Colic in Senior Horses Video

Colic is scary for any horse and its owner. In this video, Dr. Russell Freeland, a surgeon at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute, talks to us about colic in our senior equids.

He said senior horses present with colic much like younger horses. Those clinical signs can include pawing and rolling. The severity of clinical signs will determine whether the horse should be looked at immediately or if conservative therapy such as hand walking will make a difference. Your veterinarian should be alerted.

(Editor’s note: The content of this video is the expert’s approach to the topic. Please consult with your practitioner if you have questions.)

Click on the above player to watch the video.

Common Horse Colic

Spasmodic or gas colic are the most common causes of colic in aged horses, Freeland said. He noted that horses can get a ‘crampy’ type of intestine that may be associated owners often see the horses manifest a colic. “That usually is short-lived and often doesn’t require veterinary attention,” he said.

“But, if it persists maybe beyond an hour, somebody should definitely evaluate those horses,” stressed Freeland.

“Aged horses tend to get things such as impactions,” he said. That can be a result of the horse not feeling well, having some sort of virus, or even a weather change where the animal isn’t drinking enough.

“Those impactions can be mild,” he said. “The horse might not show violent signs of colic. But if those [signs] get missed especially in the stoic horse or mule, those things can rapidly progress to something severe.”

He said only a veterinarian can diagnose impactions and treat them aggressively.

Colic Surgery

Freeland said colic surgery in the senior horse is “something we do more and more commonly every year. That’s because we’ve gotten better at it. A lot of it has to do with anesthesia.”

He said the risk of anesthesia is lower now than 20 years ago. “In the aged horse, a lot of that has to do with how they recover and us doing a better job at recovering those horses,” he added.

Freeland noted that colic surgery in the aged horse is based on what they find. That can start with an exploratory surgery to discover what is going on and give the owner a prognosis.

Depending on the lesion, the surgery might be a quick and easy fix “such as a large colon displacement,” said Freeland.

He said unfortunately, colic in the older horse can be more complicated, such as strangulation of the small intestine involving a lipoma or fatty tumor.

Lipomas in Seniors

“This is one of the more common lesions we see in colic surgery of aged horses,” noted Freeland. “For that reason, colic surgery in senior horses tends to have a lower survival rate. That’s probably not related to the age as much as related to the lesions that aged horses tend to get tend to be more strangulating. Those require resection and anastomosis which means removing a piece of intestine. That immediately has a lower prognosis.”

Freeland said it is more common that aged horses get euthanized on the table than younger horses just because of that strangulating lesion that veterinarians commonly see in aged horses.

Post-Surgery Recovery

“Recovering the senior horse is always a bit of a hurdle,” he noted. “That’s because they tend to be weaker than the young horse following anesthesia.”

The quickest colic surgeries are about an hour, Freeland said. “The longest ones are several hours,” he added.

“Depending on what we had to do and the procedure, the horse might have been down for a few hours,” Freeland explained. “During that time—despite aggressive treatments—their muscles are being weakened. They probably are not getting as much blood flow as they should. And by the time they get into recovery, they have to lay there and expel all of the anesthesia that we have given them.

“We try to restrain them until they have done that and are awake enough to successfully stand,” he continued. “But ultimately, we can only do so much.”

The aged horse tends to be weaker and veterinary staff often has to assist it more to stand. That could include medications to stimulate the horse to stand.

Final Words

“The reality is that the success rate of colic surgery as well as recovery is tremendously higher than it was 20 years ago,” he stressed. “That’s a reflection of better anesthesia as well as quicker surgery times.”