The Horse:Your Guide To Equine Health Care provides monthly equine health care information to horse owners, breeders, veterinarians, barn/farm managers, trainer/riding instructors, and others involved in the hands-on care of the horse.
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19 September 2016 THE HORSE TheHorse.com for inhalation over a time period; how- ever, they can be cost-prohibitive for horse owners. To prevent this respiratory condition, removing the allergens is your best bet. Couetil says even good-quality—and certainly moldy—hay can contain mold particles. For asthmatic horses, switching from feeding hay to feeding a pelleted or a complete feed and turning the horse out on 24/7 pasture is more beneficial and cheaper in the long run, says Couetil. Comparisons in Consciousness John Madigan, DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVIM, ACAW, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), focuses his research on equine and comparative neurology. He and his team have made several discoveries during their years of studying equine neonates and, now, hu- man newborns, including a comparison between maladjusted foals and autistic children. One of Madigan's most prominent research findings involved the dis- covery that many cases of neonatal maladjustment syndrome (aka dummy foals) do not result from hypoxia, or lack of oxygen during birth, as traditionally thought. Instead, the condition can be caused by persistently elevated in utero hormones called neurosteroids, whose job during pregnancy is to keep the fetus "asleep." While trying to determine how the foal's body knows to "switch off" these neurosteroids so it can "wake up" after birth, Madigan's team found that the birth canal's squeezing pressure is a ma- jor signal. He hypothesized that the final stage of labor was too quick or otherwise affected (e.g., due to birth complications), thereby failing to prompt the neuros- teroid switch. These neurosteroids then stay elevated and keep the foal in a more sedated state, as is seen in maladjusted foals who wander, are unaware of their environment, and show no desire to bond with and nurse from the mare. Madi- gan calls this "a failure to transition to consciousness." Madigan's group has discovered that squeezing a maladjusted foal's body with a rope harness for 20 minutes can simu- late the pressure from the birth canal during labor, thus flipping the switch to lower the neurosteroid levels. In observa- tional studies, the dummy foals squeezed with the rope system "wake up" and seem to have no lingering effects from the pre- viously elevated neurosteroids. Madigan's team also performed a brain-wave study on eight newborn foals to explore what is called the "flopping reaction" to tight restraint for a proce- dure. "Using a novel foal squeeze system, now called the Madigan foal squeeze, we determined that foals go into slow-wave sleep (and essentially flop, or go limp), and at the end of the 20 minutes, there Performance Horses fall victim to respiratory infections due to dust, hay, bedding, etc. If your horse can't breathe, it can't perform! EquiSilver is a patented chelated silver designed specifically for equine nebulization. ■ Use as a Remedy or as a Preventative Measure! ■ Does Not Interact or Interfere with Medications! ■ Meets criteria for Therapeutic Medication! Equi-Resp Give your horse the WinninG AdvAntAGe! RespiRatoRy & Wound CaRe pRoduCts foR the equine MaRket 405.317.3396 ■ www.EquiResp.com ■ email: EquiResp@pldi.net Scintigraphy Testing completed by Dr. Nathan Slovis, DVM, DACVIM, CHT of the world famous Hagyard Equine Medical Institute of Lexington, KY. Institute of Lexington, KY. equi-Resp systems are affordable at $700! Type TheHorse in the coupon section on our website for a $50 savings! We've determined that there's not just an association, but that these neurosteroids do alter behavior." DR. JOHN MADIGAN