Grass Colic

Background

• Colic is pain or discomfort in a horse's abdomen. Because a horse is unable to regurgitate, they must rely on their stomach to process whatever they have consumed. Changing the diet of your horse suddenly could cause its digestive tract to react. Sometimes a horse will get colic from gas, or their stomach will twist, or something could become impacted in the digestive system.

Cause

• Grass colic generally happens in the spring time when new, fresh, green grass appears. This grass is full of sugar and plentiful. Horses love this grass and will often not stop eating it. They will gorge themselves full of this grass and, like humans eating too much candy, this sweet new grass can cause a stomachache in a horse.

Types of Grass Colic

• Grass colic could just be gas, where the horse's stomach becomes extra sensitive to the sweet grass and builds up extra gas to try to digest it. An impaction can occur, if the grass is super fine, with not much coarse material to push the grass through, and if the horse is not taking in enough water to also help move the grass. Impaction can also be a problem with fine grass hay. Horses need the roughage and coarser material mixed in to help move everything through their intestines.

Signs

• Signs of grass colic will be signs of pain. The horse will begin to sweat, look at its stomach, lie down, try to roll, lift its lip a lot and paw on the ground. If your horse is lying down and rolling, you need to immediately get him up and start walking him. You do not want the horse to roll, because gas and impactions can be easily cured, but rolling will cause the stomach or intestine to twist. This can be very painful for the horse, very expensive to treat and can also be deadly.

Medication

• If you notice signs of colic, besides making sure the horse stays up and walking, an injection of Banamine is your next step. If you do not have Banamine, Bute will work as well. Both of these are forms of anti-inflammatory pain relievers. Banamine is the better one to use because it does not affect the horse's stomach in any way.

Veterinarian

• Call your veterinarian immediately. Tell them every symptom, exactly what you have done to help her, and they will continue to help you from there. With grass colic, generally a veterinarian will listen to the gut, hoping to hear signs of movement, possibly give more Banamine if needed and tube your horse with oil to help move the grass through the intestine. If they think it is necessary, they will also do a rectal examination of your horse to see if the intestine or gut has twisted.