When communicating with your vet, you should consider the following checklist to relay any history and information that might shed light on your horse’s respiratory problem.
Questions to answer include:
Many of these questions might spark a few telling recollections. If hay has come from a new source, it might be drier and dustier than previously fed bales. As you break open a new bale, does dust fly from the hay, making a thick mist of particles in the air? Does the smell of the hay have any faint odor of must or mold? If hay is lobbed from overhead or into the feeders, can you see dust and particles spewed into the air? Does your horse burrow his head into the hay placed in an overhead hay feeder? All these environmental pollutants are inhaled into your horse’s airways potentially creating an allergic response.
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Nancy S. Loving, DVM, is a performance horse veterinarian based in Boulder, Colo., and is the author of All Horse Systems Go.
I have young horse that breathe funny, and was looking for some ideas of why and what I can do.
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