All natural horse care in the west of Ireland

May 2010

What happened was the fields where my horses graze was fertilized by the farmer who owns the land. I dont like fertilizing the land for the horses but the farmer insisted that it so after a lot of discussion he put fertilizer on very lightly. Only half a ton over 5 acres.

Well I was away in UK in May and my husband called to say that he was asked to move the horses into the pasture which had only been fertlilized 10 days before. I was not happy about this but was assured by the owner that it would be OK as we had had some rain.

I had read somewhere that you should not put horses out on fertilized land until you had seen at least 1inch of rain. We had not seen anywhere near an inch of rain by this time.

Anyway I returned from UK 5 days later to find that Magpie was very poorly and could hardly move. She seemed to have seized up and look like she was in the middle of a very severe attack of laminitis without any heat in her feet. Her udders were swollen solid like she had mastitis as well.

She struggled to walk back to the house from the field. It was pitiful to watch!!! This mare had been barefoot and sound since 2003 and has almost perfect solid hooves!! 

My farrier checked her feet and gave her a trim and even commented that although she was indeed very stiff laminitis would not be top of his list of ailments.

A week later her son, Harley who is now 4 years old, developed a swollen sheath. It was the size of a football!! He was also barely able to walk

My farrier came again and checked both of them. Still no heat in the hooves!!

One of the evenings when Harley was looking particularly uncomfortable I brought him home, hosed his sheath with cold water and his with KY Jelly and MADE him move around for about half an hour. He was so not impressed at having to move and was obviously in a lot of discomfort.

I couldn't believe that 2 horses would be subject to the same symptoms, at the same time.

I called my vet as I suspected that the fertilizer might have something to do with the symptoms they were suffering. This was now two weeks after the symptoms appeared and they were not getting any better.

He confirmed that fertilizer poisoning could indeed cause symptoms similar to laminitis and odema (swollen sheaths and udders) but these symptoms would normally be accompanied by very loose bowels.

They did have very loose bowels but I did not associate this with their condition only a switch from hay to grass.

he also commented that at this stage he would have expected the fertilizer to have washed through their systems at this stage. But they were still very poorly and did not seem to be improving.

He prescribed diarazone powders for 2 day which did give them a 'little' relief. But they still weren't good.

Polly is now the lead mare (taken over from Magpie) and has buddied up with Harley. Magpie (ex. aggressive Alpha) has now paired up with Baby (who was always exorcised from the herd)!! 

Lets hope so anyway!