Horse people - any suggestions for home treatment of mild colic?

First, I know I SHOULD call a vet for this and get the whole nose tube mineral oil/water thing done. I would love to call a vet, as I don't know how to safely do the nose tube thing myself, and I don't want to try. But thanks mostly to Covid and the recent freak ice/snow/no power/no water episode, we've been forced to miss a lot of work this fall and winter and have nearly completely devastated our emergency fund already.

So my question is, do you know of anything I can do to help my mare aside from bringing out a vet? I've dealt with colic in the past, but always with a veterinarian. Best I can tell, she ate a bunch of the pampas grass my neighbor threw over the fence for my goats, and either she didn't chew it up well enough or it just didn't agree with her for some other reason.

She IS POOPING. I could tell she was feeling off yesterday because I saw her lying down in the pasture more than usual, and she didn't eat when I threw out hay in the evening. I put her in a stall by herself with some water so I could monitor her pooping. She pooped while I was sitting out there with her last night, and she pooped again this morning. Less than usual, but still, I think pooping indicates she isn't blocked up, or at least isn't completely blocked up.

She wants to lie down a lot and sometimes she tries to roll. I've walked her a bit, I let her nibble some grass to see if that would stimulate her system. I found a thing online that said coffee can help stimulate digestion in horses and ginger helps with digestive problems, so I tried giving her some coffee and ginger with an old wormer-type syringe I've kept. She spit most of it out, so I'm not sure it helped any.

I went to TSC for some mineral oil and figured I'd try to give her some orally, as I saw that online somewhere as a recommendation for something to do while waiting for a vet to arrive. But I just did a little more reading and somewhere else was saying to never try to give mineral oil yourself because it might get in the lungs. Ugh. I might try anyway. I mean, the nose tube - I can see that going very wrong. But orally? That's how you give dewormer and bute... how can that be a big risk?

If anyone has any ideas I'd be grateful. If she doesn't improve in two or three hours I'm gonna call my vet and hope I don't have to give them every last dollar I have... I'll do whatever I can to save her but if I completely drain our savings and something else happens we won't have anything left.

Thanks in advance to anyone who has any ideas. While I wait I'm going to take her for another walk and see if that helps.

 

Update: she pooped again. This time a small, kind of runny pile. I am out walking her.

 

Thank you. I’m calling the vet in an hour if I don’t see any change.

 

Vet said I had to bring her in so they could do fluid IV. Our neighbor is bringing a trailer. Ugh - the starting cost is $500 they said. I sure hope it isn’t much more than that.

 

Thanks guys. Damfino, unfortunately I just dropped her off at the vet, or I’d have tried that. I’ll be sure and check back here though if I ever run into this again in the future. Vetting a horse is soooo expensive. It probably doesn’t help that my nearest equine vet is in a pretty well-off area. A lot of their other customers probably have a lot more money than I do.

Ugh - so the vet said my mare (her name is Navi) palpated like part of her intestine is stuck in this weird spot, I think she said between the spleen and something. Dang, I can never remember these things. Anyway, apparently it’s common in horses because of a weird anatomy thing they have going on in that area, but it’s also very bad. They have a drug they give for it that shrinks the intestine and then they exercise the horse in some way to try to dislodge the intestine from where it’s stuck.

She has to stay at the clinic for a couple of days to get rehydrated and then get the drug. Estimated cost is $1200-$1500. I sure hope it works, ‘cause that’s honestly about all we have left right now.

The poor girl looked so miserable and uncomfortable. I really hope she gets feeling better from this.

 

I’ve used Burleson since I was a teen living with my parents, so that’s where I took her. They say she’s doing well - that’s the most important thing. But I may consider going to Alvarado in the future. I’ve taken a goat there a couple of times now and it’s not so much farther, though in an emergency maybe a bit far.

I got Dr. Rook’s and Dr. Camp’s numbers
from you once before, but wasn’t able to get ahold of either - have you spoken to them recently? If my memory serves me correctly, one had some kind of automated bad number message, like maybe they got a new number and nobody had been assigned their old one yet, and the other had a regular voicemail but didn’t call me back.

 

So someone from Burleson Equine was supposed to call me sometime this evening with a progress report. I waited and waited, all stressed and worried, and never got a call. I thought maybe they’d gotten busy with an emergency, so I waited until after 11:00 and then called, thinking I’d leave a message in case they’d lost my phone number or something. I was surprised when an actual person answered - he said he’d forward my message and someone would call me shortly. Sure enough, someone called and said she was doing well, pooped twice and not showing signs of colic tonight. So that’s a relief. I wonder if they will still go through with the treatment plan if she seems to be recovering. I don’t think they gave her the drug yet - pretty sure they were just hydrating her tonight. I guess I’ll find out in the morning.

 

Well, it looks like she's going to be okay! Yesterday morning she was about the same as the night before: improved, but still painful here and there. Sounds like she got two rounds of the drug that - if I've come to understand correctly now - shrinks the spleen so the intestine can sort of bounce out of where it gets wedged, between the spleen and something else. Still can't remember that part!

Anyway, the initial dose didn't quite do it so they did a second one, and had her do some trotting to try and bounce it out. After the second one she wasn't showing signs of gut pain anymore, so that's really good!

She was still having small, runny poop though, so the vet went in from the rear to check for impactions again (she did that during her initial exam also, upon our arrival at the clinic). She told me she thought she could feel something just at the end of her reach, and suggested another round of fluids to make sure she stayed super hydrated so she could get things moving through properly again.

So we did that. And this morning they called and said she was doing wonderfully and would be ready to come home this afternoon. So that was really, really nice news to wake up to.

Before the second IV we were at $1220, so I guess we'll end up around the middle of the estimated price range. I'm gonna have to make up for that somehow with some extra work or something, but at least she's alive, and at least they didn't need to do surgery!! Honestly, if it had come to surgery I'd have been forced to borrow money for it or put her down. We've had one too many emergencies this past year. Sick cat, the winter storm, multiple possible Covid exposures at work demanding stay-at-home vacations with no pay while awaiting test results... Our poor emergency fund is absolutely starving to death, despite our consistent efforts to refill it in between emergencies.

Thanks everyone for dropping in here with your encouragement and ideas! I really appreciate it - it's been nice knowing that you're here waiting for news along with me.

 

Thought I’d add a picture here for y’all’s enjoyment. Navi, the mare in question, is the little cremello on the right. The big dun boy next to her is my gorgeous mustang gelding, Dorado.