Horse with health crisis

Hi its quite simple, my daughter has a lovely 16 year old Normandy Cob (once attelage for weddings) that she purchased last October. Now it was known that he had RAD and we were able to keep this under control with feeding of wet hay. He has been on other pasturland where my daughter was keeping him to ride with others. Within the last 4 days he has developed a chronic wheeze, vet called last night and arrived this morning with an injection for him, said he was in Crisis and that he needed ventopulmin but that he had not brought it with him. It is believed that this horse is suffering from an allergic reaction, he has a respiratory horse lick and is eating and drinking (but only moderately - the drinking) and is not good - any ideas please. My daughter will have to get the ventopulmin asap but my husband is recovering from a knee operation and therefore we are obliged to wait for a lift to the vets which is some way away from us. We want to move him back so that we can keep an eye on him and are having to find a box large enough as he is 16 hands high and wide also.

I feel that this could be managed if we could just get him over this crisis - thoughts please - particularly if you have experience of this problem.

Thank you.

Well Homer is home and hopefully on the mend, the wet weather is helping and now all we have to do is make sure that he does not get too cold but if we blanket he will get too warm. Honestly animals are such a worry when they are unwell and therefore I am glad I do not have any more than just one small dog. How do people cope.

No worries - if he’s had dry grass and no hay, in this weather, then that will very likely have triggered it.

Hope he picks up soon, I’m sure the Ventipulmin will do the trick.

Thank you so much Jenny for your reply, he is not sweating, just stomach pumping his lungs to clear his airways. We have found a vet nearby who has some ventapulmin coming in this morning so this will be picked up by another friend and brought to us. Another friend will take my daughter to Homer so that he can have his medicine.

I have read that vitamin C may also help and to this end I suppose we need to know his exact weight in order to dose him appropriately. Now that the weather is cooling off it may well be the case that he will improve also. We are near Pontivy in 56 and need to get him moved here asap.

We do soak his hay in the winter and I am of the opinion that he may well need to be kept on this throughout the year and poor pasture but that said we are on the edge of a village and have houses around us so there is only the problem of the corn to be cut next door and we should be OK. Thank you for the positive reaction.

He’s probably reacting to the dust and the very dry grass. I assume RAD is the same as COPD?

Most horses with COPD can be adequately managed with soaked hay or haylage, and permanent turn out. However, it sounds like your has reacted to some pollens or something - have they been doing a second cut of hay anywhere nearby?

When you say he’s not good, what do you mean? Is he sweating? Is he stressed? The ventipulmin should help a lot, just keep him as cool as you can - why won’t the vet come back out with some? He should …

There are supplements on the market which help with this problem, I can’t remember any names off the top of my head though. I evented two horses with this problem, so it’s not imposssible to manage.

What region are you? There are various transporters who could move him, he’d easily fit into a double horse trailer or a lorry.

Hope this helps!