Rolling Dog Farm Blog

I went out to feed the horses on New Year’s Eve morning and found our Belgian draft horse, Rooster, lying flat out on his side in the snowy corral.  It was snowing, the wind was howling, and judging from the ice balls in his mane and the snow all over him, he’d been like this for awhile.  Rooster and his brother Beaver have a big run-in shed for shelter, so he wouldn’t have decided to lie down to sleep in these kinds of conditions.  I called to him but he didn’t get up.  I threw hay out, and he didn’t get up.  Uh oh. 

I walked right up to Rooster and only then did he sit up … but he still wouldn’t stand up.  I went back to Lena’s Barn to get his halter and lead rope.  He let me put it on him while sitting down.  I tried coaxing him up, tugging gently on the lead rope, but he wouldn’t budge.  He just sat there, sternal, and stretched his neck way out, resting his chin on the ground.

I suspected colic, but also worried about hypothermia, since he was covered in snow and had been down for a long time.

At this point, I called Alayne to tell her we had a problem with Rooster and ask her to come out to help.  Then I called our equine vet clinic in Missoula, Blue Mountain Veterinary Hospital.  Dr. Erin Taylor, our equine vet, was out of town for the holiday, so I spoke with Dr. Doug Reedy.  Doug offered to come out to the ranch, but if Rooster needed IV fluids, it would be better to take him to the clinic … if we could get him up.  So Doug told me to give him an IV injection of banamine, an anti-inflammatory, and I told Doug we’d call as soon as we managed to get Rooster in the trailer.

As I walked back to the house to get the syringe, banamine, and stethoscope, Alayne succeeded in getting Rooster to his feet.  What a relief.  After I injected the banamine into his jugular — big horse, big vein, easy to find! — I listened to his heart rate.  His heart was pounding at 120 beats a minute.  Ohmigod.  I’d never heard a horse heart rate faster than 80.  I couldn’t believe it and handed the stethoscope to Alayne.  She counted the same beats. 

I hitched up the horse trailer to the Chevy pickup, and Alayne walked Rooster through the corrals and out to the truck.  He loaded just fine — but being a draft horse and an exceptionally big one at that, he had to duck his head to fit in the trailer.

About an hour and a half later, I arrived at the vet clinic.  Doug took Rooster’s heart rate, and even after a whopping 18 cc dose of IV banamine, his heart rate was still racing at 80 beats per minute.  He also had a fever, which is unusual for a colic case.  That’s why, in the photo at the top of this post, Doug is doing a belly tap on Rooster to see if he has any fluid in in abdomen that would suggest an infection or gut leakage of some sort.  Vet tech Courtney, who makes frequent appearances on this blog, is holding Rooster.

In this photo, Doug is doing a rectal exam, trying to find an impaction or other gut problem.  To give you some idea of just how big Rooster is, Doug is a big guy himself at 6′ 2" … and you can see that’s just about as tall as Rooster’s rump: 

Rooster came to us because of the awful swayback condition that is so obvious in the photo.  We’ve noticed in the past few months it has become more pronounced, but it doesn’t yet seem to be causing him pain.

In this next photo Doug is pumping fluids and electrolytes directly into Rooster’s stomach, while Courtney uses a twitch on Rooster to give him something else to focus on besides the tube in his nose.  After the fluids, Doug pumped a jug of mineral oil into Rooster to help loosen everything in his intestines.

Then we put Rooster in a stall so Doug and Courtney could hook him up to IVs, and we left him there to spend the rest of New Year’s Eve.  No parties for this boy.

Doug called this morning to say Rooster’s vital signs had all returned to normal, he had pooped, and he looked great.  Whew!  That was great news to start off the New Year with!