Alright in this next lecture we're going to talk about colic and, you know, just, just quickly, when deciding what to present in this class, you know, I always try to think how am I going to make these animals lives better and their animals owner's lives better. And, you know, two areas I thought that were important was laminitis, which we already covered and the other was colic. So, I felt this was definitely worthwhile to take a few minutes to kind of talk through colic and give you some management tips on how to limit colic in your animals. You can read the, the definition right there. You know, digestive servi, disturbances with, with different causes. And the key is that this is going to, this is going to affect about 10% of all horses, you know, or all equines at some point in their lives, they're going to have some bout of colic. And the thing is with colic is, it can result in death. So it's, it's a very serious disorder that, you know, we need to pay attention to. We need to pay, you know, our management with. Now, you know, what, why do we, we have instance of colic again. Remember going back to the, the, you know, anatomy of the animal, you know, they're built to eat small meals all day, and what we've done is we've confined them, so we've limited the amount of exercise they get, and we feed 'em, you know, typically two meals a day, one in the morning, one in the evening 'because that's easiest for us. And that's why we start to see the incidence of this a lot higher. Now, I'd like to take this, you know, study from Canada, and this is a 10-year study from, from Western College of Veterinary Medicine in Saskatchewan, and they have documented their cases of colic from 1992 to 2002. And they're listing there as you can see the top nine types of colic that they see in their cases. And the largest one was impaction followed by displacement and spasmatic. And those are the three that we'll really cover in this lecture, and then you can read up on some of the others to see what they are and, and, and how they come about. But the bottom line is you know, this does affect horses. Now, impaction colic is kind of the what people think what the typical colic and this is where some portion of the intestine, could be small intestine too, or large intestine, this is the colon that you're looking at of a horse. And it becomes impacted and the feed just keeps backing up, backing up, backing up, not digested and it results in this very painful condition and they start to get, you know, the, the lining of the intestine starts to die off. And you can see that looks, that highly inflamed area where all that feed stuff just stuffed in there like a big sausage and it's just really, a really terrible condition. Now, what can cause that? It's not just feed. Things like sand. So, sand colic, especially here, here in the state of Florida. You know, we deal with we have sandy soils, and horses that they're eating off the ground, they'll ingest some sand. And then that can build up and they get this large, you know, bag of sand. It would look like that. They'd be full of sand. So, one of the things you can do is feed, keep your feed up off the ground with sandy soils or put in, you know, some type of container, horse feed bin, you know, or something they can eat out of, or dish, so they're not ingesting that sand. Worms, you know, if you don't deworm your animal, they could get worm build up in their stomachs and they can get blockages with that and then also undigested feed stuff. Now, the good news about impaction colic is that the front-line defense of really any colic is mineral oil through a nasal tube, that a veterinarian would come in and stick it, the nasal tube in, they would go down to their stomach, and then they would pump them full of mineral oil. And that's in hopes of loosening up that impaction and allowing everything to pass through. Very rarely, like in this instance in this image, does it result in surgery, but it can. It can result in surgery. Now again, when we go back to our anatomy, you know we have these twists and turns in the digestive tract and so when we feed these large meals. You know, large amounts of hay, large amounts of grain. When it gets in there, and they can get stuck at these twists and turns. So, you can see, you know, these sites, you can just imagine, like, there at the pelvic flexure, which we've talked about before, you know, get stuck there, and then you start getting the buildup of all the feed stuffs, and everything backs up. Now, colon displacement is also called the twisted gut, and this is where the, the, the organs get abnormal position in there. So again, very painful condition for them. And the other thing is you, you hear it calls volvulus, that's intestine twist or torsion. And typically these are going to have to result in surgery where they're going to have to go back in there and rearrange the digestive tract. And I guess I'll say it here, I, I've sat through a couple colic surgeries when I was an undergraduate and I am amazed at the skill of these equin surgeons. They are just, it, it's amazing to see them pull out these digestive organs, find the impaction site, or, or find where the colic is, fix that area, and then I just watched them, I mean almost just shoulder deep in, in replacing all of these digestive tissues. It's just an amazing, it was an amazing experiment, experience and I was just amazed at how, how well these veterinarians can do that. Very, very talented. Now, another type of colic is spasmodic colic. So, you're getting muscle spasms in the digestive tract. So, their, their smooth muscle which lines the digestive tract is just spasming. So, again, very painful, due to some irritation in the gut. And not, not a nice condition for these animals. So, again, like I said, there, there's other types of colic that you can go look at that list and kind of, you know, look on the internet. Like a lipoma is, is kind of a growth that kind of strangulates part of the digestive tract, so, you can kind of see the differences with that. Now, what are some signs of colic in, in, I put this first because we're going to jump into this more next week, when we get into equine health. But things you're going to see is their heart rates going to increase, their temperature going to increase and then just some external signs. They're going to be really sweaty, so, here you can see in this animal, this is an animal suffering from Colic, they're really, really sweaty, they're going to be pawing the ground a lot. And then this violent rolling, which you'll typically see them do, too. You know, they're in pain, so maybe their trying to think, I can rearrange everything, or try to get that, you know, impaction out on my own. And one of the cases that I saw, you know, I was going out, driving out to pasture to get some mares up. And, you know, our, our pastures were a little overgrown at the time. And I saw what I, I called a crop circle. Because the, the mare had violently rolled in a circle continually. And she got up and I instantly knew she was suffering from colic. You know, it could have been something else, but that's the first thing that came to my mind was colic. So, you know, got the veterinarian out there, treated her, and she was fine. Alright then, a couple of other signs of colic is this abnormal stance. So here you can see this animal stretching and won't move, and is just in pain, doesn't know what to do. And then, the other most common type thing is nipping at the sides here so there, there's a painful area there in their gut and they tend to nip at their sides and you can see. You can always see tuffs of hair, you can see the tuffs of hair where they have been nipping at the, at the painful areas. So, what do you do if an animal is suffering from colic. Well, initially the severity is going to dictate how their treated. So, if you notice your animal's violent action, again like I talked about that horse had been rolling and rolling and it looked like a crop circle. If it looks in severe distress you want to contact your veterinarian immediately and get them out there to treat your animal. Now, if it's mild you can do some of the following things before you contact your veterinarian. So check the temperature, respiration and heart rate. You're going to check, you know, check capillary refill time. So what you do is stick your thumb or finger on the gums and when you do that you will see it will be white for a second and then it should refill relatively quickly, those capillaries fill with blood. So that pink color should come back relatively quickly, if that's slow, could have some circulatory problems. You know, notice are they eating? Have they, have they defecated recently? And have you changed anything? You know, sudden changes to how you feed them, management. You know, any type of medicine you've given them can, indicate that, that they could be suffering from colic. So, gather that data, then give your veterinarian a call and then they'll be able to advise you better on what to do. Now, like I said, the front line treatment of this, and they call these medical colics, and typically you see it with these impactions or inflammation is doing this nasal tube. So, here in this image you can see them inserting a nasal tube in this animal down into the gut. Where it will you know, they can pump in oil, mineral oil to help lubricate that system. You know, you may, give pain relief but only do that first in, you know, unless the vet, do it after the veterinarian tells you to. And they my need an IV if, if especially if they're not drinking. They could be dehydrated, so, they may need fluids to be replenished. Now in the surgical colics are more complicated impactions or displaced colons and, you know, things like lipoma and, and other strangulation lesions. Other types have to require in surgery. This is when the animal is not getting better over time. You know, the veterinarian come out, done a farm call. Had you know, tubed the animal not doing well, getting worse. It's going to result in a surgery which can be very expensive. So you know some of the things to note, is the earlier surgery the better for their recovery, their better chance of survival. Again, be very careful with pain medication, you know, only do it under the advice of of a veterinarian because it could mask their pain. They, they could be in severe pain but if you give them enough pain medication, you know, you may not be able to notice those symptoms. Now, this is taken from that study from Canada again, and I know this is a busy slide so I just want to highlight a couple things. This is, the first thing to take into consideration is typically, like here at the University of Florida, we only see the worst cases typically. So, we, we get referrals to the, to the veterinary school, so they're seeing the most difficult cases. So a lot of these colics that, they, they, they saw up there could have been some more, the more difficult ones. But, it was interesting that, that, this is one of the pieces that, like the farmer, they actually have some good data. So, of the surgical cases of all the animals, they had 277. So, 277 over 10 years were referred to for surgery. Now of those about 46% were euthanized before they even went in to surgery. Could be the owner couldn't afford it. Or the animal was, was, was just in too much distress. And for you know before they can, or even withstand surgery, they were euthanized. So, that left it at about 151 that actually went into surgery. Now you can pause the video, and look at the differences. I'm not going to go through all of these. But I really want to kind of show you is the amount of animals that actually got discharged, and so that was about 80. So out of the 277, 80 actually went, and see I'll stand to the side sorry about that, 80 actually were discharged and went home. So surgical colic obviously isn't ideal. And you know, again this, this, this veterinary school's probably seen the worst cases, so, the percentages may be better. I'd talk to your veterinarian if they do recommend this. Now how do we prevent colic? One of the biggest things is always feed at regular intervals. If you feed at 8 am in the morning, and 8 pm at night. Always feed at eight am and eight pm, always keep your same intervals, when you mix it up or you skip a feeding, that's where you're going to increase your incidence of colic. Now again, if you could feed an animal five times a day, or even, you know, I always recommend owners, if you can go to three times a day, that's better for the horse and will help limit some of this, this colic. Always, always, always feed quality feed to horses. Never feed moldy hay or old feeds. Horses are not like cattle or other ruminants, you can, you know they typically can get away with feeding some of these moldier type feeds or maybe not a high quality feeds as the ruminants. Because they have bacteria in there that are going to help break it down and nu-, you know, digest that feed. Horses cannot. They don't survive, or they run into a lot of problems if fed really poor quality feed, and that's where it runs into things like colic. So, always try to feed your animals quality feed. Exercise, again, you know, a reminder, they need exercise daily. And another tip is to never feed more, for an average size horse the, the rule of thumb is about five pounds or 2.2 kilograms of grain per meal for an average size horse. But if you really want the, the rules, especially for the, you know, the other equids that are smaller. It's half a pounds or 0.23 kilograms per 100 pounds of body weight or 45 kilograms of body weight. So, that's the hard and fast rule of how much grain you should feed them, but again, at any one meal you want to limit the amount of grain. That will help prevent colic and laminitis, which we've already talked about. So, we're going to jump a lot more into parasites next week but you want to make sure you de-worm them on a normal schedule to keep that parasite level down in the gut and then avoid sudden changes to the diet. So, I, the easiest for me to, to teach students or horse owners is, the three, what I call the three week rule. And you, you'll see some, you know, veterinarians and others will recommend doing it over two weeks, which is fine. But I think it's easier to remember, remember the three week rule. So, what you would do, is you would, the first week that you are changing their diet you would feed them 75% or 3 quarters of the old diet and then introduce only a quarter of the new diet. Okay, so you mix in, if you are changing commercial feeds or types of hay, you know mix it up but keep 3 quarters of it the old diet. Through week two you go to 50 50, 50% old, 50% new, mix it up. Feed the animal for a week, and then the third week 75% of the new diet, 25% of the old diet, you know, that way they're getting weaned over to the new diet. So, that may take you know, a little bit longer than some people recommend. You may shorten it to five days or what have you, but you know if you, if you do that, you're, you're not suddenly changing the diet on the animal. So that's it for Colic, and you know, you can find a lot of resources on the web. And also if you're concerned always talk to your veterinarian, or your medical professionals in your part of the world. So this is the end of week four with nutrition, and again if, if you really want more, I, I can highly recommend Dr, Dr Murray's class on Coursera. Just, just look at for equine nutrition and there should be, you can put it on your watch list, should be coming up soon again and she really jumps into really the, the deep portions of nutrition. So just a couple reminders, take quiz four. You can go ahead and complete the feeding plan. Watch the feeding plan videos, so we're going to go through and just kind of formulate a quick easy diet, shouldn't take you more than 30 minutes to an hour max on, on a formulating a feeding plan for your animal. And these peer assignments again we'll ask you to, to peer review three of your, your, colleagues and that, of the feeding plan will be due by the end of week five. So, that's it for nutrition so next week we're going to jump into health and then week six we'll, we'll get more into reproduction. So, have a wonderful rest of your week and I'll, I'll see you soon.
