When the Horses came in this morning for their feed, Bliss was very lame. She came in limping and feeling very sorry for herself. It is the same leg as she had the infection in her hoof two weeks ago. Then the poison in the hoof made its own way out. In most cases it does happens like that, by far it is the best way for an infection to cure itself, as normally it does not inflame again. Having the infected area opened or poulticed will very often leave some of the poison in the infected area, and it will need further poulticing or treatment. On inspecting the underneath of her hoof it seems what happened was that where the poison released itself, a large pebble got stuck in to the release area and stopped all of the poison from draining out. We removed the pebble from the hole hoping that the remainder of the poison would come out over the day, whilst Bliss was in the field walking around grazing. Unfortunately it didn’t and we decided that we would poultice the infected area.
All those of you who were watching the webcams when Bliss was born at Denbury, about eighteen months ago will know what a star she has been from the first day of her being born. She has been the most friendly and easy Horse that we have ever had, I would even say that we have known. Even with easy Horses like Bliss, when they have pain and you need to treat them they can be very wary of what is going on, especially when they have never hardly had their feet lifted up.
To poultice the infected hoof you need first to clean the area with a hoof pick, and wash it out thoroughly. the hoof pick would have given Bliss a bit of discomfort. A hot poultice is then put over the wound, using an old sock to keep it in place, held with vet rap, a type of sticky bandage. As Bliss was being turned out tonight we needed to make sure that the poultice stayed on. We use a large corner of a thick plastic feed bag, held with gaffer tape. To a young filly like Bliss it is an awful lot of messing about. She was absolutely brilliant, allowing us to do every thing that was needed without a sign of protest. Hopefully by the morning the poulticing would have done the job an Bliss will be back to normal without any pain.
Chris Speering from the Hawk and Owl Trust visited this morning, I will tell you about the meeting in tomorrows diary. We walked the whole farm with him, and as if on cue the Buzzard youngster flew over head squawking as loud as it could. We asked Chris about it disappearing for the week that it has. By all accounts the Adult parents hide from the youngster to help it leave their territory, The youngster looks in for the parent in different areas. We may be lucky to catch it on the webcam again before it leaves for good.