Horse Health: Is it Colic or Enteroliths?

If you have never heard of enteroliths, don't be to surprised. I had never heard of them until I nearly lost my stallion from it, and I have been dealing with horses since I was old enough to sit on one. Even during the time I was taking several animal husbandry classes, the problem with enteroliths was never mentioned.

What exactly are enteroliths and what is the primary cause? Enteroliths are an accumulation of phosphate, magnesium and ammonium that builds up around various things that the horse ingests, like small pebbles, sand grains, bits of wire or even baling twine. Basically, just about anything that can not be digested, or passed.

Horses can pick up these objects in many ways. Obviously from eating on the ground, but they can also be ingested from their hay, or even in grain. Horses feed is all harvested from the soil, so it stands to reason that the possibilty of foreign objects in the feed can be pretty high. Even feeding in a feeder that is off the ground is no guarantee of your horse not picking up fragments of these foreign objects. Check your feeders and you will more than likely find little pebbles, dirt clods, or other things laying there.

Horses that have chronic colic could very well have enteroliths. But that's not always the case either. My stallion was never prone to colic. I think in the 23 years that I've had him, he only coliced twice, until the day nothing seemed to help him. After several treatments for colic through out the day, my vet said I needed to get him to the animal hospital for surgery, or lose him because of enteroliths. His intestinal tract and colon was blocked. She was right. After exrays and immediate surgery, two very large enteroliths were removed. One was perfectly round and the other, slightly smaller, was almost eliptical. Both were very heavy, almost like cement.

My horse was very lucky, all things taken into consideration. During the surgery they found there was no rupturing in the intestinal tract. If there had been, he would not have been able to be saved. Detection is the key factor and the only way to detect an enterolith is either abdominal exray or exploratory surgery. The only treatment for enteroliths is surgery and there is about a 90% to 95% success rate, according to the veterinary hospital.

Symptoms to watch for, beyond chronic colic are being cranky, lethargic, weight loss, seeming to be depressed, not performing like normal, refusal or reluctance to either jump or go down hills, even loose bowel movements.

The biggest risk of undetected entroliths is a lodged stone, or object, that leads to the rupturing the intestinal tract. Once a rupture occurs, the horse either dies or has to be put down by euthanization. Heartbreaking, considering enteroliths can be detected.