There are over 100 million horses, donkeys and mules in the world today and owners of these animals can be found on almost every continent and in almost every society. The Horse Course will cover many unique aspects of equine ownership and touch upon the science behind many of today’s management practices.
Equine Vital Signs
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From the course by University of Florida
The Horse Course: Introduction to Basic Care and Management
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From the lesson
Maintaining Equine Health
The topics this week will focus on equine health. Monitoring and taking care of your animal’s health is critical to owning any equid. We will start off with the normal equine vital signs and then we will discuss administering first aid to your animals. We will then cover the different parasites and diseases that can afflict these animals. Finally, we will end the week discussing some common genetic disorders.
Meet the Instructors
Chris J. Mortensen, Ph.D.Professor
Animal Sciences
[BLANK_AUDIO]
Alright.
Welcome to the first lecture of week five,
which is, we're going to talk about vital signs.
And before we get going this week, I, I, it's really important to
discuss that, you know, as an owner of these animals, it is your responsibility.
To monitor and maintain their health because, you
know, as an owner of animals and these equids.
There is totally dependent on you for
their food, their housing, and their health.
So, that's why, you know, we're going to spend
an entire week discussing the different aspects of equine health.
Now, you know, when we start discussing some of these
different ailments that may afflict, you know, horses and donkeys
and mules, you know, going back to that behavior, we
talked about behavior, abnormal behavior versus, you know, normal behavior.
It's important to understand what's normal for your animal.
Because, you know, if it's normal for them to go
out and sit in a field like that, it, that's fine.
But if, one day, you've never seen your animal do that and they, they sit down
like that and don't move for a long,
long time, you know, there may be something wrong.
And, and you have to be able to recognize.
You know.
What's normal and what's abnormal.
Because obviously they can't come up to you and say,
you know, hey mom, hey dad you know, this hurts.
My knee hurts.
Or my elbow hurts or you know I've got a nail in my foot can you help me remove it?
You know we have to be able recognize, you know
what they show us by their behavior and body language.
So, it's very important to observe your animals on a daily basis.
Now, you know this is easy if, if you're you know, having
a stalled animal because you have to feed them twice a day.
You have to clean their stalls once a day and provide water.
Or, check their water once a day.
So, you do get eyes on them.
But it gets a little bit tougher, especially when you have animals
in pasture, and even in that left picture, very very large pastures.
So, what we talked about last week in feeding,
was a good strategy is to get your animal
used to coming up to you once a day with just a little bit of grain, you know.
Some whole oats.
Very very, you know, safe feed to give horses.
Put a little bit of whole oats in a bucket, you know, come up
to the fence and they'll come up and get used to that daily interaction.
Now that's if you're not providing them feed.
If you're feeding them once a day I
guarantee you as soon as you come around with
the feed wagon, you know, you're going to go
up and they're going to be there waitin' for you.
So you'll be able to observe them every day.
Now if you have an animal that's just on pasture and you don't have that kind of
interaction you know, get some binoculars or something
that you can actually look and inspect that animal.
I mean that's, that's the worst case scenario but at
least, you're, you're observing this animal on a daily basis.
So what you're looking for is anything that's abnormal.
Abnormal movements, abnormal you know, behaviors because that may
be an indicator that there's something wrong or they're ill.
And, you know, what are some of the things you should be looking for?
Well one of the easiest is the animal is lethargic, it's listless, it's depressed.
It's just blah.
It's just not.
Happy, having a bad day.
I mean, we've all been ill at some point in our lives.
We know how we probably look in the mirror, getting out of bed.
I mean, that's how your animals are going to look too.
Now, that's why it's important you understand what's normal.
There are some horses that are just.
Look lethargic all the time.
Well, that's normal for them.
But most typically animals, you know, they're sprightly, they're running around.
They're thrifty.
They're excited.
You know, there, that's, you know horses do, what donkeys do.
And then when they look like this, you know, there's something wrong.
Now if they're obviously limping, that can be
an indicator of a lower limb injury, or, you
know, even up somewhere higher in the joints can
be an injury, and, and we call that lameness.
Where, you know, they're walking, and, and they're either picking it up, or they're,
you know, limping, abnorm, abnormal movement, again,
can be an indicator of an injury.
Or illness.
Now, if the lay down for any length of time, you
know, longer than, you know, normal, then there could be something wrong.
Now, I put this in here too.
That, remember, on average, you know, back to normal behavior.
It's normal for them to lay down a little bit per day.
And, on average, horses spend about two hours every day laying down.
You know, but any length of time, and that's not one two hour bout.
That's broken up into probably, you know, 10, 20 minutes max.
So, [COUGH] excuse me, that.
You know, you want to make sure that they're
not laying down for an inordinate amount of time.
Too long.
Now colic, we devoted an entire lecture to colic.
So you know, you shouldn't, if you see any of
those symptoms, sweating, abnormal stance, nipping at the sides, pawing.
You know, rolling, all of those things we talked about
obviously there's an animal in distress and that's abnormal behavior.
Now here's a list of the vital signs and
we're going to go more into these into greater detail
but these are the things if you, if you
suspect an illness that you want to do with your animal.
Now the first one's temperature.
And unfortunately for people who have never been around horses, you just can't
take a thermometer and say open wide and stick it in their mouths.
So, that's not going to happen.
They'll probably try to eat the thermometer and that's not a good thing.
So, the way we, we.
Typically take temperatures is with a rectal thermometer, and, and I know that
sounds kind of, you know, difficult, but it's really not with a horse.
In the, in this image, you can see, that horse is just standing there, someone's
holding the halter, and she lifts his
tail and sticks the rectal thermometer in there.
The, the only, you know, caution thing I would, I would use, obviously
you want to, don't want to stand directly behind the horse so they can kick you.
But also don't stick that thermometer in too deep.
You don't want to lose it in there.
because then you'll be, you know having a veterinarian come out to do that.
But you can get these digital thermometers at a
store or even the old mercury thermometers work just fine.
And you want to take temperature through the rectum.
Now, normal temperatures for horses are higher than humans.
And they're, they range from 99.5 to 101.5.
So that's, that's the normal range, you know, average
around a 100 degrees Fahrenheit or roughly 38 degrees Celsius.
So that's, that's roughly the the average temperature of the equids.
Now, if they do get a fever or, or you.
Exercise them to exhaustion.
You know they, very easily can spike
over 105 degrees Fahrenheit or 40.5 degrees Celsius.
And even in some of my research that I've done with exercise stress, you know
we've gotten them up over 106, which is you know getting into that danger zone.
And you don't want them, up there too long.
Now the death zone for these animals is, is higher than us
and it's in the 108 range, 108 degrees Fahrenheit or 42.2 degrees Celsius.
So anything above that, your animal's at risk of
dying, so you, you obviously need to cool them down.
And have medical treatments, you know, immediately if they,
if they spike over that 105 or 108 range.
Now, there's different things that can affect temperature.
So, if you're exercising, like I just said, that's obviously
going to increase their, their body temperature and they're going to spike.
You just, you gotta monitor it and make sure it comes back down.
If, after exercise, they maintain that
elevated temperature, then you have a problem
where you could be running into, you know, some heat stress or heat stroke.
Where, again, you will need medical attention.
So, so, expect that to come up, but you need to
see that come down, you know, during the cool down period.
Very hot days, obviously, their temperatures are going to spike.
And then, also, with illness, with fever.
It's like us.
Their temperatures are going to spike.
Now, heart rates are going to vary by age.
So, here's a list of the average heart
rates of horses, and then even mature donkeys.
Mature donkeys actually have a higher heart rate than.
Than a mature horse.
So, so pay attention to both of those.
So mature horse, 28 to 40 beats per minute.
So again, their heart rates are, are roughly half of what ours are at rest.
And then, you can see as they get younger
those heart rates actually get really higher and those newborn
foals, if, if you've never heard it, you know,
it, it's just bop, bop, bop, I mean really fast.
It's really fast their heart rates right after they're born.
But as they get older that tends to slow down.
Now how do you check for a heart rate.
Well the, the, the two best ways that I
would recommend and the picture on the left actually
shows you five different areas where you can check
the heart rate of a horse or the pulse.
And you know if you do get a stethoscope, you want to go behind the left elbow.
And put your stethoscope there, and try to listen for the hear rate.
In my experience, that's been a little bit harder for me.
You know, my, my hearing, too many rock concerts when I was younger, but.
You know, it, it's, it's, that was a little bit tougher.
So for, the easiest for me is just this mandibular artery.
And you run your hand under the bone of the jaw, and
I just run it there till I feel that pulse on my fingertips.
And you can do that and then you just sit there.
And I usually count, you know, after 15 seconds and then multiply
it by four and that's going to give you your estimated heart rate.
Now respiration rate is, is actually easier to
detect as we'll see here in a second.
But again, it's going to vary with age.
So your donkeys are going to be a little bit faster
than horses, so they're not breathing quite as much as us.
And those young, youngsters take about 20 to 40 breaths per minute.
So, obviously a little bit more than the adults.
And this one's a lot easier to, to check.
So, the, the easiest way I do, I just put my hand in front of their nose
and then when they breathe out, you can feel
their breath hit your hand and you just count.
Again, I look at my watch for 15 seconds.
And then I'll multiply it by four.
So, that's the easiest way to do it.
You can also look at their flanks and a little bit harder to detect, but
you can see that those go in and out, and you can count that way.
But my, I would recommend just kind of feeling their nostrils if you can.
That's pretty, pretty simple.
Now, when we talk about mucosal color or checking the gums.
Of an animal.
What we're looking for is really the
circulation because that, that's going to tell us
if we're really in, you know, a
danger zone or shock situation, toxicity situation.
So, so you do want to, to look and the easiest thing to do with capillary refill
time is just stick your thumb, and this picture's
perfect because you can see right here, that white.
Indentation right here, and that's what you're looking for.
So you go and you put that, you look for that, but that should change
back to this pink color around here within two to three seconds, so relatively quick.
And if that happens, that's, that's good circulation.
So that's what you are looking for, but.
If there's a delay to that you can have some, some trouble.
So, so just looking at the color of the gums, if they're
pale that can actually indicate a, a, where you, the animal's in shock.
So obviously you're going to need immediate vet
attention or an animal health specialist's attention.
Deep red, again, could be a sign of shock or some, some sort of toxicity.
So, you know, with all these you're going to want vet attention immediately.
And then purple can either be toxicosis or
another toxicitity situation or low oxygen in the blood.
So again, very, very, very concerning situations
that you'll need immediately, need immediate vet attention.
Now one of the other easy things to do is
to check for dehydration, especially in hot times of the summer.
Here in Florida, it's really warming up today.
So as we're getting ready to jump into the summer months here.
It's getting really warm.
So the animals are going to be, you know, sweating a little bit more.
So, if you're exercising, or let's say you go and, and
something happened to the water it, they didn't get water that day.
You can go and check for dehydration, and you just do a, a a skin pinch test.
You go up and you pinch the skin near their neck.
And then let it go.
And it should bounce back quickly and if it kind of tents, stays tented
or is really slow to bounce back, that can be an indication of dehydration.
So again, you would need the veterinarian or animal health specialist to come out.
And give that animal some fluids.
So that, that covers the vital signs, and very easy to check with horses.
You know, try it on your own, or if you, you know, next time you get around
an equid, you know, you go ahead and try
to check some of these, and very, very simple.
And next, which is a little bit more complicated, is actually giving first aid.
So, you know, we'll jump into some of the things
you can do to, to really help out your animal.
So, I'll see you then.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
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