On Friday morning, Disco saw my vet for the first time. I was crossing my fingers that he would be well-behaved, because he hadn't been turned out since Wednesday evening due to the weather, making this the longest amount of time he'd ever spent in a stall (a few minutes of turnout in the indoor the night before notwithstanding).
He was perfect. Like, I was holding him and I didn't even realize the vet had given the shot because Disco didn't react in the slightest, not even so much as an ear flick.
"This is a good baby," the vet said, "Must've been handled a lot and handled well."
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| Drug scale or salt measuring operation? You decide. |
Disco's mom was vaccinated during pregnancy, so up until this point he's been protected by the antibodies he received from her, but 6 months is around the time that protection begins to wane. So he got his first dose last week and he'll get a booster dose 6 weeks from now, around Christmas.
I also wanted the vet to look at his left front fetlock, which has been puffy and hard since earlier this summer. I was not opposed to x-rays or even a referral if the vet thought it was necessary, but he immediately diagnosed it as physitis, or joint inflammation caused by enlargement of the growth plate. From KER:
Considered a scourge among horse breeders everywhere, physitis is bound to pop up in any horse-breeding population sooner or later, regardless of how conscientious a breeder might be. Loosely defined, physitis is an inflammation of cartilaginous growth plates near the ends of long bones in growing horses.
Treatment for physitis is largely diet changes. My vet asked what he was fed before, and what his concentrate diet would be going forward (a FeedXL-designed diet of 1/2lb of low-starch high-fat Kalm Ultra and 1/2lb of Essential K ration balancer twice a day).
"Oh, that's perfect, yeah, this should go away within a few months of being on that diet. If it doesn't, we can look at [some medication or supplement I'd never heard of and can't remember], but I don't think we'll need to, this is a pretty minor case. Some young horses, their joints look like boxes it's so bad."
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| You can see it quite clearly here, the left fore is visibly thicker above the fetlock. I'm glad this is nothing serious. PC: Leah |
He also felt his man bits ("Two nuts, tiny, but they're both there, no cryptorchidism here") and agreed with my assessment to wait as long as I can to geld him. "At least the spring, longer if you can."
Finally, he discussed deworming protocols with me, and said he likes to see them wormed every six weeks until they're a year old. That sounded like overkill to me at first, but nope, a bunch of reputable sources agree with him. Young horses are most susceptible to worm infestations and serious side effects caused by worms, so even with all the concerns about resistance and as much as we've backed off on frequent deworming of older horses, the deworming protocol for youngstock is much more aggressive. So I'm still going to do fecals, but he'll be getting wormed a few more times before his first birthday in April.
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| Surprise fall rain storm that actually also contained some graupel, which my husband refuses to believe is a real weather phenmenon, but it's true |
I think I'm a pretty well-read and educated horse owner, but there's a lot to learn about raising a baby the first time!
