[Duckduckgoose]

It's been a hard week here. We lost our 8 year old Shetland pony to grass sickness on Wednesday morning. she was just quiet and not right and thinking that she was about to colic I called the vet out and tried to keep her walking. She went down just as the vet arrived and she proceeded to treat her for colic as that's what she thought too. The situation went from thinking she just needed fluids to her being so bad and in so much pain that she had to be put to sleep within 2 hours. the children and I are utterly devastated.
Just wanted to put that out there. Its the first time I've seen a pony with grass sickness and it was shocking how rapidly she deteriorated.
Anyone else on here have any experience of this?

[Brandi]

  I am so so so sorry for your loss, fortunately I don't have any experience of this but I know that it can be devastating as it has been for you and your family, such a difficult experirnce for you.  Please take some consolation from the fact that you did everything humanly possible.

[CarolineJ]

Very, very sorry for your loss.  My neighbours lost one to GS just before we moved here 8 years ago, it's horribly quick.

[Duckduckgoose]

Thanks guys, she was such a loving young mare who i'd just broken for my 4 and 2 year old who were loving riding her around our place. I had had to put my Welsh D mare away as a companion 2 weeks before because she had ongoing foot issues. There are most definitely horse and pony sized holes in our lives just now!

[shygirl]

do I remember right that you just moved there?

sorry for your loss 

[harmony]

Really sorry for you and your children 


I lost a lovely mare a couple of years ago with this. Like yours she seemed a touch colicky and the vet treated as such and in my experience I expected her to improve but she didn't and I called the vet again mid day and we were still going down the colic route but something didn't quite add up. Most of the day she was very quiet and wandered a little, got up and down but you would have expected a colic to have cleared with the treatment she had or escalate and nothing much changed all day. Then suddenly in the afternoon she jumped up and sweat just poured out of her and she seemed to go into shock. I called the vet and we had both by then decided it wasn't colic and he had spoken to another vet and by the time he arrived we were both thinking grass sickness. She had calmed a bit but clearly she was not going to make it and we had her PTS.


In the following days a friend lost her stallion and we heard of another locally.


It was following a wet cold period where temperatures didn't get into double figures and it was April time. It has been drier and warmer here but there is a lot of poached ground so that may be a factor.


Walking a horse with suspected colic is viewed as a rather old fashioned treatment now and actually may do more harm depending on the type of colic.


As I said really sorry for you and your family.

[waterbuffalofarmer]

I am so sorry to hear that it must be devasting for you all. I will certainly keep on the alert. Does this also apply to sheep and bovine? Or is it just for horses?

[Duckduckgoose]

Yes we moved here at the start of last year and got Vicci shortly after to break for my children. She took to it like a duck to water. I'd known her since she was a foal as she was bred by my friend.
really sorry to hear all your stories too. My neighbour half a mile away had a horse with colic the day after and he was  panicking it was grass sickness as well. His gelding has recovered though thanks goodness.
WBF I think grass sickness is just horses, its certainly where I've heard of it. Not sure if there's an equivalent in sheep and cattle??

[shygirl]

I think its land related aswell.
poor you though, would be awful x

[Rosemary]

Sorry to hear this. Not experienced it personally, thankfully, although a few were lost to grass sickness over the years at the livery yard we used to be at.

NE Scotland is particularly bad for GS. In fact, the epicentre is here in Carnoustie. Speculation is that Army remounts at Barry Buddon brought something back from the Crimea or that it is linked to the common practice of spreading guano on the fields in the NE many years ago.

Very sad.

[shygirl]

. Speculation is that Army remounts at Barry Buddon brought something back from the Crimea or that it is linked to the common practice of spreading guano on the fields in the NE many years ago.

can you elaborate? whats guano?

[Rosemary]

. Speculation is that Army remounts at Barry Buddon brought something back from the Crimea or that it is linked to the common practice of spreading guano on the fields in the NE many years ago.

can you elaborate? whats guano?

Seabird dung. It used to be imported and spread as a fertiliser.

[shygirl]

oh. thanks.

theres interesting research online.

 

[Buttermilk]

At farm we used to keep our horses at 40 years ago, a retired farm worker told us of one field which was not a horse field and never to use it.  A few years later when he had died and we had moved some more people had horses there and grazed that field.  They lost three young irish draughts that summer, all to grass sickness.

[shygirl]

my vet had said they thought it was the same thing as "botox" which paralyses the gut and takes 3 months to wear off. obviously a pony cant survive gut paralysis for 3 month.