Night before Thanksgiving and my accident-prone mare....

[oharabear]

...attempted to remove her star from her forehead by smashing her face into something. :eek::rolleyes:

So she has a flap of skin about the size of a silver dollar and tomorrow is a holiday, ergo, my vet clinic is closed, and I refuse to call the vet on holidays unless it's a life-or-death situation (like colic). My mare is not dying, it's just really painful-looking, although she seems fine. Ugh.

After I unfolded her skin flap I smeared boo-boo (antibiotic) ointment on the back of the flap and stuck it to her forehead. It seems to be sticking in place, but does anyone have any tips on how to doctor it up so it will be okay until I can get the vet out on Friday?

[Bluehorsesjp]

Well, can you see her skull? Do you think it will need a stitch?
See if you can attach the pieces together with butterfly clips so at least the edges are touching and maybe give her a gram of bute for the headache she is bound to have.:lol:

[oharabear]

What is a butterfly clip?

I already gave her bute, and no skull is visible. I do think stitches will only be necessary for cosmetic purposes, unless there's something else going on that I can't see... I am not concerned about it not healing, since I've had horses with much worse wounds that always seem to heal fine.

Thoroughbreds. :rolleyes:

[rcloisonne]

Thoroughbreds. :rolleyes:
Cheap owners. :rolleyes:

[marta]

it needs to be done asap, not a day or two later... :confused:

butterfly bandaids are the kind that you use to keep wounds closed on humans (not sure if that's what the poster meant by clips) but i don't see how those would stick to horse hair.

i'm poor but i think i'd rather pay the emergency farm call.

[LauraKY]

Oh, for Pete's sake. Stitches need to be done within a short period of time, not two days later. Why aren't you calling the vet? Probably too late now for stitches.

Hope you don't have a big problem. One of our guys whacked his face, we were using the "country" vet at that time. He said he didn't need stitches...he should have stiches. Cost us $750 to clear up the infection. Don't use the "country" vet anymore (think he should have retired...just not really interested anymore).

Heck, I would throw mine on the trailer and take them to the vet clinic if no one would come out.

[birdsong]

It will heal but will likely have a bad scar if its not stitched properly. That piece will die off and then scar tissue will fill in.
I always haul to my Vet anyway.

[Zu Zu]

oharabear - Jingles for your mare and her star ~ hoping she heals quickly and her star remains unblemmished. Jingle Jingle Jingle & AO ~ AO ~ AO ~ Always Optimistic. Happy Thanksgiving !

[pj]

Cheap owners. :rolleyes:

:lol::yes::lol:

[ThoroughbredFancy]

Speaking of Thoroughbred's who take their faces off...


My guy did something similar a little over a year ago. The flap of skin on his face was only part of what he did to himself. However, his flap of skin was probably the size of a penny that was hanging off. The vet didn't think it needed stitches but I had him remove the flap (the injury wasn't very deep). It ended up healing fine. I put antibiotic ointment on it for a bit then just followed my some aloe cream when the hair started growing back in. He barely even has a scar. You have to look very close to his face to see it.

Your mare's sounds larger than his and maybe deeper? Perhaps you should give the vet a call. I say this without seeing the injury, though.

[Watermark Farm]

If it's on her skull (forehead) and the injury goes through the full thickness of the skin and needs sutures, it should be done today. You can't wait 2 days to suture a wound. Don't mess around with an injury like this. My horse had a similar injury and it wasn't until the vet came out and sedated and cleaned the wound on his forehead that we discovered that you *could* see the skull underneath. It didn't look that bad and initially I wasn't going to call out a vet, but am glad I did.

[Grataan]

The problem with waiting is that if you want to suture you must do so in the first few hours following the injury. Friday will be too late. Thus, if you wait until Friday the only way you could 'close' the wound with sutures after that point would be to do a delayed closure (treat with abx and such for a few days then attempt a closure-but this is not really ideal as the wound edges have to be trimmed and then you also have to deal with contracture etc.)

[oharabear]

Okay, so after some further investigating this morning (in the daylight) it looks like she mostly just scraped the fur off her face. There isn't even much scabbing, just a large bald spot. I think I'll be okay with not calling out the vet at all on this one. It looked much worse last night when it was bleeding and we were in the dark under the one crappy light in the barn.

And it's not about being cheap- it's about NOT hating my vet enough to call him away from his family on Thanksgiving to clean my horse's superficial laceration, when I am perfectly capable of doing so myself. Last night I just thought she might need stitches only for cosmetic reasons, since I am not tickled at the idea of a big scar on her forehead, but this morning I am going to say she doesn't need them at all. The worst that might happen is her hair will grow in white, which will be unnoticeable since it's her star, anyway.

I try to reserve those holiday vet calls for ACTUAL emergencies. And we may have to agree to disagree, but I don't consider a scraped/cut forehead to be an emergency worthy of interrupting my vet's holiday.

[Grataan]

Um, we appreciate being called out on holidays. We absolutely DETEST fire engine medicine. Which is what the original situation would have turned into by friday.

Why would we rather come out on holidays? Because injuries are much easier to treat when they are fresh instead of three days later when they are infected, crusted, and covered in mud.

[oharabear]

Um, we appreciate being called out on holidays. We absolutely DETEST fire engine medicine. Which is what the original situation would have turned into by friday.

Why would we rather come out on holidays? Because injuries are much easier to treat when they are fresh instead of three days later when they are infected, crusted, and covered in mud.

That's a good point and I can see that. I just keep thinking that vets would hate it. I had a horse choke a couple years ago, and when I called the vet at 9:30pm, he sounded downright irritated and told me to just give the horse Banamine and let it resolve on it's own and to ONLY call him if it's been going on for a few hours and the horse doesn't sem to be getting better. I had just rescued this horse, had NO medical history on him, and have never dealt with a choke episode before, and it scared the heck out of me. It did resolve on it's own, thank God, but ever since then I have had this issue about distrubing the vet during off-hours.

I no longer use him as my vet (because of other reasons besides him not being terribly willing to come out in the middle of the night), but he is one of three vets at my vet clinic (I adore the other two and always specifically request them when I make appointments). However, for after-hour emergency calls, Grumpy Vet is the one who gets the calls, so in my brain I guess I'm lumping all vets together and steriotyping that they all hate being disturbed. I'm happy to hear that it isn't the case.

[Zu Zu]

Glad to hear it turned out to be just a scrape ~ jingles for no scar healing.

[LauraKY]

We had a vet in a practice who didn't want to come out, for an eye injury, no less, then the partner didn't want to come out for a puncture wound because he was two hours away (and on call). Ending up driving to an emergency vet clinic. Turned out the "puncture" was three inches deep and just missed the jugular! Now use a new vet practice. We LOVE the new vet. He does charge a lot more for an emergency call...but who cares, at least he will come!

Sorry, if it's a question of whether they need stitches or not, I call the vet. It's his/her call, not mine. I am not a vet.

You might want to get yourself a good light. Maybe a big work light that you can clip onto a fence or stall. We have pretty good lighting in our barn, but still have extra lights if we need them. Just part of being prepared. Right up there with having a working thermometer.

If you can't see what's wrong, you sure can't fix it!