Kidney Failure

[Sefroniaau]

I had the vet out today because my horse has not been his usual self lately. He has been snorting when i go to catch him and just been really on edge. Today i went to ride him and he started to tighten his stomach and had his head in the air. I got off him and had a probe about his abdomen and he was very very upset about it. Like he was colicky. I called the vet but by the time he got there maddock was feeling a lot better but he was still a bit funny.

Any way the vet took bloods and said it might be one of two things. A defiency of magnesium or kidney failure. If it is kidney failure :( what would be the ramifiations and how would you treat this? Also how would magnesium deficiency affect the horse? If anyone knows anything about these things please post.

[Lgd]

Not sure about the kidney failure but Iwould suspect from my knowledge of human problems that it will be difficult to treat in horses. If it is mild it may not really bother him, we did lose an elderly gelding on our yard due to kidney failure BUT he was 27yo and had really acute onset of severe failure. He swelled up badly with the retained fluid and did not respond to treatment at all.

Magnesium I know a bit more about in horses. They are prone to lose it in the urine if they are stressed and also when the spring grass is very lush. Mares tend to have more of a problem than geldings and stallions. Need magnesium for good muscle function and this includes gut muscle as well, so more prone to colic symptoms, can seem rather dull, may look stiff when they move or take a long time to loosen up. May get behavioural problems as well. Feeding magnesium at times of stress or when the grass is lush will help prevent the problem. There are two ways of supplementing, electrolyte powders - NAF do a good one that contains quite a lot of other electrolytes (name escapes me at the moment, think it is Electro-salts), Triple Crown do one called RN12 Nomad which is mainly magnesium and potassium somay be more suitable to your needs. The cheapest way is to feed small amounts of epsom salts (Magnesium sulphate) but be careful as too much will make their droppings too loose. We use the equivalent of about a 10ml volume which seems to do the job without causing other problems.

You obviously need to get the results of the blood tests from the vet first and then follow his advice. Hope it is something simple and not the kidney problem.

[Nic J]

I have no experience of kidney failure in horses but my father has it and like Lgd said I would think it would be extremely difficult to treat in horses if it was severe.

One of my friends has a small herd of ponies that we think have been suffering magnesium deficiency so we have done a lot of research on this. It is an extremely important trace element, some of its functions:
-interacts with calcium and phosphorus so may affect their levels as well
-involved in formation of bones and teeth
-energy production
-nerve and muscle function
-cell metabolism
-activates over 300 enzymes.

Symptoms include:
-nervousness (a lot of calming supplements contain extra mg as the feed manufacturers realise a proportion of nervous animals are actually deficient in this element)
-stiffness/ pottery gait
-eating soil or droppings
-reduced tolerance to exercise
-muscle spasms known as tetany.
In severe cases affected animals may collapse on the ground in spasms. Symptoms are often worse in stressful situations for example travelling which gave it the name transit tetany. In very severe cases they can die.

I found a research paper where scientists had induced mg deficiency in foals (all rather sad but useful information) only two foals showed the tetany symptoms from a group of about a dozen (I think- haven't got the paper here) one of which died during its second attack. The scientists then put down all the youngstock and performed post mortems which revealed mineralisation of the tissues of heart, lungs etc (can't quite remember- but extensive damage even in those which appeared normal).

My friend has twelve ponies all in fantastic condition, gleaming coats, healthy appetites etc any one of them could go in the show ring- but three have collapsed 2 mares, 1 gelding. For a long time we have wondered about them as they can be a bit jumpy but we thought it was just the way they were, but then a few months ago the problems really began. I have her last big mare and whilst she lived there I had problems with her stamina (just couldn't seem to get her fit) and nervousness (she just wouldn't settle in unfamiliar places) now that I have brought her home things are gradually improving.

What we have been unable to discover is much about the recovery from a severe deficiency, whether the internal changes are reversible, but touch wood the ponies here have not collapsed for quite a while now. Unfortunately the vets were unconvinced by our ideas and followed all the poisoning and neurological routes first, so by the time they bloodtested we had been supplementing them for a couple of months and the levels were normal so we may not be able to prove it one way or another.

What have you been feeding your horse? My friends ponies are very good doers and at nearly constant risk of laminitis so they used to get no extra food in summer. Most feedstuffs contain mg. Alfalfa, linseed, soya beans and carrots are all good sources. Grass and hay should provide a sufficient amount as long as the soil is not deficient. If there are any farmers near you ask them if they have suffered with their stock, dairy cattle in particular are very susceptible.

Don't know if this is true but although Epsoms salts are widely used our vet said that they are not worth using as it is hard for the horse to absorb the mg in this form.

I would be very interested in any information you get from your vet or anywhere else on the subject. Thanks