Chesney

Chesney has had a difficult 18 months, I wanted to look back and see how much he has improved since January 2015.   

September 2014 he looked like this ....

.... but by the middle of November he had really lost a lot of weight and muscle tone. To be honest I took no photo's of him without his rug on, I was too embarrassed about how thin he was.  He had a blood test and as I mentioned in my blog back then it showed he was a bit anaemic and had slight inflammation in his intestines.  He had an iron supplement, was wormed and I gradually changed his feed to something more fattening and increased how much he was having.  I also had to make sure he was wearing nice warm rugs because he was feeling the cold more. 

His follow up blood test showed his Red Blood Cell count was back to normal.  Then we just had to get the weight back on him, it proved more difficult than I imagined for a horse who had been a good doer all his life.  

By March 2015 he was very, very slowly putting on weight.  This is how he looked, the camera angle makes him look slightly better than he was.

April 2015:- his ribs are more covered, but his neck is thin, his spine sticks out and his pelvis is pronounced.

June 2015:- Chesney continues to very slowly put weight on and regain his muscle tone.

 

August 2015:- his ribs are covered but his spine and pelvis are still pronounced and his neck is still thin.

September 2015:- his ribs are well covered but his neck still looks thin and his spine sticks out a bit over his loins.

April 2016:-  Chesney's neck has built up, his hindquarters are round again and his spine has finally disappeared :)

I am so pleased that he is finally looking better.  He will be 22 in a few weeks so I think that may be why it has taken so long to put the weight back on.  I wish we had been able to discover what caused the sudden weight loss at the end of 2014 but I guess it is just great that he recovered.

Did you see my vlog on Wednesday 'One Day in May'  on my You Tube channel.  
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Until next time!

Jo