Hello everyone!
I#%92m hoping some of you may be able to help me out and give me some ideas or insight of what might be going on with my mare. She is an 11 yr. old Appy mare that I bought in mid August as a project mare. While her previous owners gave her a decent home, she has really lacked in basic care for the past 8 years, and the 3 years before that she was abused very badly giving her a lot of personality traits that are being worked on. She hadn#%92t had her feet worked with in about 4 years, has never had her teeth floated, hadn#%92t been wormed and was VERY head shy and had no ground manners whatsoever. Since being with me, she is on a regular worming schedule, is getting back in the routine of getting her hooves trimmed and has really bloomed in the round pen.
Here lately though I have been seeing some changes in her performance and attitude. She has been in season regularly throughout the time I#%92ve had her. However the last few months she has started getting an waxy buildup on her utters. She is by no means bagging up or producing milk though. I#%92ve also noticed that her belly is getting bigger! Which is giving me some case for concern. (Did I mention that her previous owners had a 2 yr old stud running with their mares? And an ugly one at that
L lol ) Well this morning I noticed she was acting different. Usually when I walk in the barn of a morning, I open the door to her stall door that leads to her turnout area and she goes out until I have her feed ready. Not this morning, she stayed inside in a hum-drum fashion and wasn#%92t interested in going out. She also didn#%92t get excited about feed! (really weird seeing that she is usually throwing her head like mister ed while I#%92m pouring it in her bucket and then wastes no time plunging her nose inside the second I give her the ok to eat ). She ate half of her feed very slowly and took a break, I checked on her about an hour later and she was finishing the other half. She also acted stiff on her back legs. Not lame but just a little stiff. I led her into the round pen and asked her to trot some circles and she showed no signs of lameness such as head bobbing or being off on any certain side. Her energy wasn#%92t as high as usually either. Just kind sticky/dopey acting. She is using the bathroom so Im not worried about colic or founder. No feed changes and she wasn#%92t even worked yesterday…
I have the vet scheduled to come out next week and float her teeth as I have noticed she has started dropping feed when she eats. I also have the feeling that she will be blood tested for pregnancy just to be on the safe side. Any ideas to what could be going on with her? Sorry this is so long winded… just wanted to get all the facts out there. Thanks in advance for any advice! I really appreciate it! I can also post recent pics of her if needed.