Services

Equine In Clinic Services

Our goal at Temeku Equine is to provide comprehensive, attentive, thorough care to the farms in our community and beyond. We offer a wide variety of services so that we can best care for your equine companion. Our care consists of diagnostic testing, internal medicine, emergency services, surgery, reproductive care, and so much more.

Routine & Preventative Care

Annual wellness examinations are strongly recommended to help maintain your horse’s health. Wellness examinations may help detect subtle changes in your horse before they become more significant problems. Regular vaccination, deworming and oral exams are recommended to prevent or mitigate a number of serious diseases. Each horse’s Health Wellness Program is tailored to that individual horse’s needs.

Annual Physical Examinations

A thorough physical examination of a horse is a great way to better understand that horse and to help create an overview for the types of medical and dietary considerations that may arise for your horse in the near future. It is also an excellent opportunity to discuss any questions or concerns that you may have about your horse. Planning ahead at this meeting may help your horse avoid health concerns and facilitate keeping their training program on track. Annual bloodwork (CBC/Chemistry/Fibrinogen) can also be added to this wellness exam to screen for additional information on internal wellness.

Vaccination

Annual vaccination is strongly recommended for horses. Temeku Equine supports the principle that core vaccines for horses at this time include annual vaccination against Rabies, West Nile, Tetanus, Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE), and Western equine encephalitis (WEE). We also recommend vaccination against equine respiratory viruses, especially Equine Influenza Virus and Equine Herpes Virus (aka Rhino/Flu). Additional vaccinations may be appropriate and are recommended based on a horse’s environment and travel. Please contact our office to help develop a vaccine protocol for your horse.

Fecal Exam/Deworming

Parasites in horses have shown significant resistance to dewormers in recent years, so it is important to understand when and when not to administer a dewormer. Temeku Equine recommends need-based deworming, as determined by quantitative fecal egg counts. We want to ensure that horses are adequately dewormed so as to avoid parasite burdens that cause diseases such as colic and weight loss. We also want to avoid deworming them when there is no clear benefit to doing so.

Basic Dental

Dental maintenance is an important part of your horse's preventive care program. Most horses require a dental float on an annual basis, although some require more frequent evaluations and adjustments. All horses being floated have an oral exam conducted. Wolf teeth removal is also available.

Routine dental care means that our horses suffer from less oral ulcerations, dental imbalances, dental pain, and tooth loss than in previous times. It also means that we are more aware of their dietary needs and can more appropriately provide them with forages and grain sources that they can safely consume. An improved diet can lead to fewer episodes of colic, fewer episodes of choke, and improved absorption of digestible calories. This is part of why we now see that a horse does not have to become thin just because it is getting older! Happily, many older horses can now maintain a healthy body condition with appropriate dental and dietary care.

What qualifies as “routine” dental care may vary from horse to horse. The average timing for a routine dental examination is once per year. However, there are some horses that require more frequent exams due to their dental conformation, imbalances, or current health challenges. The more regularly horses stay on their preventive maintenance dental schedule, the less often they should require extensive dental procedures. Despite our best efforts, dental problems may arise from time to time. Signs that your horse may have a dental problem include discomfort in chewing; discomfort in wearing a bit or being ridden; inability to chew properly; ulcerations in the mouth; nasal discharge or odor; and swelling along the jaw lines

Bloodwork

Blood tests provide clinicians with key, non-invasive, diagnostic information, helping them formulate strategic clinical plans and optimize treatment for their patients. We are equipped to handle a variety of patient needs, from assessing inflammation, to kidney function, liver function and infectious disease.

We are here to help you improve and maintain the quality of your horse's life, and we look forward to partnering with you to achieve your goals. Please give us a call to create a diagnostic plan with one of our highly-skilled clinicians and to learn more about available testing.

Examples of In-House Bloodwork

• CBC (Complete Blood Count)/Fibrinogen to assess overall health
• SAA (Serum Amyloid A) testing, which quantifies a specific, sensitive biological marker of acute inflammation or infection

Gastroscopy

Gastroscopy is the procedure used to view the inside of a horse’s stomach. The procedure uses a 10-foot long endoscope (camera), passed into the stomach via the nose. This is the only accurate way to diagnose stomach ulcers in horses, which are very common and can cause signs of colic, weight loss, poor performance, etc. Gastroscopy can also identify tumors, stomach impactions, and other abnormalities of the upper GI tract.

Upper Respiratory Endoscopy

Endoscopy allows us to evaluate the horse for a variety of upper respiratory diseases such as guttural pouch infections, laryngeal hemiplegia and even exercise induced pulmonary hemorrhage (bleeders). Having a definitive diagnosis allows us to formulate a safe and appropriate treatment plan not only to achieve a more effective result but also to reduce the potentially dangerous side effects of treating these respiratory conditions blind.

Wellness Care

Our equine wellness programs are designed to provide you with confidence your horse is receiving the highest-quality preventive health care and a fundamental foundation for a long, healthy life. We recommend annual preventive care appointments, which include a physical examination, vaccinations and dentistry, as well as more frequent de-worming. We view annual examinations as an opportunity to establish a baseline for your horse's health as well as to detect problems before they become serious and expensive to treat.

Though we prefer to prevent illness as much as we possibly can, there simply is no guarantee a well-cared for horse will never face a illness or injury. We are able to diagnose and treat a wide range of medical conditions. These include (but are not limited to):

• Coggins Testing for Equine Infectious Anemia
• Coughing
• Choke
• Respiratory Infections
• Colic
• Weight Loss