Transcript:

[0:03]

This video has the potential to save your horse's life — or better yet, please share this with your friends or colleagues, anybody you work with that works around horses, because the information contained within does have the potential to save their horse's life. And that's the topic of why do so many horses still die from colic. In fact, one in 10 horses every year suffer this horrible, painful ailment we call colic. And actually, in fact, colic is the number one killer for horses under the age of 20. So in this episode, we're going to explain how this information can be used and how it has helped save horses' lives. I’ve, in my career, spoken to many people that — knowing about colic and the signs of colic and how to alter their management strategies — have gone on to help save their horses or prevent colic.

[1:07]

And just to start all this off, if you can imagine, this happened to me quite a while ago when I was a graduate student. It was a warm summer day in Texas — in the morning it is warm, it is hot — but I went into the barn to grab a nylon halter. I had a mare that I had to ultrasound that day to see where she was along her pregnancy. In my boots and my jeans, walking down the long lane, looking to the left — the pasture of mares and newborn foals — and then off to the right where the mares and the little bit older foals that might have been, you know, six to eight weeks old. I was going to our early-pregnant mares’ pasture, and as I walked in there, the pasture had been a little bit overgrown, so the grass wasn't quite knee-high, but just under my knees. I didn’t see my mare and I didn’t know where she was. I was one of the first ones to the barn that morning.

[2:19]

Walking around the pasture, I saw literally what looked like a crop circle. And I walked, and in the middle was my mare — in distress, in intense pain. She had been suffering, I don’t know how many hours, with a bout of colic. It was so painful that she’d been rolling and pawing all night, that she created a perfect circle within the tall grass. So immediately — thankfully we had cell phones back in the day, even when I was in graduate school — I called the barn manager, who called our veterinarian immediately. Thankfully, I was on the Texas A&M campus where the vet school was across the way, and the veterinarian was able to get there quickly to start treatment.

[3:12]

I’m going to talk in this video about how to properly respond when you come across a situation like that — not only your safety, but what's best for the horse. It’s something that, if you’re working with horses, you’re going to run into. Like I started off with, the higher estimates are one in 10 horses every year suffer some sort of colic. Now, does that mean one in 10 horses die every year from colic? Absolutely not. It’s a little bit less — one to two out of a hundred might die from colic every year. But still, it’s such an impactful disease, ailment, that horses have, that that’s why this is so important. That’s why I get so passionate about it.

[4:06]

And just to close the loop on that mare — the vet was able to come, I remember we got her up, we walked her down to the barn, she was just sweaty, all the signs of severe colic, in a lot of pain. The veterinarian came, we did pass a nasogastric tube — which goes through the nasal cavity into the stomach of the mare — pumped her full of oil, the veterinarian treated her with medication, gave her pain relief, and thankfully within a few days it resolved, and she was fine and back to go to work normally. But it’s such a frustrating thing that we have to deal with as horse owners and lovers because it is something that you just don’t like to see them suffer. You don’t like to see a horse in pain, and colic is one of those that you’re like, “Wow, that horse is really suffering.”

[5:06]

Now, just to kick it all off again — what is colic? Because that is a very broad term. It means different things to different people. In general, it just means abdominal pain — it’s a digestive disturbance. Horses and other species, like us — even we can experience colic. Baby colic — some of you may have had children that have suffered colic. Other animals do suffer colic; wild horses not so much, but again, we’ll talk about the reasons why horses get colic. But it’s just this general term to say that the horse has a stomach ache. Now, it doesn’t just mean the stomach, it’s the digestive tract — because you have the stomach, small intestine, and then the hindgut of the horse with the colon, the large colon, small colon, obviously the cecum that they do the fermentation in. So it’s just — the digestive tract, there’s an ailment, and it is causing the horse a lot of pain.

[6:05]

And there are different types of colic, which we’re going to talk about here in a minute, which gives you an idea of what you may be facing as a horse owner — what types of colic and how they get it. Now, at the beginning I said this information can help you save your horse’s life, and just to give you another story — many years ago, I was very motivated to, obviously, with this passion I have, spread the knowledge about horses and how to care for them. When I was at the University of Florida, I took it upon myself to create a massive open online course. At the time, this company called Coursera was starting to go around to major universities in the United States — University of Florida was one of those universities — and said, “Would you be interested in developing free online courses, college-level courses, for the masses, for free?”

[7:17]

So I took it upon myself — we’d already offered a music one that had, I think, 80,000 enrollment, it was something fantastic — and I said, “Wow, if I could reach that many people in a college-level course, sign me up.” So I applied, and my course was accepted, and I created what we called the Horse Course. Now, after I created it, I don’t have anything to do with it anymore — I’m obviously working for Mad Barn — but when I was there, and after I created that course, we offered a couple live offerings, and I think I had like 40,000-plus signups for the first iteration. It was something really great.

[7:57]

But in that course I developed, there was obviously a topic of colic, because it is such an important piece of equine management. And when I was creating that course, I remember telling the people I was working with at UF, I said, “I can guarantee you I’m going to save a horse’s life by doing this, by getting this information out. I should save at least one horse’s life, and if I do, I’ve accomplished something, I’ve done my job, and I would be very happy.” Well, a few months later, I did get an email one day — and I still have the email in a box — and it said, “Dear Dr. Mortensen, I just want to thank you.” And I can still remember reading this email to this day. The thousands of emails I read in my career there at UF, this one always sticks out. It said, “Thank you for your course. It helped save my horse’s life.”

[8:53]

It was a horse owner — she was actually in Miami, just a few hours south of me — and she said she walked into her barn and she knew something wasn’t right with her horse. She went to the barn manager, and this person hadn’t grown up around horses, but she had the sense to say, “Hey, my horse isn’t right. I don’t know, could it be colicking?” And the barn manager went and said, “Oh, your horse is fine, just leave it, she’ll be fine in a few hours.” Well, the horse owner remembered the course, remembered this information I’m going to tell you today, and she called her veterinarian. The veterinarian came out and said, “Oh yeah, your horse is colicking, thank you for calling me. If you didn’t, your horse probably could have died.” The vet treated her horse, and her horse was fine.

[9:49]

So that always stuck with me, and that’s why I think this information is so critical to you and anybody that works around horses.

[10:00]

The big question is: why do horses get colic? Domestic horses — wild horses, we don’t see a high incidence of colic, and that’s for multiple reasons. First, if there’s a wild horse that’s injured or sick or does suffer from colic, they’re probably going to get picked off by a predator. So the wild horses in America — you’re looking at cougars and bears and other things that might get a really sick, hurt horse, right? That’s why we have predators on the planet. In the ancient times — or ancient times, you know, 10,000 years ago or 15,000 years ago — you had other big carnivores chasing horses, so they would get culled out of the herd.

[10:46]

But really, the story of colic in horses goes back millions of years. And again, this is one of the reasons I always talk about the evolution of the horse and always talk history — in every podcast, I always look back and then look forward. So, looking back — when we looked at the evolution of the horse from little Eohippus to, you know, Equus — when they were making that transition and their digestive systems were evolving, for millions of years, instead of meal-eating, horses are designed to eat small meals all day, or trickles of feed all day, in their digestive tract.

[11:31]

As grazers, as large herbivores, they go around and munch forage all day — small little meals going down into the digestive tract, into their smaller stomachs, which is, you know, 10% of their entire digestive tract. The feed is in there for 20 minutes, and it’s out in the small intestine. Whereas, like us or large carnivores, we have larger stomachs — we meal-feed and then we rest and sleep and digest our food, and then we eat another meal later.

[12:06]

Herbivores like horses are hindgut fermenters — so you’re looking at rhinos and tapirs, their close relatives — whereas cattle are a different story, different topic, different day. For horses, they’re getting this small trickle of feed in their digestive tract, and then that feed goes into the small intestine and then into the hindgut, where it sits for a little while. That’s where you get this fermentation of the forage. In cows, all that is happening in the foregut, or in their big stomachs, their rumen. So cattle will eat a bunch, and then sit down and ruminate. Now, to fight off carnivores, cattle have horns, they get in big herds — if you see the wild bison of today, they’ll drive off predators. So, they kind of meal-feed for a little bit, eat a lot, and then ruminate. Horses eat small meals all day.

[13:09]

Now, when we domesticated them, their digestive systems are the same as they were 5,000–6,000 years ago. So they’re still designed to eat small meals each day. But what we’ve done is stick them in stalls or paddocks, and we meal-feed — we throw them hay twice a day and maybe a little bit of supplemental feed. So they’re getting these large meals, and that sits in their digestive tract, and that has led to things like colic, laminitis — all these other issues we see. That is one of the reasons we see it, and you’re going to see in the statistics on what causes colic and why that happens.

[14:00]

Because when we do look at their activity budgets today — horses on pasture, when they’re out getting those small meals all day, you have a nice green pasture where they can go out, or suitable forage — they’re doing what they’re naturally meant to do. If we go back to the research, time-budget-wise, horses — 60–70% of the day they’re just munching grass all day. In the studies where we look at when we stall them and then meal-feed them, they’re only — depends on the study — but 20–30% of the day they’re eating. So what do they do for the rest of the day? That’s where you start seeing stable vices and whatnot.

[14:43]

But when it comes to the digestive system — when they’re used to small bites of feed going down the esophagus into the stomach, now they’re getting large boluses of feed, and that’s where we start to see things like an impaction colic. This happens because there are so many twists and turns in the small intestine, but also in the hindgut of the horse, that sometimes you get these spots in these turns where feed gets backed up. Impaction colic is one of the major colics we see, where the feed gets stuck and then it just backs up, backs up, backs up, and then stretches the digestive system. It’s so incredibly painful for the horse, and that feed has nowhere to go because it’s blocked — it can’t make it through that tight turn.

[15:32]

And that’s an impaction colic. Sand colic is very similar — you get a bunch of sand accumulation in the gut, it gets to that turn, and it just accumulates there. Then all of a sudden you have this big bag of sand, which is the intestines, and feed can’t go through. So it is just part of the domestication of horses. And then there are other things — other factors — that can cause colic because they can alter a horse’s behavior. Things like stress — when a horse is stressed, they may not eat or they may not drink enough, and that could lead to some digestive upset. So all of these factors play a role into causes of colic. But that’s the major reason — we took these horses and we stuck them in pens, pastures, paddocks, stalls — those are the horses we tend to see more colic in.

[16:40]

Now, leading into the percentage incidence of colic — there’s a really good article by Dr. Freeman out of University of Florida, one of my colleagues. He’s a very skilled surgeon — 50 years of colic surgery — and it’s a very good look at where we are today in the modern world, in the 2020s, versus how we dealt with colic hundreds of years ago. They were dealing with colic ever since we domesticated horses. One of the things they used to do in history would be to tie up horses and feed them oil — that’s what we use today, it’s one of the first things we do. They would feed them olive oil or a type of oil to try to loosen up that gut. So this is something that we’ve always dealt with.

[17:37]

Now, Dr. Freeman, looking at the literature and all the published studies — the amount of horses per year, out of 100, some studies have cited as low as 4 out of 100 horses, but it’s as high as 10–11 out of 100. I think that’s kind of the safe range. So, that gives us — if 10 or 11 out of 100, that’s one out of 10. And I think some of the discrepancy could also be because horses do such a good job of hiding pain, so we’ll talk about recognizing some of the signs.

[18:07]

The good news — out of most of these colics, 90% are going to be resolved with non-surgical intervention. You still should always call your vet with colic — always, 100% of the time — but 90% of them can be resolved without a lot of intervention. Depending on the study, up to 17–18% of colic will require surgery, but some of the studies have it as low as 2%. It depends what you’re looking at. Again, that discrepancy is because some of these studies are coming out of veterinary hospitals that are seeing the worst cases. Those being admitted to an equine hospital for colic — up to 20% of those probably end up in surgery.

[19:10]

Now, I also said colic is the number one killer for horses under 20. I was just talking to a horse owner last week who was showing me around her farm, and she was talking about a recent colic case. She had not had any problems with colic before — it was her first case — and she has roughly a dozen horses on her farm. She told me the story of this mare, and she had to euthanize it. Her mare was suffering, she had the vet come out, she didn’t take it to the vet hospital, and she didn’t have an extra $10,000 to go through a surgery. The vet treated the horse the best they could, and she was very frustrated. She said, “I don’t understand — I’ve managed my horses the same for 20 years, and this was the worst case of colic I ever had.”

[20:14]

So we had a long discussion about that, and then — it just happens because it is the number one killer for horses under 20. Over 20, those horses are geriatric, so they’re classified as geriatric. We know today horses are living into their 30s, but old age usually is what kills them, right? Or they’re euthanized because of arthritis and, again, a life worth living. But under 20, still in their prime, colic is by far the number one that kills them.

[20:50]

There was just an interesting study I found — and you’ll find this in multiple studies — but here was just one I found in horses in Arabia, in the United Arab Emirates, looking at mortality cases in Arabian horses. Veterinarians were looking at what caused the death, and it said out of the horses they looked at, 80% of the horses that died under the age of 20 was colic, and the average age was eight years old in this study. Out of that, most of them — over 60–70% — were actually sand colic. You can imagine, United Arab Emirates, sandy soils, feeding horses on the ground on sandy soils — they’re going to ingest a lot of sand.

[21:41]

So, real quick — if you’re in that situation, put down a feeding mat or make sure their feed is not so much up off the ground, but that they’re not ingesting sand. A lot of times, horses will dribble feed out of their grain bucket over into the sand and go and eat that, so you have to be careful and watch your horse’s behavior. You want to make sure they’re not eating feed directly on sand, because that will lead to sand colic, which — again — I talk about in that impaction. So that was interesting.

[22:18]

Then, when you looked at another — this was out of France, a retrospective study of surgeries in veterinary hospitals — there were 1,161 cases of surgeries. They were looking at mortality rates of surgeries; this can be for anything, any type of surgery in horses. Out of the 1,161 cases, 229 of the surgical cases were for colic — so about 20%. And then, the mortality rate, when you look at the surgeries for colic, was about 33%, meaning during the surgery the veterinarians made a decision: “Okay, this horse probably can’t be saved, the damage was too much.” So, it’s more ethical to euthanize the horse than it is to try to go through the surgery and hope for recovery.

[23:33]

Okay — so now we know this is a serious, serious situation with horses. How do you tell if a horse is suffering from colic? If you’ve been around horses long enough — or let me just ask you this — how well do horses hide pain? I know I’ve already kind of mentioned that, but from a broad view, horses — other herbivores, other prey species — they’ve learned to hide pain. One of the things I talked about in the mare episode was watching mares go through labor, watching mares go through birth — how quiet they are. Yes, there’s some grunting, and yes, you can tell she’s in pain, but she’s stoic and she’s quiet.

[24:20]

Horses, if they’ve got little niggles or things that are just bothering them, they’ve got to hide them, because if not, they’ll get picked off. A predator sees that — “Oh, that’s easy picking.” So horses do a really good job of hiding discomfort sometimes. And it always gives me such admiration for our veterinarians, who have really well-trained eyes to say, “Yep, that horse is off,” or, “Yep, that’s a front left leg lameness,” and I’m looking at the horse going, “Maybe?” I mean, with some lamenesses you’re like, “Yeah, okay, that horse is definitely lame on that foot or leg,” but sometimes they’re so subtle, and veterinarians have really trained their eyes well to understand that.

[25:18]

So, the earlier signs of colic can really be subtle, and then as it progresses it becomes really obvious. Like I said, I had that mare in a crop circle — she was just in so much pain. A couple articles that we’ll link in the show notes on madbarn.com under the Learn tab — you can just search “colic” — but two articles that are really good on impaction colic and sand colic, signs, diagnosis, and treatment and prevention, so check those out. This can help follow up the video.

[25:59]

But talking about the signs — I always talk to horse owners: the big thing is you know your horse’s behavior best. You know it better than anybody. So you’re going to be able to tell, “Yeah, buddy, he’s not quite right today, something’s off.” Or, say your horse Buddy is always eating all their food, and you go in and there’s some food left — that’s not right. There’s something abnormal, something is off. That is where you start thinking, “Okay, what is going on? My horse isn’t well.” Because again, remember, they can hide a lot of this, but once it becomes obvious, it’s like — wow, it’s in your face and you know about it.

[26:46]

I even thought about this — when we have tummy aches, sometimes we have tummy aches where we just get on with our days, and then sometimes we have tummy aches where we’re just laying on the couch and can’t move, thinking, “What did I eat last night?” Same thing with horses. So again, anything out of the ordinary should make you go, “All right, something’s not right, I need to look more into this.”

[27:12]

Now again, another great article on madbarn.com — “11 Most Common Causes of Colic in Horses (Plus How to Prevent).” You can check that article out — a list of common signs. Now, obvious distress — on the ground rolling, pawing, really laid out — you know that’s not right, something’s wrong. And if there’s no obvious limb injury, like a broken leg or something like that, I would immediately think colic. That’s the first thing I always think if I see a horse in distress. Then, if the vet comes out and it’s not colic, you diagnose everything else, but whenever I see a horse in distress like that, I always think colic.

[28:03]

A sweaty flank or neck, the sides of the horse — that is a sign of stress. And again, rolling or pawing or activity. The biggest telltale sign of colic is tufts of hair on the sides of the horse, because they’re going to nip at that pain — there’s pain in their hind end and they’re trying to get at it, and they don’t know if it’s a bug biting them or what is causing that. You see it when mares are in labor too, because that’s where a lot of the pain is coming from. But you’ll see these tufts of hair where they’re biting at their sides — that is a big one.

[28:39]

Pawing again, straining to defecate, refusing to eat, some of these other things — sitting like a dog, groaning, their lips — they’re just not well. It’s just obvious. So you can look at that article and see some more of that, but if you see some of the more subtle signs — maybe just little tufts of hair, horse is a little aggravated — the one thing you can always do is check your horse’s vital signs. Even if they’re colicking, you want to check their vital signs so you can tell your veterinarian over the phone, because they might ask you for that — or they should ask you for that. So it’s good to have that information on hand.

[29:42]

Now, what are the vital signs? Body temperature — so, a horse’s normal body temperature is about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, 99 to 101, and that’s about 38 degrees Celsius. You want to have a thermometer on hand — if you’re using one in the rectum, make sure it’s tied off and you’re holding it tight while you do that. Heart rate — that’s a big one. If they have an elevated heart rate, they’re obviously under stress, and the normal heart rate for a horse is around 38 beats per minute, so 36 to 40 beats per minute. You can check that. Respiration — which is surprising — horses only take anywhere from 8 to 15 breaths a minute. They take really deep breaths, and it’s a lot slower than you would think.

[30:38]

If a horse is showing obvious signs of stress, you can always check hydration. The skin pinch test — that skin should bounce right back. I’m hydrated, my skin’s bouncing right back; horses should do that too. Mucous membranes — you can take your thumb right into their gums really quick, press, and you’ll see a white splotch. It should become pink right away.

[31:04]

Then you can also listen for gut sounds. This is why you’d want to have a stethoscope — not just for heart rate, but also gut sounds. You can listen with a stethoscope, and if you don’t hear any gurgling — which you normally would — that could be a sign there’s a blockage in there, some sort of colic. I would also advise you to do this when your horse isn’t stressed. Go do it today, or tomorrow, or the next time you see your horse — just try to take their vital signs. Get your horse used to you doing that, and then when there are times of stress — or when you’re stressed — you’ve done it, you’re trained, the horse is trained. It’s one of the things with working with horses — when you do things, you want to make sure they’re habituated to it.

[31:56]

Like when I always talk about emergency management — if I’ve got a fire coming down the mountain towards my facility, and my horse has never been trained to get into a trailer, and I’m trying to get them into a trailer, I’m freaking out, the horse can smell the fire, they’re freaking out — I’ll tell you what, you’re never getting that horse in that trailer. When a horse doesn’t want to get in the trailer, they don’t want to. So you want to train them — train them for emergencies. And this is one of those instances where you want them used to you checking their vital signs, and you want to be able to do it so it’s second nature to you. Just some bits of advice.

[32:32]

Now, if you suspect colic, the most important thing I can tell you — period, end of story, end of video — really is call your veterinarian. Always, always, always call your vet. When in doubt, call your veterinarian. That’s why you have them, that’s why they do what they do. I’ve worked with many veterinarians, trained many veterinarians, taught many students that became veterinarians. I was going down the vet path. That is what they do. They expect those phone calls — you’re not bothering them. Your horse’s life is in danger — call them, okay?

[33:17]

Now, what do you do if you come across your horse and you suspect a colic? Again, don’t panic — that’s the first thing. Second — especially if they’re stalled or in a paddock — remove all hay and feed. You don’t want them to keep eating. If there’s an impaction or something, you don’t want to make the situation worse. If you can, walk your horse — it prevents them from harming themselves. Because again, they’re in pain, so they may want to roll on the ground a lot, and they can get hurt or cut that way. Exercise does help mobilize — get the body going — and could help the digestive system a little bit, blood flow, things like that. But if your horse is uncooperative, don’t force them. Always think of your safety first.

[34:11]

I know I’ve been in many emergency situations with horses, and you want to jump in without thinking — “Can I get kicked? Can I get hurt? Could that horse fall on me, into a wall?” Be very careful. Your safety is always paramount. But, if you can get your horse walking, do that. I would always say don’t administer any sort of pain medication unless your veterinarian tells you. The reason is — I know you want to alleviate that pain, give some Banamine — but that can mask symptoms the veterinarian would observe. If you gave them a bunch of pain medication and the vet comes, and the horse isn’t as distressed, they may not think it’s as severe as it is. So only give the horse anything if your veterinarian tells you to, okay? Always, always follow their advice — that’s why they’re there.

[35:05]

Now, as I said, 90-something percent of those can be treated on-farm and the horse will recover fine. Those 10% — maybe a little bit more — are the horses that need to go to a veterinary clinic or hospital for surgery. Very good study done looking at the risk factors of colic in horses — and there are multiple studies out there looking at this, because it is such a big issue around the world. The number one cause of colic in horses is changes in hay. When they looked at thousands of data points in this study — done out of Texas A&M back in the day, when I was there — this was published, and come to find out it’s really, like I said from the very beginning, dietary management. Yes, there are other causes — and I’ll talk about that here in a second — but it all boils down to how we feed them, and feeding management, and dietary changes.

[36:20]

So, in this study, recent changes in hay were the number one cause of horses suffering from colic. So, going from — it could be not so much bales of hay, but say you were feeding alfalfa and all of a sudden you’ve got to feed a grass hay — I mean, that is a massive change to a horse. It could be a different cutting of hay — you get a new shipment in, and you notice the quality is different. Other things — like, we never feed moldy hay, ever, ever, ever, to a horse, or hay with a lot of debris in it, because again, that can lead to colic.

[36:57]

So that was a big one. The second biggest cause was recent diet changes — maybe not so much hay, but maybe you were feeding a concentrate and you ran out of the bag, and oops, you went to the store and they didn’t have it, so you found a different one, and you fed them the same amount of that different feed. That is a sudden dietary change to the horse’s digestive system, which can upset the balance. That was number two. Then, if they had a history of previous colic, they had a higher propensity to have colic again. That was a big one. And, if weather changes — that’s one too that owners talk quite a bit about — that’s stress. One day it’s hot, the next day a huge storm comes in and it’s hailing, tornado warnings and sirens are going off — the horses are stressed. That could lead to some signs of colic.

[37:57]

And then there are just other things that happen, like they develop growths, lipomas, things in their digestive tract. But dietary management is the big one — and so this is where I know I could make a difference, you can make a difference, especially if you share this information with other people. Anytime you change a horse’s diet, you do it slowly. I see recommendations from anywhere from two weeks — I go four weeks. It’s just easy to remember if you can do it. Now, sometimes you can’t — I’ve seen it, especially in times of drought, and people are having difficulty getting hay and they run low on hay — so you’ve got to be forward-thinking sometimes with dietary changes in horses.

[38:49]

Emergency management — if I’ve got, like I said earlier, a fire bearing down on my property and I’ve got to jump in a trailer with a horse, I don’t have time to grab feed, I’m out of there. My horse’s life is in danger, my life’s in danger, we’re getting out of there. So sometimes you can’t do this, and I understand that. But if you can — if you can look ahead and say, “Okay, I’m making dietary changes,” do it slowly. I say four weeks because it’s easy to remember. Week one — 75% of the old feed, 25% of the new feed. If it’s hay, I mix it — old hay, new hay every day. Week two — 50/50, so 50% of the old, 50% of the new. Week three — 75% of the new feed, 25% of the old feed. By week four — boom, they’re transitioned. So you do it over a three-week period, but by week four you’re done.

[39:53]

If you’re feeding new concentrate or a different supplement or something like that, you can introduce it slowly over a few days or a few weeks. If you have bags of feed, 75% old and 25% new — mix it up, then 50/50, and then 75% new and 25% old. That’s probably an easy way to remember, because that dietary change is the one that will really impact your horse the most. So you want to do it slowly — please remember that. Please, please, please.

[40:30]

Some other contributing factors — horses that are stalled will, more often than not, suffer colic compared to horses out on pasture. Makes sense — horses are meant to graze all day, their digestive systems are still designed that way. So, if they’re out grazing all day, they’re probably going to suffer a lower incidence of colic. They still can — that mare I walked across was out on pasture and she had colic — but stalled horses need turnout time. It’s very critical that they get that exercise every day, that they are turned out.

[41:12]

Sand — I talked about sand. Feeding feed on something either up off the ground, just off the ground, or on mats they can eat off of. Even hay — you throw hay out — I’ve done it, I did it years ago, tossing hay to horses over the fence, pile of dirt. Especially in Florida, sand accumulation — that’s where they’re going to get sand in their gut. That’s a common cause of colic. Dehydration — horses need to produce a lot of saliva to eat hay. If they’re eating dry hay, even if it’s good quality with great nutrients, and they’re a little dehydrated, they’re not producing enough saliva to help lubricate the digestive tract. If it’s not moistened up, you can get blockages.

[42:11]

Never feed moldy hay or feed — ever, ever, ever. Dental problems — mastication, chewing up that hay. If they can’t chew it properly and break it down, longer-stem forage can get stuck in those twists and turns in the digestive tract. Long-term use of NSAIDs — nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories — we don’t want to long-term it; it increases the incidence of colic. So those are some of the things that can lead or predispose horses to colic. There’s a long list — again, those articles you can read on madbarn.com — but we always go back to the data. Most of these horses, or a lot of these horses that suffer colic, it’s because of dietary changes. It’s something in their diet, or we’re feeding them just two meals a day, then shifting weather, they get digestive upset — boom, they have colic. So again, that’s why we want to feed them optimally three, four, five times a day, and we’ll cover that in a future podcast, talking about dietary management and how that’s shifted so much over the years.

[43:34]

I’d like to tell you another story leading into surgeries. Like I just said, when I was younger in my career, I was going to be an equine vet. That was my career path. When I went to graduate school, I kind of decided I loved the research side, I loved teaching, I had a passion for it, and I thought maybe I could make a little bit more money — whatever — and I decided to go the academic route and get a PhD and do research and teaching. But in my undergraduate days — any of you that are veterinarians or know veterinarians know — it takes hundreds, if not a couple thousand, hours of experience working with veterinarians to even think about applying to vet school. In the United States, it is very, very competitive.

[44:32]

So I was riding around with my veterinarian in San Diego, and she was amazing. She’d pick me up — I’d actually drive to her house, jump in her work truck — she had the large equine vet truck with the back and all the drawers and everything. We would drive around San Diego seeing her clients. One day she said, “I have a real treat for you, Chris — we’re going to go do a couple of colic surgeries today.” And it was a long day. It was pretty amazing. We went to the equine hospital — one of them in San Diego, California — and came in, and the horse was already prepped for surgery. She was going to assist with the anesthesia for the day, and I was able to help her prep and observe as these two surgeons worked a long time on these two horses that had colic.

[45:38]

What I can remember is, again, the viscera — all the intestines of the horses — out on a big tray as they worked on the horse to clear the impaction colic that they had. They rinsed and kept everything sterile, but then put all of that back in the horse. I remember watching them — armpit-deep in these two horses — and then stitching the horse up, stapling them shut, and the horse coming out of anesthesia. It just really stuck with me about how skilled these surgeons were.

[46:26]

Looking at the data — it depends on what study you’re looking at — but the one I’ve always gone to is this study out of Western Canada. It was a vet hospital at the university there, and they were seeing probably some of the worst cases of colic. By the time they get to a vet school level — my experience at University of Florida Vet School, Texas A&M Vet School, even walking around Auburn and some of these other major universities — their veterinary schools tend to get the worst cases, whereas a local vet hospital might get less severe cases. So I always keep that in mind when I look at these statistics.

[47:12]

Of the colic cases that were sent to the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Canada, 93% of the non-surgical, medical cases that they saw survived to discharge. Of the surgical cases — and this was a 10-year study, with 277 cases — only 33% survived to discharge. Thinking about why — I think some of it was there was a poor prognosis once they were doing the surgery, or these surgical cases were, “We can’t afford it, it’s going to cost too much.” Down the road, when you look at other studies, I’ve seen 60, 70, even 80% of horses survive colic surgery. So there are some good outcomes out there. That study I talked about in Canada was 20 years old, and looking at more recent studies, veterinary medicine has gotten more advanced.

[48:17]

Looking at the data — types of colic they see at these veterinary hospitals, because that’s where we get a lot of our information — the number one type of colic you’ll see, in study after study, is impaction. Again, I talked about these twists and turns in the gut of the horse — it just gets to the point where there’s nowhere to go. Depending on the hospital, the data I’m looking at here in front of me: Cornell University, 25% of their horses at the hospital were impaction colic; University of Guelph in Canada, 21%; Ohio State, 21%; and Penn Hospital in the United States, 23% of the horses they saw for colic were impaction types.

[49:15]

So almost one out of four of the colics were impaction. The next most common type seen is these large intestinal strangulation obstructions — sometimes you have either twists or turns, or there is what we call a lipoma, a growth in there that will strangle part of the digestive tract of the horse, and so then the feed can’t go anywhere. Now, keep this in mind — these are the vet hospitals reporting this. On-farm, your veterinarian — it’s probably an impaction or an impend, they give them some oil, they give them some medication, they’re able to clear that, and they’re back to normal. These are at the vet hospital — wow, this is a very, very tough case.

[50:09]

The third most common type was small intestinal strangulation. So, a lot of the colic we see is in the hindgut — that’s the cecum, the large colon, that part of the digestive tract. Small intestine — you do see some of this there. Then, some of it is a large intestinal non-strangulation obstruction — there’s some obstruction there. You get things like spasmodic colic, where it’s just spasming — that’s very, very painful. Again, that study out of Canada that I just talked about — large colon impaction was the number one they saw; large colon displacement — so 16% of the cases — that’s where the colon displaces itself, rolls over on itself. That’s a very difficult colic — it kind of twists where the feed can’t get through.

[51:02]

Okay — I want to wrap all this up. The big question is: my horse had colic, now what? It’s resolved itself on-farm, or I had surgery — how do I take care of my horse? What do I do? Always work with your veterinarian — always, always, always. Then go through your management — what caused that colic? What could have led to my horse colicking? Was it my dietary management? Was I feeding them some bad hay? Were they dehydrated — like I talked about in welfare — accidentally a horse flipping over an automatic waterer and having no water all day? How could I prevent that from happening again? Don’t beat yourself up, but evaluate what you’re doing and say, “Okay, is there anything I can change and alter to not have my horses be predisposed to colic?”

[52:00]

Feeding twice a day is really not ideal — we want them to eat hay all day long. So there are different strategies and different feeding management practices that have matured in the last 10 years — I’d say in the last 20 years — in how we feed horses. Again, talk to your veterinarian. If you’re doing a non-surgical recovery, when do you feed them again, or when do you let them eat normally? Within 12 to 24 hours after it resolves itself, you can let your horse go back to eating. Always check their dental health. If they are stalled, you want to make sure they’re out as much as possible — up to 12 hours if you can, especially after suffering colic. You want them stretching their legs, getting exercise, getting blood flow, getting that gut going again and functioning normally.

[53:04]

If you make any dietary changes, again, do it slowly — because it could have gotten you into that situation before. You want to give their digestive tract time to adjust — those microbes need to change in the gut. That’s another podcast for another day, but you need to allow their digestive system time to recover.

[53:23]

The hard one is surgery — how do you recover from a big gut surgery? This is where you have to be careful, and this is where you want to work closely with them and talk to them. Horses — the data shows, on average, if a horse has a colic surgery, they stay in the hospital for about six days. In the studies, the range was anywhere from a very few days — two to three — up to 75 days. That’s a long hospital stay. If they’re under food restrictions, especially after surgery, they could enter a starvation period, and you have to be very careful refeeding a horse. Dr. Carolyn Stull out of UC Davis has a great article on that — on refeeding starved horses.

[54:12]

If you’re changing that diet — from what they were eating in the hospital to what you’re feeding at home — make sure you transition. When that horse gets home, you want them eating the diet they were eating at the hospital. Make sure you talk to them about what hay, what else they were feeding. You want to make sure there are no massive dietary changes — and again, that’s going to depend on where you live in the world and what hospital you’re working with.

[54:36]

One of the things, especially with surgery, is you have this population of microbes in the hindgut that are critical to nutrition and digestion — they’re very sensitive to rapid and sudden changes. This is where we run into some problems, especially with laminitis and stuff. If a horse has been off feed for 24 hours, that population’s already starting to shift. Some of the things you can do — slowly refeed them, put them on a pre- and probiotic to help reestablish those beneficial organisms. One thing after surgery is feeding them handfuls of hay — you don’t want to give them big loads of hay, but little bits of feed, and start that trickle back down into the digestive tract.

[55:27]

You really want to be careful — you don’t want to shock the microbes. If this horse has been on pasture and you’re, after surgery, reintroducing them to pasture — they’ve gone from a hospital stay probably eating hay to what could be lush or green — you don’t want to shock the system. Introduce them very slowly. It’s almost like how we introduce horses off winter hay to spring pasture — let them out on pasture for 15 minutes each day for the first few days, then increase that by 15 minutes every day. By day 16, they’re grazing for three and a half hours, and after day 16 you can just let them turn out full. So just to repeat that: 15 minutes day one, 30 minutes day two, and so on.

[56:17]

The great news about all this — to wrap it all up — is 90% of colic cases tend to resolve on-farm, non-surgical. A vet call is well worth it — get your horse back, and they leave healthy and happy lives. But if we look at statistics, 10 out of 100 horses roughly will suffer colic every year. Out of these 10, one won’t survive — so roughly one out of 100 horses every year dies from colic under the age of 20. It is serious, and that’s why we want to talk about it, recognize the signs, know what to do, get them treated early, and then know how to prevent it. Again, proper dietary management is one of the best things you can do for your horse to keep them healthy and happy.

[57:14]

So, take that information, spread the word, talk to your friends. If they don’t know anybody that’s had to deal with colic — again, don’t beat yourselves up. You do the best you can. And if you made it this far, thank you — it shows you really care. Just before you go, if you don’t mind subscribing to the YouTube channel — we’re going to keep these video podcasts going. You obviously have the audio podcast version of this on colic that you can also listen to. Be sure to check us out on TikTok, obviously YouTube here, Instagram. Go to madbarn.com, look under that Learn tab, type in “colic” — there’s a ton of articles and resources for free. All of this is free, and all we ask is that you share, follow, like, and subscribe and all that fun stuff with YouTube. So thanks for staying, and thanks for caring — and stay tuned, we’ll have more coming your way soon.