Attention: TDR Forum Junkies 
Mike Ellis
TDR MEMBER
Two of our broodmares were poisoned on my parent's place and although they were rushed to vet both died yesterday afternoon at about 1:30. My Dad was devastated, and I was so mad when I found out I couldn’t see straight. We lost a truly outstanding broodmare and the prettiest horse I ever owned, and another beautiful mare that my parents had just bought and were hoping would produce some champions. The poor beasts died in terrible agony, what a horrible way to go. It's hard to lose any horse if you love them the way we do, but these mares represented some significant $$$ investments and we took a real beating.
Vet flushed 'em with IV solutions to get the toxins out but their kidneys ended up failing and that was all she wrote. Their gums and vulvas turned a dark purple color, which made us think cyanide at first but the vet thought it more likely to be botulism.
Dad and a couple of his friends walked the whole place looking for clues, and in the front pasture where the mares were they found 2 china plates and an old jar of orange or peach preserves. Dad threw the plates and preserves away after the vet told him it might be a case of botulism, sometimes caused by the presence of a dead snake or varmint that gets rolled up in hay, he figured it was the hay and was too distraught to pay the plates and preserves much mind. The vet did not have toxicology screen info yet apparently.
I left work early and drove down and took the plates and preserves out of the trash and photographed them closely. One was white, the other black. The black plate had traces of orange/peach matter stuck to it and the obvious smears left by a horse eating (if you’ve ever cleaned a window or stainless steel bucket a horse has rubbed their mouth on you know what I mean). The jar of preserves didn’t appear to have been opened, but the matter on the plates matched the contents 100%. Plates weren't just "thrown out" or fell from the sky, they were in the middle of a big pasture and a good ways from road etc.
I walked the entire fence line of the place and couldn’t find any tracks or places where someone might have crawled through the fence, no cloth fibers on the barbed wire or anything. I only found four variables from “business as usual” – (1) the plates/preserves, (2) a muddy seep in the back pasture with some unusual bugs in it that the horses had been walking through and clearly drinking or slurping (it was still muddy and filled with tracks), (3) a tub of feed supplement that Dad had recently put out for the mares, and (4) some scattered patches of yellow liquid on the hay – yes I checked it, didn’t smell or look like horse pee. Everything else in the pastures was absolutely normal.
I put on gloves and got into the hay and tore it all apart, couldn’t find the least trace of any dead varmint or spoiled hay. I checked out the feed and it smelled fine as well. Since there were other horses in the pasture eating the same feed and same hay from the same troughs and bales, as well as sharing the supplement, it seems unlikely to me that these items could have been the source of the poisoning but the supplement is new so we have to consider it. For those interested, it was one of the big blue tubs that are sold by Tractor Supply. If you've got any of it set out around horses, you might want to rethink the stuff...
The two horses that died were the most aggressive of the herd, and therefore always the first to claim food when it was put out. If someone put out a laced “treat” for them, these two would have run the others off and eaten first. This makes me wonder if someone might have given them some of the old preserves, possibly from a nearby boarded up house. Might have been an innocent mistake. People have been looking at that house (HUD repo) and children love to feed horses bunches of grass and stuff through the fence, in a time when kids aren't taught much about trespassing I can picture one going through the fence to "give the horsies a treat". If the preserves were old and spoiled, that could have been the source since apparently horses are very sensitive to botulism. The seep might be the source of the problem too. Who knows?
All I know is that we lost two great animals that suffered a horribly agonizing death, and don’t know what to do to avoid any additional exposures. GRRRRRRrrrr. I was so mad yesterday I could taste my own liver. Today I am still pretty hot and aching to give somebody a whuppin', but mostly just sad. I loved that horse.
OK horse folks, seen anything like this before? We've been raising horses in the same place with same grass, hay, feed types for 30 years now and never lost one like this. Any ideas appreciated as we are all
Vet flushed 'em with IV solutions to get the toxins out but their kidneys ended up failing and that was all she wrote. Their gums and vulvas turned a dark purple color, which made us think cyanide at first but the vet thought it more likely to be botulism.
Dad and a couple of his friends walked the whole place looking for clues, and in the front pasture where the mares were they found 2 china plates and an old jar of orange or peach preserves. Dad threw the plates and preserves away after the vet told him it might be a case of botulism, sometimes caused by the presence of a dead snake or varmint that gets rolled up in hay, he figured it was the hay and was too distraught to pay the plates and preserves much mind. The vet did not have toxicology screen info yet apparently.
I left work early and drove down and took the plates and preserves out of the trash and photographed them closely. One was white, the other black. The black plate had traces of orange/peach matter stuck to it and the obvious smears left by a horse eating (if you’ve ever cleaned a window or stainless steel bucket a horse has rubbed their mouth on you know what I mean). The jar of preserves didn’t appear to have been opened, but the matter on the plates matched the contents 100%. Plates weren't just "thrown out" or fell from the sky, they were in the middle of a big pasture and a good ways from road etc.
I walked the entire fence line of the place and couldn’t find any tracks or places where someone might have crawled through the fence, no cloth fibers on the barbed wire or anything. I only found four variables from “business as usual” – (1) the plates/preserves, (2) a muddy seep in the back pasture with some unusual bugs in it that the horses had been walking through and clearly drinking or slurping (it was still muddy and filled with tracks), (3) a tub of feed supplement that Dad had recently put out for the mares, and (4) some scattered patches of yellow liquid on the hay – yes I checked it, didn’t smell or look like horse pee. Everything else in the pastures was absolutely normal.
I put on gloves and got into the hay and tore it all apart, couldn’t find the least trace of any dead varmint or spoiled hay. I checked out the feed and it smelled fine as well. Since there were other horses in the pasture eating the same feed and same hay from the same troughs and bales, as well as sharing the supplement, it seems unlikely to me that these items could have been the source of the poisoning but the supplement is new so we have to consider it. For those interested, it was one of the big blue tubs that are sold by Tractor Supply. If you've got any of it set out around horses, you might want to rethink the stuff...
The two horses that died were the most aggressive of the herd, and therefore always the first to claim food when it was put out. If someone put out a laced “treat” for them, these two would have run the others off and eaten first. This makes me wonder if someone might have given them some of the old preserves, possibly from a nearby boarded up house. Might have been an innocent mistake. People have been looking at that house (HUD repo) and children love to feed horses bunches of grass and stuff through the fence, in a time when kids aren't taught much about trespassing I can picture one going through the fence to "give the horsies a treat". If the preserves were old and spoiled, that could have been the source since apparently horses are very sensitive to botulism. The seep might be the source of the problem too. Who knows?
All I know is that we lost two great animals that suffered a horribly agonizing death, and don’t know what to do to avoid any additional exposures. GRRRRRRrrrr. I was so mad yesterday I could taste my own liver. Today I am still pretty hot and aching to give somebody a whuppin', but mostly just sad. I loved that horse.
OK horse folks, seen anything like this before? We've been raising horses in the same place with same grass, hay, feed types for 30 years now and never lost one like this. Any ideas appreciated as we are all
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