Touch Down is kind of high maintenance!

[Jenni]

Ol' T has had a slightly snotty nose since I picked him up. I know the sale pen he came out of has had strangles in at least a couple horses every week for the last couple months so I have kept him segregated from the rest of my herd and tried not to cross contaminate. He's in the barn by himself at night and out in the far pasture away from the others during the day - no shared buckets or water tanks and I deal with him last after I have fed everyone else. He hasn't had a fever and loves his grain. The amount of snot kind of comes and goes and is clear or milky - sometimes his nostrils are just wet, other times he has a string hanging out, he has no swollen lymph glands, no cough ("sneezes" a lot though) and is generally pretty bright eyed. It's been 17 days since he was pulled out of the pen and 12 days since he has been here so I really don't think it is strangles but just some sort of horse cold. I have a friend who has brought a number of horses home from this pen and she told me that she has ended up putting them all through a round of SMZs within a couple months of getting them home so she suggested I do that too. I gave him his first dose Sunday night.

His main problem right now is that he is not eating enough hay. I'm giving him a high fat senior feed (triple crown) and a protein supplement (nutrena balance). He weight tapes at 875 but should probably be 950. Yesterday he only ate about 7 lbs of hay total (I bagged and weighed it before and after). I am sure his teeth are a mess - he has an overbite and I can feel a big ridge on one side. There are only 2 vets I trust to do teeth - 1 is out of town through the weekend, the other is far enough away that I can't make it there unless I have a day off. I am also concerned about his water intake. He's only drinking 3 or 4 gallons a day.

Last night I went and bought alfalfa cubes for him to try to kill 2 birds with one stone. I had never fed them before and didn't realize how long they took to soak so he didn't get them for supper last night but he seemed like he was all about it for breakfast this morning. I remembered I had some "cough free" in the barn from last fall and even though he hasn't been coughing it says it helps with congestion so I fed him that last night. He was not impressed but through the night couldn't resist the grain and it was all cleaned up this morning, lol. He had also drank much more water last night (maybe he was washing down the taste of the cough free). Yesterday morning when I turned him out he didn't care at all about his hay, this morning I left him eating his alfalfa cube soup and when I left for work about a half hour later he was working on eating some hay so maybe the drugs are kicking in.

All this rigamarole adds about 20 mins to my morning and night chores. Luckily weather has been warm but tonight I have to run about 250' of extension cord from the shop to his pasture in order to keep his water thawed. He fits perfectly into the nice warm blanket Kelsey won in the 2015 season that is too small for anything else I own. I'm sure we'll get him fixed up in time and he'll be more than worth it if Caiden and him click.

[Idaho Linda]

Alfalfa pellets soak up much faster than the cubes. I think you are going to have this guy all fixed up sooner than you think. I think you have a real jewel there.

[Marci]

If you use hot water it soaks faster still. Pellets are faster.

[Jenni]

I wanted to use cubes for the roughage value. It's not that big of a deal as long as I remember to set it up the night before. I have a heated tack room with water in it so I just set up the next feeding and let it sit, except yesterday morning I forgot to set it up the night before so it was pretty soupy and chunky - he gave me the look but he ate it anyway. I've been tossing the cough free in the water when I soak his supper portion and he's been eating it. I'm hoping tomorrow or wed we get over to get his teeth done. Then we just need the weather to straighten up so we can ride!