which I was working with just didn’t pay off. This was happening on a Monday night and by Friday morning; she was asking me in her own way to have her relieved of her pain. I took her head in my hands that morning, loved her and had her put down.

Please take this very seriously….it CAN happen to any mare at any time. These milk producing mares with large bags are the ones your really have to watch. This mare was like an old milk cow….the baby was putting too much stress on her system…watch your foals…if they appear to be much larger than their counterparts, pull them off immediately. Learn what you can do to take all the necessary steps to try to prevent it again, but IT can happen even with those preventative steps. I think the key to the entire process is the IV hook up. She was too bad the second time to get her into the trailer so we (the vet and I) did what we could do with what we had to work with at that time.

Karen

 

[Flyin G Farm]

I have had this happen as well, however, my mare DID NOT have a foal on her side, nor had she just weaned a foal. She was about 30 days pregnant at the time. I had been out just brushing my mares and loving on them, and noticed that she was standing quietly off to the side of the rest of the herd. She wasn't breathing heavily, she wasn't walking funny, she was just "off" and my gut told me something was wrong. So of course I went over to investigate closer and saw the "thumping" on her side. I had no idea what was going on, so I brought her up to the foaling stalls (which were right on my back porch) so I could keep a closer eye on her. In the meantime I went online and started researching and of course I had already called the vet. I also called a good friend of mine who suggested I check out thumps, which I did, and immediately after seeing what the problem was, made sure to give the mare alfalfa and a calcium supplement I had on hand. I talked with one of the vets on my vet clinic (one of the younger, less experienced ones) and told her what I thought was going on, and of course she didn't believe me, but she at least agreed to talk to the main vet in the clinic and come check out the mare. They ended up doing the same thing as other people's vets did, IV with fluids, eletrolytes, calcium, and the mare did end up at the vet clinic overnight. We did bring her home the next day because she is a mare that does not handle change well, so was stressing herself out at the clinic. But they felt she was stable enough to come home. She did go on to have a healthy, beautiful colt the following year (her 2nd foal). We have not had any additional episodes with her, but I do watch all of them even more carefully now and they are all getting alfalfa along with their grain and some orchard grass. I'm thankful we caught it before things had gotten any worse. But wanted to tell my story as well, because she had the vets stumped...they also said this is something that happens to cows and mares with foals on their sides...not barely pregnant mares!

I hope your mare is doing well...it's a very scary thing to go through!

 

[cretahillsgal]

To those that have used a supplemental calcium paste, what have you used? Meant to get some this year before foaling season started. What I have found are in the large tubes for cattle requiring a dosing gun.

Becky, my vet gave me a tube of CMPK gel. It is a big tube like for cattle and I have seen it for sale on Jeffers or Valley Vet. I didn't use a gun, I just used a stick in the back end to push some out into a syringe for each dose. It is not too thick and easy to push out.

I had to give my mare 4 cc 2x a day for a month, then down to 4cc a day for the next 3 months till she finished nursing.

Also, if your mare develops thumps, don't mess around with the paste/gel. Call a vet because by that point the horse is so far gone that they need an IV. The gel was just for maintenance/prevention after we got her over them with the IV calcium.

 

[cretahillsgal]

Here are some links.

http://www.americanlivestock.com/pc-230-76-cmpk-gel.aspx

http://www.jefferslivestock.com/c.m.p.k.-gel-300-gm-tube/camid/LIV/cp/A2-CB/cn/3110/

 

[Allure Ranch]

To those that have used a supplemental calcium paste, what have you used? Meant to get some this year before foaling season started. What I have found are in the large tubes for cattle requiring a dosing gun.

That's exactly the same supplemental calcium paste that the vet sent us home with. We were given the proper amount to dose her with and then we dispensed it into smaller syringes for administering to the mare.

 

[R Whiteman]

Last year we had our first experience with "thumps". Ours was a little different because our mare was not nursing, was not working, was not in foal, and hadn't been for three years. One morning she was a little off and we had been fighting some kind of snotty nose virus in another horse, so we thought that was the issue. The next day she got progressively worse. We had made an appointment with the vet for the afternoon and by noon was not sure she would make it to the vet. it took three of us and a tractor to get her to the trailer; she could not get up and stay up. She stayed overnight with IV calcium and also magnesium (I believe) and eventually recovered, only to do it again 5 months later. She had become calcium deficient due to a change in diet in an attempt to keep her from being so seriously overweight. We immediately put her on a daily calcium supplement and a feed that had the right ratio of calcium to phosphorus and could be fed in small amounts with or without alfalfa pellets. We're now also feeding alfalfa pellets to all of our working horses and watching them closely when we work hard, or the weather makes them sweat hard. So far no problems there. My experiences with big horses had never prepared me for this as it is known to be something seen in horses that are working too hard, sweating too much. Vets here had never seen a case, only read about it in their studies. Perhaps the small size of our horses leaves them too little room for error, but it seems to be seen more often in our ranks than elsewhere.

Our little mare recovered again and is now companion to another mini. When she left the farm, we retained ownership and responsibility, and she left with a bucket of calcium. She is a short distance away, should something happen again, but we are confident that her new diet and stressless lifestyle will give her some protection.

As I write this, I am remembering another incident; We had gone to a horse show, leaving our horses in the care of a high school girl in the neighborhood. One was a two month old colt and when the girl came to feed she noticed that he was doing something different than normal. She ran home and called our vet, who came out and took a look and diagnosed it as "hiccups". We talked later and were reassured that things were all normal without intervention. Looking back and knowing that horses don't normally do the hiccup thing, I'm wondering if the colt had not been running and playing and had a temporary bout of "thumps", that fortunately resolved itself

Just when we think we have learned enough to get by, something will happen to show us the need to learn more...

Dorothy

 

[Michelle@wescofarms]

Thank you all for posting this. We haven't had that happen here yet. Yet being the important part as it's good to know the signs and be prepared.

 

[Field-of-Dreams]

Vet called, she is holding her own. We think she may have gotten into some acorns, which might have started the hypocalcemia, and now her kidneys are a bit compromised. They are running fluids to flush out all the garbage. They want to ultrasound her later and see if Baby is still with us, so keep your fingers crossed.... she has to stay tonight, too, but she is in WONDERFUL hands. This clinic is awesome (Reata Equine in Weatherford, TX) She's a bit depressed, but she is always unhappy away from home, which is the main reason I stopped showing her.

Thanks again- we learn something new every day, and this sure is a new one on me!

 

[chandab]

Becky, my vet gave me a tube of CMPK gel. It is a big tube like for cattle and I have seen it for sale on Jeffers or Valley Vet. I didn't use a gun, I just used a stick in the back end to push some out into a syringe for each dose. It is not too thick and easy to push out.

I had to give my mare 4 cc 2x a day for a month, then down to 4cc a day for the next 3 months till she finished nursing.

Not sure if its exactly the same thing, but I just got a new Valley Vet Farm & Ranch catalog and it has CMPK liquid, item # 16416, comes in a bottle. [They have the gel too.]