Urgent ! Founder miniature horse and banamine

[Ginger]

Hello,

I have a founder miniature horse 22 years old. The vet gave me banamine but I read somewhere it was forbidden with miniature horses. Any experience about it please ?

Thank you

 

[chandab]

Banamine is ok with miniatures, the dose for the liquid is 1cc per 100# bodyweight (2cc/100# for critical pain per my vet), and you can give it orally (tastes pretty icky, but beats fighting with injecting), if you have the paste, I believe the weight increments are on the tube.

It's bute that isn't recommended for minis, but it can be used if you are very careful with the dosage, you need to know the weight of your mini. My laminitic mare needs bute for an acute flare up, nothing else touches her pain, but luckily, she's been doing very well for several years now, so hasn't needed anything.

 

[Miniv]

Ditto to Chanda's post.

To add.......If you are giving banamine for more than a couple of days, you should also give her something to protect the lining of her stomach.

Ulcer Guard or U-Guard is what comes to mind.

 

[drmatthewtaylor]

I don't believe Bute or Banamine are any more/less problematic in minis than any other sized horse. Which is to say that both can have life threatening side effects sometimes in all sizes of horses, but their good effects outweigh their bad effects.

NEVER inject Banamine IM.

NEVER use Bute and Banamine together.

Dr. Taylor

 

[Ginger]

Thank you very much for your answers ! it was very helpfull

Have a nice day

 

[AngC]

I would be interested in hearing whether Ginger's (original poster's) horse improved?

This topic and the handful of responses had a big impact on me. Sometimes you can read and read and read--and enlightenment escapes you. Sometimes a light bulb illuminates. This one was a light bulb.

Regarding chandab's mention of Banamine prescription dosage. I believe she offered it as a guideline to the original poster. But if anyone reads this thread later on...
For Nicky's eye injury, the vet didn't specifically give me a weight-based dosage; although I believe it was tailored on Nicky's weight (they weighed his fat-butt when he arrived at the vet hospital.) But it was for paste and was: 1.5 ml by mouth once daily; 24 hours apart. It came in a "cheap" tube/w.plunger similar to dewormers and marked with totally uncalibrated 500 lb weight increments; the same sort of junk-tube that is so easy to twist wrong or break or the ring fails and delivers a different dose of dewormer. Dewormer has totally different "safe" levels than this drug, in my opinion. [by the way, the vet gave me much smaller syringes (without needles) that had closely-spaced graduations to allow me to more precisely administer the drug.] So there it is: ml's and cc's.

Dr.Taylor mentioned his low regard of injecting Banamine. Our horse that was put down (after being diagnosed with colic) was injected with Banamine on initial treatment. We had him--field vet--here within a few hours of noticing symptoms. Her condition rapidly worsened and in less than 24 hours, he told us she had nerve-type damage and we had to put her down. (And you could see it; she was twitchy; I don't know how to explain it but you could tell her nervous system was affected.) Afterwards, I agonized and read everything I could find... and to this day her symptoms seem like rabies (not something they vaccinate against here in WA; not sure why.) I'm not bagging on this vet; it was just a light bulb for me, because although I trust vets, I need to be informed as a consumer to ask the correct questions. And whether or not to inject with Banamine was simply not something I knew to ask.

Regarding Ulcer-Gard type products....
When Baby had laminitis, the vet hospital prescribed Bute. By then I was getting somewhat more informed and was really nervous about using the Bute due to the little I'd read about ulcers. But on the other hand, I had the impression that Bute was an anti-inflammatory. So Miniv's mention of using some type of omeprazole is something I would and did research more. For example, this: http://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/NewsEvents/CVMUpdates/ucm422694.htm
Perhaps everyone else out there in internet-land knew about this, but I didn't. I still don't.

I administered the Bute to Baby for that short period of time (maybe it takes longer to get ulcers???) I don't know if she now has ulcers; her appetite seems pretty darn healthy. Quite frankly I wouldn't know a horse ulcer if it bit me in the butt; but if we ever have to administer such drugs again I now know to ask the vet whether it's required.

 

[FurstPlaceMiniatures]

Banamine is in fact Chanda's dose age.

I hate banamine, but it does have it's place. My word of caution is this - use it right or don't use it. If you cannot reliably hit a vein every time, have someone who can do it. I have 250ml in my fridge right now, and give 12cc per dose to my cows, I will not use the whole bottle this year - and I have 1200 head. That is how little I like to use it because of the side effects and potential issues.

I was a TA for a colleges dairy program, specifically anatomy and physiology of the dairy cow. We would do a yearly dissection. It was my job to 'prep' the cow for it.

I gave her a bunch of banamine IM the night before the "final prep." I also gave a bunch of Sub Q vaccines IM, loaded her up with off label crap, did some old school ineffective 'treatments' etc to show students WHY we follow label instructions.

When she was dissected, the banamine spot was like no other. Within 16 hours it had turned green. Tissue was absolutely disgusting, and a weird texture. I don't mean this happened after she died, she was still warm upon necropsy with these observations.

I couldn't even imagine what that monster spot was going to turn into. I always knew it was important, but that really drove home just how nasty banamine can be. This particular cow was ulcerated as all get out too, probably from the days of banamine and aspirin in an attempt to save her before she was the designated dissection cow. She had a leg too bad to send for beef.

 

[amysue]

I always keep oral banamine paste in the barn for my horses and injectable for my cows. I am completely capable of finding a vein and administering iv shots, but I find the paste easier. As for the cows, my vet says that although you should not administer it im, due to the risk of abscesses, many people do with no problems. She calls it "the farmer way to use banamine". I will not risk it, especially in my beef cows, but I do understand why so many people do it that way. I also always keep ulcer guard on hand to buffer the horse's stomach after using pain drugs. I asked my vet if it was okay to use the two together, or if I should space it out to avoid rendering the banamine ineffective from coating the stomach or neutralizing the acid. She said it was okay to use them together. Anyone else have any other advisement or experience with this?

 

[chandab]

AngC since you had the paste and it's dosed by weight, pounds are listed on the tube, I'm going to guess your vet figured out how many ml of paste would be appropriate for your horse's weight. [The dosage I listed is for the liquid banamine, which can be give orally, but tastes horrible. Probably an off-label use, but it's been done by many.]

 

[Minimor]

1 ml and 1 cc are the same amount--just thought I would stick that in in case anyone thought there is a difference.

Ang--did your vet give the banamine injection IV or IM? It is perfectly acceptable to give it IV. I'M would not have caused the issues you describe--the reason IM is not the way to give banamine, it can cause clostridial infection--that is a gas gangrene that is very nasty to treat and can be fatal. Some vets do still instruct owners to give it IV bit I think most will say not to. I do not buy the paste--I get the liquid and give it orally. It works just as fast orally as it does when given IM (IV works faster)-'yes, we did give it IM for many years with absolutely no problem at all--IM injection does not always cause clostridial infection, but the risk is there.

 

[AngC]

Ang--did your vet give the banamine injection IV or IM?

uhhhh, I misread Dr. Taylor's words. I thought he wrote IMO (as in internet abbreviation for "in my opinion") I've since noticed that he/and you folks are referring to IM (as in intramuscular injection?)

When our little mare was sick, my husband and I were a mess. I do remember that the vet spent some time finding a specific location somewhere in her neck or some part of her front-end and that he explained something about the need to inject in a precise location. So I believe she was injected intravenously.

It's been four years now. At the time my husband and I were devastated. I really wish that we had her body analyzed or something just so I could know what happened--at the time, I was terrified that I would kill off a second horse (Nicky.) But the rendering truck was coming to our county the next day; I had no way to get her body to the vet hospital (at the time my truck was not equipped to haul a trailer) and if she didn't go on the meat wagon, she was going to be lying around stinking to await the next week's pick-up opportunity.

Afterwards we discussed it some to try and decide how much we should be willing to spend on our horses. We never were able to come up with a price to put on Nicky's head (...or Coco's or...Baby's heads.) About the best we were able to come up with was that if we ever faced a similar situation, we weren't going to "dink" around but would stuff the afflicted horse in the trailer and haul them to the vet hospital. Anyway, I wandered off-topic.

 

[drmatthewtaylor]

AngC,

I sympathize with the 'how much do we spend?' problem, especially when the Vet is only able to give you a few minutes to make a life decision.

I encourage clients to have a credit card they put on top of the refrigerator that they never use (so they know how much is on it) except for emergencies. Sadly, too often I have clients who want to spend more but don't have any available funds...

Dr. Taylor

 

[AngC]

AngC,

I sympathize with the 'how much do we spend?' problem, especially when the Vet is only able to give you a few minutes to make a life decision.

I encourage clients to have a credit card they put on top of the refrigerator that they never use (so they know how much is on it) except for emergencies. Sadly, too often I have clients who want to spend more but don't have any available funds...

Dr. Taylor

In this instance, the vet spent more than a few minutes on a "life decision." He was out here two nights in a row to very late hours. He more than explained things to us. The first night he told us our options for a colic-ed horse and told us typical prices and mentioned what the lady up the road had spent on her horse (somewhere in the 6-8k range).... (horse is now dead.) He explained the options/limitations of what could be treated in the field vice at the vet hospital. I was shocked at the potential costs. I thought I would have until the next day to make the decision; well, we didn't have that long. By the time he came back the next day, Poke had something going on that he was not able to identify--other than it affected her nervous system.

I don't "do" charge cards. When we stumbled on horses, I set up a savings account and an allotment of a couple hundred a month. It wasn't that we couldn't afford more: I just like to organize my money. I really don't know and don't look at what we've spent. Poke's death pretty much wiped out the savings because she developed problems so soon after purchase. I've since abandoned the whole idea; when Nicky had his eye injury, up-front costs were in the 3-4k range. I pretty much didn't care; the husband and I discussed it; and after field treatment was not working, we did what we'd decided and hauled Nicky to the vet hospital. And when Baby had her laminitis, we trimmed the field treatment effort to the next morning.

I don't know about elsewhere in the country, but here vets typically (and vet hospitals) don't do credit. So whenever I read here that someone is proposing to buy a cheap horse... well, nothing wrong with that, but I wonder whether they have the funds to take care of problems. The costs can be shocking.