Strange Sickness Affecting Horses In Ennis
Ennis, Mt (United States):
Teri Freeman watched her appaloosa horse Lucky die of a strange liver disease within a day of showing symptoms in early July. In the evening, the 27-year-old horse became lethargic, demented and jaundiced.Freeman sat with him all night.
By the morning Lucky was dead.‘‘He died in my arms,'' Freeman said recently at the Rusty Cowboy, an antique store she rents on the south end of Main Street in Ennis.Her partner Bobby Bock's Arab pinto horse Splash showed similar symptoms a few weeks later: becoming lethargic, walking in circles and having her skin flake off in huge clumps that look like peeling paint. It was a bizarre sickness, Bock said.
‘‘None of the old cowboys around here have seen anything like this,'' he said.They rushed Splash to Ennis veterinarian Eileen White, who took the horse to a veterinarian in Belgrade who specializes in internal medicine for horses. White said Splash showed signs of dementia and had jaundiced eyes.
She ran tests on the horses liver and found it just wasn't working.Splash survived with a combined treatment of liver support drugs, intensive intravenous fluids and being kept inside, out of the sunlight that is damaging for horses that have a weak liver.But the onset of the disease in two horses has Freeman, Bock and White searching for the cause.White said it's extremely unlikely that the disease was spread from other animals because liver ailments are rarely contagious. And neither horse had been vaccinated recently, so it's unlikely that the sickness is a reaction to shots.That led White to suspect the one thing to which both horses were exposed.‘‘It made me think there had to be something in that pasture,'' she said. ‘‘Something had to change there.''Lucky had grazed in the pasture, which is set along the Madison River, for over a decade, Freeman said. But Bock got Splash just this summer, and the horse had only lived in the pasture for about two months before coming down sick.
Bock said he searched ‘‘every square inch'' of the pasture looking for toxic plants and didn't find any.Freeman had the soil in the pasture behind her place tested by Alpine Analytical, Inc., a private laboratory in Helena. The levels of arsenic were more than 500 times the quantity recommended safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water.
The soil also tested high in mercury, uranium and lead, according to the Alpine report.The arsenic is likely the factor that caused the sickness, White said.But now Freeman and Bock are trying to figure out the source of the contaminants. They're trying to discern whether it's in the plants on the pasture, and ultimately where it came from.
Sept 22, 2005
Nick Gevock, The Montana Standard
Ennis, Mt (United States):Teri Freeman watched her appaloosa horse Lucky die of a strange liver disease within a day of showing symptoms in early July. In the evening, the 27-year-old horse became lethargic, demented and jaundiced.Freeman sat with him all night.
By the morning Lucky was dead.‘‘He died in my arms,'' Freeman said recently at the Rusty Cowboy, an antique store she rents on the south end of Main Street in Ennis.Her partner Bobby Bock's Arab pinto horse Splash showed similar symptoms a few weeks later: becoming lethargic, walking in circles and having her skin flake off in huge clumps that look like peeling paint. It was a bizarre sickness, Bock said.
‘‘None of the old cowboys around here have seen anything like this,'' he said.They rushed Splash to Ennis veterinarian Eileen White, who took the horse to a veterinarian in Belgrade who specializes in internal medicine for horses. White said Splash showed signs of dementia and had jaundiced eyes.
She ran tests on the horses liver and found it just wasn't working.Splash survived with a combined treatment of liver support drugs, intensive intravenous fluids and being kept inside, out of the sunlight that is damaging for horses that have a weak liver.But the onset of the disease in two horses has Freeman, Bock and White searching for the cause.White said it's extremely unlikely that the disease was spread from other animals because liver ailments are rarely contagious. And neither horse had been vaccinated recently, so it's unlikely that the sickness is a reaction to shots.That led White to suspect the one thing to which both horses were exposed.‘‘It made me think there had to be something in that pasture,'' she said. ‘‘Something had to change there.''Lucky had grazed in the pasture, which is set along the Madison River, for over a decade, Freeman said. But Bock got Splash just this summer, and the horse had only lived in the pasture for about two months before coming down sick.
Bock said he searched ‘‘every square inch'' of the pasture looking for toxic plants and didn't find any.Freeman had the soil in the pasture behind her place tested by Alpine Analytical, Inc., a private laboratory in Helena. The levels of arsenic were more than 500 times the quantity recommended safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water.
The soil also tested high in mercury, uranium and lead, according to the Alpine report.The arsenic is likely the factor that caused the sickness, White said.But now Freeman and Bock are trying to figure out the source of the contaminants. They're trying to discern whether it's in the plants on the pasture, and ultimately where it came from.
Sept 22, 2005
Nick Gevock, The Montana Standard
