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.