Natural Horse World Articles-Healthcare

Teeth Check Time

One of the few things horses and humans have in common is the need for annual check up with the dentist.

In days gone by the farrier also practiced horse dentistry so it was easy to slot in a quick check of the teeth when he visited on a regular basis. But now horse dentistry is much more specialized and requires a little more skill than being able to wield a rasp to knock off the sharp edges. Therefore, we need to make a special effort to book the dentist for a yearly check up and do the necessary preparation before he arrives.

“Preparation – what preparation?” most people would say – thinking it’s the dentists job to educate your horse to have his mouth handled. Unfortunately, this approach has led to a lot of dentists having to resort to tranquilizers so they can do the job without injury and trauma to themselves and the horse. Then you end up with a horse who increasingly fears the dentists visit.

It need not be this way if you are prepared to spend a few minutes a day or even a couple of times a week, desensitizing your horse to things around and in his or her mouth.

Just having a stranger wanting to prod and poke in the most sensitive part of their body is fear causing enough for a horse, so by getting them used to mouth handling, you are going to have a calmer, more accepting horse which your dentist will love.

To start with, you should be able to rub your horse’s nose and lips with your fingers without him shying away – use approach and retreat and gentle rhythmic pressure while gently holding the halter so you can follow his movement if he pulls away. Keep the rubbing going until your horse is showing signs of acceptance then immediately leave him alone for a minute.

As your horse accepts your hand and fingers in and around the lips, start with rubbing the gums (which some horses love) and then the tongue, remembering to stop when there are signs of acceptance (not pulling away, relaxing the head, licking).

Once they are comfortable with you rubbing the tongue on the side where there is a gap in the teeth, work towards acceptance of your fingers in the mouth on top of the tongue, entering where the gap is. Then see if you can gently hold the tongue for a second before releasing it, being careful not to pull it as you can break a very fragile bone connected to the back of the tongue, rendering it useless.

When your horse accepts you gently holding the tongue for a second or two, you can then work on acceptance of simulated dentists tools in the mouth. The rubber handle on a training stick or crop is a good thing to start with as its soft with rounded edges. You might even get them to like it by smearing it with molasses or apple sauce.

Acceptance of a worming tube will also help and I’ve heard from a student that cleaning the teeth with a toothbrush is something her ponies really seem to enjoy.

Remember to allow the horse to check out anything you want to put in his mouth first, and even use it to groom him with so you are not being too direct line about getting it straight in the mouth.

The process may be quite fast for some young horses who are very mouthy anyway and love holding onto and chewing things so its good to introduce them to different objects and being able to gently rub their teeth with them.

For older horses who have maybe had a bad experience or who are naturally more wary and protective of their mouth, you will need to take it slowly and use some incentives like molasses or apple sauce.

Start with it on your finger then move onto other objects as they gain confidence which may have previously been shattered by rough handling or no preparation.

Choosing a dentist who has the right approach (slow and gentle) is also important for future confidence so ask around experienced horse people for recommendations.

We need to realize that mouth handling should be a part of our grooming routine, just like cleaning out the hooves to check on growth and for anything caught in the hoof.

It gives you the opportunity to notice anything out of the ordinary such as an abscess, grass seeds lodged in the gums or other problems.

Some horses even need regular cleaning of tartar build up around the edges of some teeth on a regular basis which is something the dentist can show you how to do quite easily.

And the other big benefit is the trust it builds in the relationship with your horse so don’t delay, use the winter months when less riding time is available to develop your horsemanship in other ways just as beneficial for you and your horse.

Regular teeth checks can help you notice problems like this offset jaw which may need special treatment.

THE HEALING POWER OF HONEY on Severe Wounds by Cynthia Cooper

I'm always looking for natural alternatives when it comes to treating horses and I believe they can work well in conjunction with modern medicine.
A while ago now, I had a yearling filly (Ruby) badly injured from wire cuts. She had severed the flexor (front) tendons on her off fore and near hind, and had stripped an 8" section of flesh to the bone on the front of her off hind.

Both back legs had severed tendons and even after 10 days the bone showed through and proud flesh was rapidly developing following conventional treatment.

After initially stitching the worst cut, I had the tendons operated on so they would have some hope of repairing.
A week after the operation I had her home as a full time patient requiring her bandages changed every couple of days, confinement and a diet to help her heal.
Initially, I followed the vet's advice and used the antiseptic lotion and 'green grease' provided for under the bandages.

It only took about 5 days for the flesh to cover the exposed bone and at that point I started my alternative treatments.
I cleaned the wounds with Calendula tea and then applied pure Tasmanian bush honey.
I can't recall where I'd heard of using honey, but I was amazed at what I discovered.
Usually, leg wounds develop a lot of proud flesh which can become a real problem if not controlled.
Traditional methods include using things like 'Yellow Lotion", copper sulphate solution and very firm bandaging.
Or simply allowing it to grow then having it surgically removed.
What I found was that the honey seemed to naturally control the growth of the flesh so that it didn't develop more than necessary.

Upon further research, I found that Honey has long been known for its special anti bacterial qualities and ability to heal.
It has been used since Egyptian times and is currently making a comeback in human treatment of long standing wounds.
Apparently there are is even a certain type of honey from Queensland known for its exceptional healing ability.

The one thing that is important I discovered, is to use only pure, un-processed honey.
Heat treating honey (as they do for longer shelf life) seems to ruin its anti -bacterial qualities.
Back to the treatment of Ruby - as I lived only a 15 minute float trip from the beach I decided to use the sea to cleanse her wounds.
It became a great educational experience with regular float trips, learning to go in the sea (no waves) and to lead from another horse.
The only disaster I had, was once when riding Manny with Ruby in tow - he must have stepped on something that moved for all of a sudden he shot forward and I got dumped over the back, landing with a big splash under Ruby's nose!
This scared her enough to want out of there so she started to head out to sea! Luckily she responded to my calls and came straight back.

After treatment with honey and salt water, they were much improved.

After a month of bandaging, there was enough healthy flesh reducing the size of the wounds, to leave them open to the air.
I continued to apply honey twice daily as she often licked it off! Even though it was summer, I didn't have any problems with the honey attracting wasps.
As you can see from the photos, the healing was clean and the scarring minimal considering the original size of the wounds.

A few months later the scars are almost healed and proud flesh reduced.

Now her legs are healed and sound even though there is still some unsightly scars.

Fortunately she didn't suffer any loss of movement and the tendons repaired effectively.
I have since heard of several cases (and experienced myself) where honey was used straight onto smaller cuts and they healed very nicely.
For more information search on "honey + for + healing" which gives you hundreds of web sites to choose from.

Another Example with a less severe leg wound

Arabian foal's foreleg wound day 2 (left), then one week after being bandaged with honey (right).

The would has healed beautifully after 1 month of using Manuka honey. With time the scare became barely visible.

Heel wound healed with honey

Honey treatment started 2 days after initial treatment with hydrogen peroxide to flush it clean twice daily as this was a very deep wound.

3 days of cleansing with salt solution then honey treatment. I applied it with a syringe to get into the deep wound.

TIPS ON TREATING MUD FEVER:
1. Remove the horse from the pasture to an area where there is little grass and feed free choice low-sugar grass hay in a slowfeeder haynet. Feed extra copper/zinc available in a balanced formula (available from www.balancedequine.com.au).
2. To help remove the scabs cover them with vaseline and use cling film uner a vetwrap bandage to wrap the affected area overnight. This allows the scabs ot eb removed easily.
3. Apply an ointment such as a mix of Filtabac and vaseline or Filtabac and Derisal (cow udder ointment). The Filtabac helps with keeping the sun off.
4. If condition is acute, i,e., legs very swollen, horse very lame/sore, a steroidal cream or antibiotics may be needed to start with. If unsure about your horse's condition, call your vet.
5. Continue daily treatment with ointment and additional scab removal if needed until under control (usually about a week).
6. Protecting your horse from mud, and flies while treating mud fever or rain scald will be of great benefit to the recovery process.
7. A 3 days course of Arnica/Ignatia/Hypericum from your Homeopathy First Aid kit would be a good idea!

JACKO'S STORY
by Paul & Karen Lockwood
We were first introduced to Pat Coleby’s book "Natural Horse Care" by a neighbour back in about ’96. We thought it sounded pretty good & started to base our supplemental feeding on her ideas. The ponies we had did just fine on this feed with the grazing they had & the addition of hay in winter.
Then we got Jacko, a severely undernourished 3 year old first cross quarter horse.

So we started the task of putting some weight on him, wow could he eat. It didn’t seem to matter how much we fed him, he didn’t put on weight. After six months he started to get greasy heal on 1 of his 3 white feet so we treated it topically with iodine which at first appeared to work. Then the greasy heal started to appear on his 2 other white legs as well, treatment with iodine did not seem to work at all, the scabs started to grow in size & number & spreading up his white socks. Mud Fever? Over the following 6 months we tried every topical remedy that anyone told us about, Vaseline, White Healer, engine oil & Quit itch (iodine). They all seemed to do something at first, then the mud fever would come back even worse.

What a nightmare, he started to become lame with the condition. Then we remembered Pat Coleby had remedies in her book! Jacko was copper deficient! The answer was on our shelf all the time - why hadn’t we used it? A copper sulfate wash for his legs and feed him copper sulfate to address his deficiency. Oh that's right we looked at the packet of copper sulfate at the hardware store, saw the poison label, did the human thing & asked around about copper sulfate & feeding it to horses & came to the conclusion that it might kill him. He should be getting enough copper from the seaweed. Wrong.

Well we didn’t seem to have any other choice & to make matters worse 1 of our other horses started to get greasy heal, so we purchased the copper sulfate & just washed their legs with it. Hmm! Didn’t seem to be doing much after a week or so, looked like we had to feed the copper sulfate. Jacko was the guinea pig, we started with a ¼ teaspoon daily in his feed. He didn’t seem to mind it at all & so increased it to ½ teaspoon. Within 1 week the mud fever had started to recede, yippee!!! After 2 weeks it had halved & 1 month later completely cleared. In the meantime we decided to feed ¼ teaspoon copper sulfate to the other horse, he didn’t like it at all.

What now? He would not eat a feed with copper sulfate in it till we reduced the amount to 2 tiny grains!! That's not enough. We then doubled the amount on a daily basis until we reached a ¼ teaspoon. After a week or so of the ¼ teaspoon his greasy heal had gone. So not only did it not kill them, it cured them. Phew!! Over the next year or so Jacko changed color from washed out orange to a shiny copper chestnut.

We became more aware of what Pat Coleby was saying in her book. We even wrote to her to tell her the story. She wrote back suggesting her new version of the book would be interesting reading. We purchased that & another of her books Natural Farming & Land Care. Both well worth getting, the amounts of copper sulfate & sulfur had been increased from the early version. When we increased the sulfur to 1 tablespoon for Jacko he started to absorb his feed properly & finally started to put on weight to the stage where we reduced his feed to less than half what we had previously fed. We also had a soil test done which confirmed our pasture was in fact low in Calcium, magnesium, sulfur, copper, zinc & boron. Surprise, surprise!!

We have top dressed our paddocks as recommended by the soil lab over the past 2 ½ years and decided that we could stop the feed supplementing of minerals as we had them available in an ad lib form, as described in Pat Coleby’s books, as well as ad lib seaweed and ad lib rock salt.
After 2 weeks, in January this year, of not supplementing their feed the greasy heal returned, 2 years after we thought we would never see it again, even though we had observed them using the ad lib minerals, & seaweed, they did not take enough. We returned to supplementing on a daily basis, 1 tablespoon Dolomite, 1 tablespoon powdered sulfur, ½ teaspoon copper sulfate for Jacko (¼ for Spike) & 1 teaspoon of seaweed meal as our maintenance ration, they still take more from the ad lib options as well. The Greasy heal cleared in 2 weeks. Looks like our horses need copper more than we think?
We thoroughly recommend you at least read one of these books before using the information, to get a better understanding of the importance of minerals in your horses diet and the soil your feed is grown on, so that you can tailor your supplement to suit your individual horses needs. You will also find in both these books a list of common conditions & which mineral deficiency is the underlying cause.

Stringhalt is a common seasonal condition.
In Australia, stringhalt is commonly seen in summer and autumn as drought stressed pastures are overtaken with weeds such as false Dandelion (also known as Catsear or Flatweed) and Capeweed. Toxins from these weeds affect the nervous system resulting in an exagerated high stepping action in one or both hind legs.
In mild cases the symptoms show when the horse is asked to back-up or if there is a change of terrain, cold weather or if the horse becomes nervous or excited.
Horses with stringhalt can walk, canter and gallop but have trouble trotting properly.
If your horse is supected as having stringhalt there are several things you can do:

Horses left un-treated for this condition will suffer from muscle wastage and may never completely recover. Most cases resolve once the horse is removed from the pasture in a period of 2 weeks to 2 years, depending on the severity of the stringhalt.

Prevention is better - check your pastures for the offending weeds and if you have them, remove your horse before it shows symptoms and feed it on grass hay and supplementary feed according to use and condition.

Teeth Troubles and a Positive Outcome by Vanessa McDonald

I have owned Missy now for five years. The sad truth is that during those five years I have not got her teeth done. It was not meant to be neglect! I thought I was doing her a favour, protecting her from the stress of a dentist visit. Missy was given to me as an unstarted eight year old Arab that had been rescued from starvation and bad handling, to a woman who thought with good intensions to send her to a breaker, she was sent back worse and her experience with being mouthed had resulted in a comment that she was unsafe and tried to kill them.
Shortly after I was given Missy I met Cynthia and she introduced me to natural horsemanship. I was able to form a relationship with this beautiful sensitive mare. Yet her scars remained and I just accepted her as she was. I had my gelding’s teeth done but still was too scared to do Missy, because of the stress it would cause her. Then a few weeks ago I noticed swelling down her jaw, I was horrified at the pain that Missy was in.

I called the vet and arranged for him to do her teeth. Recently I had discovered Clicker training through Natural horse world and was using the technique to get Missy to worm easier, I was having great results and in a conversation with Cynthia she recommended desensitizing Missy in readiness for the dentist using clicker training. Over the week I was able to place the handle of a plastic hoof pick all over her teeth without her being upset. I also did target training, which is getting the horse to respond to a manmade object, like a wooden handle with a ball taped to it, so the horse can focus on the target. All this helped in her preparation for the vet.

Photo: The lump in the side of the jaw alerted Vanessa to her horse's teeth troubles.

The Vet arrived and sedated her and began the procedure as well as a pregnancy test. She was amazing as she coped with all the rasping without hardly any resistance. I have watched horses being sedated and still fighting the whole procedure. I can say that having formed a trusting relationship with the help of many great natural horsemanship techniques and love as well as desensitising her in readiness for the experience has made the whole experience stress free for both of us.. The great feeling is that evening when I walked out to check on them they all came trotting up and I was able to rub and kiss Missy’s face and she stood there loving every moment of it.

I realise the commitment in looking after a horse’s health. When I first got her she would fall over when I touched her legs, yet over time I was able to bare foot trim her and now she stands with no halter or rope as I trim her sitting down.
I guess I also think teeth fall into the category “what you can’t see won’t hurt you.” I have learnt my lesson in thinking that I was being kind. I was actually being neglectful. What I love about this journey of natural horsemanship, is that there is a huge tool box of knowledge waiting and when we need a solution we just rummage around and find a tool to help us, it may not be the first one but I have learnt that eventually an answer will come. And I thank Cynthia Cooper for all her wonderful articles and now I am just waiting for her book!

Another Example with a less severe leg wound

Heel wound healed with honey

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Another Example with a less severe leg wound

Heel wound healed with honey

Visit the Natural Horse World Store for quality 'horse endorsed' products

Featured Product

Visit the Natural Horse World Store
for quality 'horse endorsed' products