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Elite Veteran
Posts: 898
  
Location: Mountains of VA | How common is it for horses to have seizures especially when there has been no known cause such as injury or disease??? |
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Defense Attorney for The Horse
Location: Claremore, OK | I can’t say how common they are. I only know of one horse that was actually confirmed with seizures . He was a multiple NFR qualifier and won a lot. He has what they diagnosed as photosensitive epileptic type seizures. I’d the arenalights went off suddenly he would have a seizure. |
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 You get what you give
Posts: 13030
 
Location: Texas | I'd be checking for ear ticks. Ear ticks can cause serious neurological deficits.
True seizures in horses are rare but anything is possible. How old is the horse? any recent medications? Any consistent triggers for the seizures? I'm serious when I say check for ear ticks... |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 898
Location: Mountains of VA | He is a 3yo.........first "episode" was back in June.....came out of his stall staggering and almost falling towards his right, similiar to a horse recovering from sedation. Recovered to almost normal within a few hours. Vet. gave Selenium/Vit. E and ran a battery of blood tests. Only thing that came back abnormal was an extremely low Vit. E level. Started him on the Elevate brand of natural Vit. E plus alfalfa hay. He has been doing good until Thursday and he has another "episode", same as before but this time almost falling to his left. Once again he returned to almost normal within 5 hours and normal by the next morning. He had been out of Vit. E for just a few days.
The original vet. that looked at him has moved out of state. So now I'm trying to do a little research on my own. I have been around dogs that have seizures and this is similiar to what this horse acts like.
Back in June he was in regular work but with all the rain he has not been consistantly ridden in about a month. He is a big, fast growing colt. Wobblers was ruled out in June.
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Defense Attorney for The Horse
Location: Claremore, OK | Is by chance, corn in his feed ? |
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Elite Veteran
Posts: 898
Location: Mountains of VA | He has always been fed Southern States Solutions 14% pellet. In June when he was being ridden a lot I fed him 4 lbs. a.m. and 4 lbs. p.m. Lately, I have cut that in half since he has not been ridden much. It does list corn meal and corn distillers dried grain with solubles in the ingredients. I also feed Equimin. Along with alfalfa he gets timothy/orchard grass hay. |
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Defense Attorney for The Horse
Location: Claremore, OK | hotpaints - 2018-10-13 2:18 PM
He has always been fed Southern States Solutions 14% pellet. In June when he was being ridden a lot I fed him 4 lbs. a.m. and 4 lbs. p.m. Lately, I have cut that in half since he has not been ridden much. It does list corn meal and corn distillers dried grain with solubles in the ingredients. I also feed Equimin. Along with alfalfa he gets timothy/orchard grass hay.
I had a really good 4 yo I’d owned for over a year, one day I see him standing, swaying like he had 1 Cc of Dormosadan in him, staggered and drunk walked, recovered that day. It happened multiple times, multiple vets couldn’t figure it out. I finally realized it was happening about an hour or so after he ate. Put him on a feed without corn and never had another problem. No one could say for sure but the Vet thought he’d either become allergic to corn or the corn had mycotoxins in it.
edited to add: I had several other horses on the same feed. No one could tell me why this was the only horse that had a problem.
Edited by Liana D 2018-10-13 2:47 PM
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 A Somebody to Everybody
Posts: 41354
Location: Under The Big Sky Of Texas | Is this horse kept in a stall with shavings? I knew of a few that was allergic to shavings and cause them to act really off {drunk like walking} untill they were out of the stalls for a few hours and went back to normal, my one gelding cant be stalled with a certain type of shavings..
Edited by Southtxponygirl 2018-10-13 2:59 PM
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Member
Posts: 11
| I had a horse that suddenly began having seizures. They were very violent like a grand mal seizure. I took him to the University and had every test under the sun done to him, including an MRI. They found nothing. I took him off of grain and he still had them every once in a while. They finally got so violent and more frequent that I had to put him down last year. It is an awful thing to see and very scary. |
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