Melanomas are skin tumours that predominantly affect grey horses. Approximately 80% of grey horses will develop at least one melanoma in their lifetime so it is part of the course of owning a grey. Here we discuss what these tumours are, how they may develop and how to make decisions as an owner about what to do if your horse has them.
Over the last 10 years resistance to horse wormers has become more widespread. We only have a limited number of chemical drugs we at our disposal for treating worms in horses, and with no new types of drugs on the horizon it is vital we protect the efficacy of the ones we have. In this article I want to look at how resistance happens and how our management of worms may actually accelerate it...
Over the last 10 years the way we worm our horses has changed dramatically for the better. Due to the onset of resistance to wormers in livestock and horses, we have been forced to adapt and become less reliant on blanket worming plans. Back in the 90's and early 2000's it was common to have whole yards on worming plans that involved giving every horse a wormer every 6-8 weeks.
We now know better, and thankfully the majority of owners have abandoned this practice in favour of worm egg count (WEC) tests. One question that crops up a lot, and many clients struggle to understand, is how horses in the same field under the same management conditions can have such variation in the results of the WEC tests. So I am going to do my best to explain why in this post.
Its come back to that time of year when we're just getting to grips with Christmas and New Years being over, where our bank balances are not quite where we'd like them to be and neither are our waist lines! I always find this a good time of year to have a think and remind myself what my horse needs this year and when these things need to be booked in!
With the eventing season just around the corner, it’s time to make some plans for the season ahead with our team of horses who range from 5 years olds starting out their eventing career at BE90 to our more advanced horses who are competing at intermediate/ 3* and we look forwards to what will hopefully be a successful 2021.
Equine asthma is now used to collectively describe airway disorders which may have been known previously as:
IAD- Inflammatory Airway Disease
COPD- Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Heaves
RAO- Recurrent airway obstruction
We often see this condition spike at two different times of year: ...
Winter is approaching rapidly and with it a change in weather, grass quality and your horse's diet and management regimes. The aim of feeding horses at any time during the year is to maintain condition and ensure they are getting the appropriate amounts of vitamins, minerals and calories in their diet. This is even more important in winter when we lose the nutrition gained from the grass. Here are my tips for winter feeding:
In 2018 the government announced that all horses, ponies and donkeys are legally required to be microchipped by October 2020.
Choke is one of the most common emergencies equine vets attend and the team at Ridings Equine Vets have seen an increase in cases over the last few weeks. Here is a list of the most common things the cases that we see are choking on and some tips on how to avoid it happening to your horse.
Choke is a common equine emergency and the team at Ridings Equine Vets have been seeing a spike of cases over the last few weeks. While the majority of chokes are straightforward it is vital horse owners are aware what to do if their horse has choke to avoid any potentially fatal complications.
This weeks blog has been inspired by the several eye cases we've had over the last few weeks! We'll go through some of the common eye conditions we see and why it is so important for them to be checked by a vet....
According to recent studies over 50% of horses in the UK are overweight. I can easily believe this as myself and the team at Ridings Equine Vets take our role in educating horse owners about weight loss very seriously. It's not an easy task to get horses to lose weight and sometimes it may seem like there is no reward for such hard efforts. So I thought it would be useful to look at some of the problems that overweight horses are more likely to suffer from...
