Slobbers: The story of it may be a bigger deal than you think

In this episode, Dr. Krishona Martinson shares her personal story of changing her mind about how big a deal slobbers really is.  An unseen mold in legumes can cause big headaches, and owners need to be aware of risks, and how to manage properly to reduce the chance that your horse can be severely affected.

Transcript

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Kris Hiney: Welcome to Extension Horses Tack Box Talk Series, Horse Stories with a Purpose. I'm your host, Dr. Kris Hiney with Oklahoma State University, and today we're going to be talking about slobbers in horses, and whether or not that's a big deal. So, we have a returning guest with us, Dr. Krishona Martinson from the University of Minnesota, so welcome back, Krishona!

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Kris Hiney: Thank you, thank you for having me.

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Kris Hiney: Now, unfortunately.

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Kris Hiney: You are here to talk about slobbers because you had an experience with slobbers. So, maybe start with what it is, where it comes from, and then we'll dive into the rest of it.

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Kris Hiney: Yes, well, thank you, Kris. You know, I think we've all been taught that slobbers really isn't a big deal.

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Kris Hiney: And I think you know a certain situation, or maybe a few situations, and I certainly recently had a situation where I'm sort of changing my tune on the slobbers. So I think we all know what slobbers is. The name kind of says it.

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Kris Hiney: So that is when your horse is excessively salivating, like, buckets of saliva.

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Kris Hiney: We know that it's caused when horses ingest.

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Kris Hiney: mold-infected legumes, primarily red clover, but there's also cases of it being in other legumes, like alfalfa. And white clover. And white clover, yes, really any legume. And it isn't like mold where the hay was bailed too wet, and molds. It is a mold that forms on the underneath sides of the leaves. It is something called black blotch disease.

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Kris Hiney: And it is commonly found when it is really hot and humid. So, if you live in an area that is hot and humid, or if you just happen to have a hot and humid stretch.

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Kris Hiney: Your legumes can potentially get the black blotch disease, which produces the cell for me, which then results in that excessive slobbering in horses.

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Kris Hiney: Right, so… so when I've dealt with it, it's been primarily on pasture with white clover, because that's what grows in pasture a little bit. And so, yes, in those hot, humid conditions, people start to be really concerned, because the horses are…

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Kris Hiney: Buckets, right? So not, like, frothy mouth, I ate an apple, but, like, buckets, oh, saliva falling out of them.

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Kris Hiney: Yes, and so, you know, as horse specialists, we talk about a lot of these things, but the cool thing is, you and I are also horse owners, as are many of our colleagues, and so when you experience it, it is quite eye-opening. So.

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Kris Hiney: our… my particular horse, who recently suffered from it, when she would open her mouth, like, I… I mean, if you had a coffee can.

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Kris Hiney: let's say, she could have probably filled that the minute she opened her mouth. It was unbelievable the amount of fluid that was coming out of her. So it is…

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Kris Hiney: it's not something you can really not see when it progresses. It's not like you're like, hmm, is my horse slobbering? In my case, there was no doubt that this horse was suffering from slobbers. Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah, so my… and we're gonna get into your horse's story. I've had the personal experience, as well as giving advice, but I was… I had a horse that was in Illinois, so you would like this one. She got abscesses.

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Kris Hiney: from slobbers, but it was because she was drooling so much, her stall environment was just getting, like, saturated. Her feet were saturated, because it was, like, going crazy. So not one you typically think of as being, like, a…

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Kris Hiney: A side effect, or a other issue, so…

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Kris Hiney: Well, and I think what you and I have learned and chatted about, and our colleagues, is that I do think people are really used to seeing it in pasture. But my situation was October in Minnesota, and the horse was on hay.

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Kris Hiney: And she is a… What? I know, and since then, since we have talked about it, other people have come forward and said, absolutely, I've also had issues with it in my hay. And looking at the literature, it is very clear that the slaframine stays active in the hay. Now, some people suggest that over a 10-month period, that slaframine really decreases in the hay.

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Kris Hiney: But it is certainly in there, and in there for, I mean, a year, right? Like, 10 months is essentially a year, so it can stay active in the hay, and it's something you really need to watch on both in hay and pasture. So in October, that would be this summer's hay, right? Yes. Yeah. Yes.

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Kris Hiney: So it was hay that was… that was harvested July, August, so it really only sat for 60 to 90 days. But interestingly enough,

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Kris Hiney: I think when you look into the literature, and you know how, like, clover, especially in a primarily grass.

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Kris Hiney: situation, like if it's a grassy field or grass pasture, sometimes you get clumps of clover legume, right, that just grow. And especially red clover and white clover tend to grow really dense, and it kind of creates what I've been told is kind of like a microclimate, where it tends to stay just more wet and humid.

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Kris Hiney: So, it kind of also perpetuates the possibility

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Kris Hiney: of that black blotch disease forming, and then the sulfur mean coming. Right, well, and we've always talked about, well, maybe not on this podcast, but, like, red clover failed, it always takes longer to dry, so is it, like, it naturally just is…

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Kris Hiney: It just holds more moisture around itself? Well, I think… the…

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Kris Hiney: I do think it just holds more moisture, but also, if you look at a grass, like, legumes are notoriously harder to dry than grasses, that's why people like a

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Kris Hiney: Because it does help speed up the drying process, and we're getting a little bit off-topic, but… That's okay. But that's what we do on this podcast. It is always what we do, so… But, you know, clovers and legumes just have bigger stems, and stems is what takes longer to dry. They also have very pubescent or hairy leaves, especially the red clover, and those can take longer to dry, and so I think it is the denseness.

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Kris Hiney: And then just the size of the stem that tends to take longer to dry than a grass, which is mostly blades, versus stems, or can be.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah. Okay, so we've got some… some hay that could be, like, more clover in a flake or a bale, just, like, where it was bale in the pasture, right? So, in my particular…

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Kris Hiney: So personally, I have 5 horses. The one horse that was impacted is an older horse, and she is housed by herself. She also is just perpetually kind of on a diet.

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Kris Hiney: So the other 4 horses get a round bale, and she gets small square bales just to control her intake. But the hay is from the exact same field.

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Kris Hiney: It's just one form is round bales, fed to the four, she gets small square bales.

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Kris Hiney: and only this horse has had… has been impacted, so I'm guessing, like you just said.

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Kris Hiney: The small square bales that were baled happened to be in an area where there is either a lot of clover, or where this

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Kris Hiney: Happened to form.

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Kris Hiney: So the… so just a curiosity, so at the same field, but… but I assume, like, a sec… if you're gonna do small squares, you're gonna do a section of it as small squares, and some… you don't just be like, here's a round bale, it's gonna be a square bale, like, that seems a very inefficient way to make a case. Yes.

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Kris Hiney: But… so, interestingly, for this particular field, I share it with another person, I crop share it, so we actually do every other row to keep it… to keep it…

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Kris Hiney: Fair, as fair as possible. So, we were doing kind of every other, but the headlands around the field, we round bale, because then you have more room to turn the equipment and not run over windows. So, it is a little bit random, just because we are literally going every other row. Okay. Yes, and also, we have farmed

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Kris Hiney: this field for 20 years, and this is the first time I personally have ever had slobbers, but this past year in Minnesota was a very wet year. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: So, hot and wet? It was hot and wet. Okay. And also, this is a, a hayfield where every few years, we do have to chemically treat just to remove some of the clover, because the field gets so hard to dry. So, we're kind of bumping up on kind of our maximum amount of clover we would want.

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Kris Hiney: hot, wet.

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Kris Hiney: I think kind of all the things came together to create a perfect storm. So you, in October, had a horse that had slobbers, and I'm gonna, like, preface this again, like, what do we normally tell people when their horse has slobbers?

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Kris Hiney: We normally tell them, remove them from the source, whether that's the pasture or the hay, and then just watch them, and they will recover within 24 hours, and make sure they don't get dehydrated.

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Kris Hiney: Well, I think we need to maybe be a little bit more vigilant… Okay. …than that. So what happened? So this… so this is what happened. I went out, I fed…

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Kris Hiney: you know, I fed, and I noticed that this horse's name is Daisy. So, a little backstory, Daisy is a very beloved, semi-retired performance horse. She's 25,

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Kris Hiney: We have been treating her for Cushing's underneath… with the veterinarian's care for maybe 3 years.

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Kris Hiney: But even with medication, she gets just a slightly thicker hair, and this particular week in Minnesota, it… the rain had stopped, but it was 90, so it was very hot and very dry.

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Kris Hiney: And, again, I… we've never had issues with this, I wasn't even thinking.

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Kris Hiney: on the first day, I sort of noticed that I actually thought we have automatic waters. I thought maybe the automatic water had leaked, because there's just kind of, like, liquid around the cement. When then I looked at Daisy, I could see she was slobbering, but in my mind, I'm like, not a big deal. So, at that point, I should have immediately taken the hay.

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Kris Hiney: I found a new source of hay for her. We have a couple options at home, like probably most horse owners do, but I was like, no!

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Kris Hiney: I'm an expert! Which is never a good thing to say to yourself. And I'm like, she'll be fine.

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Kris Hiney: So, the next morning, she wasn't any better, but she wasn't any worse. And I had a long day at work, I came home, and she was down. So, I think that being 25,

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Kris Hiney: Having… being 90 degrees when she already had the start of a heavier winter hair coat, and it was very dusty, and we can go over some of the… she did end up having to spend a night in the equine hospital getting hydrated, and she has fully recovered.

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Kris Hiney: But she did get extremely dehydrated, where she became almost disoriented and a little neurologic, and when my veterinarian came out, he was more concerned about the heart palpitations he was, hearing under when he did his physical exam on her.

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Kris Hiney: And being down and being dusty, she was also coughing, and every time she would cough, she would literally spew, like…

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Kris Hiney: wads of saliva… like, of spit at you, and by that time, she was covered in it, the entire pen was covered in it, and I think it was so bad that when she opened her mouth, her mouth, it was so uncomfortable that gobs would… would…

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Kris Hiney: would… a salvo would just spill out of her, and she just couldn't drink enough, and it was hot. So it was a terrible situation.

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Kris Hiney: That ended up costing me a significant amount of money to keep her in the clinic overnight and get her hydrated. And I know, Kris, neither you or I are veterinarians, but some of the paperwork that we got, her dehydration markers…

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Kris Hiney: were incredibly high. So, when that gets high.

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Kris Hiney: put stress on their other organs, especially their kidneys. Because the blood's too thick, essentially, at this point in time. Yes. And so, she had elevated, BUN is what they were really concerned about, and a few other things that made her kidneys were under pressure, and because of her age, that made the veterinarian very clear, and

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Kris Hiney: even they, my… my regular veterinarian and the hospital she went to, which was luckily just down the road, they were the same as me. This has to be something other than slobbers, because we never see it escalate to this. I'm like, there's nothing else wrong with this horse. Like, she is perfect… she is 25, but she is perfectly healthy.

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Kris Hiney: And then also her white blood cell count was pretty high, just showing that she had just excessive amounts of inflammation, I think just from being so uncomfortable and being dehydrated. But she was severely dehydrated. They hydrated her overnight, and the next morning, so I think…

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Kris Hiney: she, of course, these things happen after work. Right. I think they started hydrating her at 9pm, and by 6 a.m. the next morning, all of her blood work was back to normal. Okay. Well, that's good. So, it was very quick, and I think…

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Kris Hiney: I mean, you know those, like, Culligan jugs of water? That's essentially what they hydrated… I mean, that amount of fluid, and I think it also just flushed all of the toxin out of her system. So when I picked her up the next morning, she was done slobbering.

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Kris Hiney: She looked like she had lost about 100 pounds, she looked a little rough from the experience, and I would say even for a couple days after, she was fairly lethargic, but then she did pop right back after just some time. But it was very scary, and

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Kris Hiney: Definitely makes you rethink the severity of slobbers. Hmm.

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Kris Hiney: So, any, any, like.

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Kris Hiney: long-term kidney or liver issues, or as far as they know, just… No, so they checked her that morning, that following morning, and then they rechecked everything before they would let me

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Kris Hiney: I mean, you can go get your horse, but before they would recommend me take her home, they checked everything, and everything was back to normal. The clinic, of course, was most concerned about colic. They treated her as a colic, just because, again, they were so…

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Kris Hiney: they're like, this doesn't usually happen with slobbers. Yeah, right? I'm like, but… think about it, it's a perfect storm.

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Kris Hiney: an old horse, excessively hot for the time of year and the location, and I did… I did not…

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Kris Hiney: I failed to recognize the criticalness of the slobbers, and I should have immediately taken the hay away from her, and I think we could have avoided the whole expensive

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Kris Hiney: you know, mistake that I made. Oh, well, there's a life lesson. There is. But, so…

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Kris Hiney: what we did for management is I did a little bit of digging and found that

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Kris Hiney: you know, the hay will decrease over time. So for 2 weeks, we had another source of hay, that was from a previous year. The same field, actually, but just a previous year. And then after 2 weeks, we didn't see any more issues. She was back to her normal self. She looked way better. We started rotating that hay back in, because that was the bulk of my hay for winter. Oh, that's scary, huh? It's a little scary. But we had no issues until last week.

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Kris Hiney: Oh, no! Yes? Last week, I think it was probably a week ago exactly, we went out to do tours, at 7am, and she was fine. My farrier was coming later that day, so I was back out at 11, and she was slobbering.

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Kris Hiney: But we knew we just took the hay away, and by 9 p.m. that night, she was done slobbering. And as we… because my farrier was there for most of the day, we do a lot of chit-chatting with my farrier. It's not a… we… we just enjoy… it was a nice Minnesota, you know, winter day.

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Kris Hiney: We washed her very carefully, and she was able to drink.

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Kris Hiney: And she was able to eat hay, but her hay net was drenched. The, you know, the cement in her little area was drenched.

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Kris Hiney: But it was a 12-hour ordeal because we removed the hay. So we have her off that hay again.

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Kris Hiney: We took that bale that was more clover-y than the rest, fed it to the cattle. We have cattle, so we have that option.

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Kris Hiney: The other 4 horses still have not shown any signs, and they're eating the exact same hay, but in round bale form.

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Kris Hiney: And, next week we'll start just incorporating a flake back of that hay into her diet, and just really watch for

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Kris Hiney: just try to avoid the bales that have excessive amounts of clover. And this bale, when we looked at it, it was probably 50% clover. Okay. So it was just the spot on the field it came from.

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Kris Hiney: So have you considered buying other hay for this particular horse? As an extension specialist, I might recommend some other strategies. So here's the problem. I have one little horse that gets this, and I have 200 bales of this hay, and it is beautiful hay, other than this issue, and…

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Kris Hiney: I think the take-home message is, probably like a lot of people, I really don't want to get rid of and go through the work of getting rid of all this hay, and I have enough hay from previous years that I could probably get away for the next 2 months, but if I mix it in… I mean, that's one of the recommendations, is to remove the hay immediately.

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Kris Hiney: let them recover, and in theory, slobbers does not cause an issue if they don't become dehydrated. Daisy became severely dehydrated because, I think, of the time of year, the hair coat, and my failure to act immediately.

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Kris Hiney: So, lesson learned. I think I can manage it.

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Kris Hiney: And try to let the hay become a little older, but most importantly, look… I mean, I look at the hay every day when I feed it, and if it is a bale that has a tremendous amount of clover, there's only about 10 or 15% of clover in the hay, so this should not be an issue. Right. Should not be. It should not, is the key word.

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Kris Hiney: But I think if… if I just watch the bales… I mean, I feed her twice a day.

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Kris Hiney: we walk through her pen to get to everything else. She's such an easy horse, we can… it's not an issue to do that.

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Kris Hiney: But we do have to really just be vigilant now that we know that this… that is in the hay. Okay, and you're sure you don't want to just feed it to those cows? It's probably too good of hay to feed it to the cows. I thought you had fancy cows now, right? I do have some fancy cows, but they don't need fancy hay. But you know, it does bring up an important thing with management, with that field,

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Kris Hiney: We probably, you know, being an agronomist.

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Kris Hiney: That field is probably getting to the point where it's getting too much clover in it, just from a drying perspective, and…

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Kris Hiney: I have easy-keeping horses, they don't need the additional energy. So, a lot of times what people will do is do a low-end rate of, like, a common herbicide like 2,4-D. It doesn't kill the clover, because I don't want to have big holes in my field, but it kind of dings about half of it back, and it buys you a couple years, because we all know clover takes over.

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Kris Hiney: So it just… it just thins it out enough to help with drying, and hopefully help it so that there's better airflow, and we don't have this mold happening.

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Kris Hiney: I would do the same thing if it was in my pasture. I would spray my pasture, try to hit the clover back a little bit.

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Kris Hiney: buy myself some time before I have to do it again. But a lot of people, if you want to get clover out of your field, you kind of have to spray it on a 3-5 year basis, just to keep it… keep pushing it back. But otherwise, like, you know, maybe we can go down this road, but otherwise, having clover in the pasture

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Kris Hiney: Can be a good thing, right? Because you might want that extra protein and energy. Well, yeah, and from an environmental services perspective, it provides some nitrogen to the grass, it provides some… some biodiversity to increase your yield, and you're right, it does increase… legumes do tend to increase the energy.

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Kris Hiney: If you have horses that are harder keepers, or performance horses that are grazing.

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Kris Hiney: But yes, in this particular case, for whatever reason, we have a problem for the first time in 20 years that we've been feeding hay from this field. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: And another maybe agronomy question. So, if a horse owner is getting hay, right, so this is your field, and you know it really well, but this isn't a standard

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Kris Hiney: test. Is this even on the radar of, like.

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Kris Hiney: testing for mycotoxins? Is that on the list? So, you know, that is a really great question. I do not know if you can test for slaframine and hay.

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Kris Hiney: And I don't… this isn't something that a hay producer can see, right? The black blotch disease looks like somebody took a fine point Sharpie marker on the back of a leaf and put dots on it. Well, a lot of things look like that. So, this is something that you kind of learn the hard way.

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Kris Hiney: And then once you have hay, you have to manage it by, you know, just being on top of it, removing the hay immediately, trying to mix it in and dilute.

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Kris Hiney: the cell for me, or find those bales that are… tend to be heavy clover, and pitching those specific bales, but maybe not the whole lot. Okay. Yeah, so that is my approach. Pitch certain bales, not all of the bales, because I sort of also don't have that luxury. Yeah. So…

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Kris Hiney: Okay. Because then you need to go find new hay. I need to go find new hay, and I like the hay that I have, minus…

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Kris Hiney: This little issue. One rather large issue. But for one horse! But just only one horse has an issue. Good point, yes. Okay, so we don't want to… so this is always the bouncing act, right? So this is, like, let's be aware, but not panic.

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Kris Hiney: Aware, not panic, and I think the take-home messages for horse owners

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Kris Hiney: We are very used to seeing it in pasture. Very used to it, yeah. But it is definitely an issue in hay as well, because we know that slaframine can remain active for up to 10 months. Okay. And that's pretty much the life of most of store hay.

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Kris Hiney: And I think it is worth repeating, if you see… the minute you see your horse slobber, change something. Change the pasture, change the hay, change whatever you need to change so it doesn't escalate into the situation that I had.

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Kris Hiney: Where the horse got severely dehydrated and almost did make it. Yeah. So part of that, like.

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Kris Hiney: had you, you know, hindsight, 20-20, but had you done, like, a physical exam on her earlier, like, do you think you would have caught, like, oh, we're getting a little slow, CRT, or a little skin tenty here, like… That is the weird thing. So, of course, this happens after work, and…

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Kris Hiney: I knew she was slobbering, but she was also down and rolling, so I was more… It was, like, all bad. It was all bad. But I called my veterinarian, he was about an hour away, so I walked her, and by the time my vet got… and I also cooled her down, so I was hosing her, walking, walking, let her rest, hose, walk, walk.

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Kris Hiney: I kind of did that protocol, which is like a 15-minute little thing that I would do. And she was slobbering the whole time, but she actually got

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Kris Hiney: She actually looked good.

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Kris Hiney: And when my vet came, he was like, Krishona, this horse, I think you fixed it.

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Kris Hiney: And he did his physical exam, and he's like, you know, I… she seems fine. He literally went to get in his truck, and I went back off to shut the lights off, and she was down again, so I ran out to him, and I'm like.

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Kris Hiney: And he was like, what the heck? And at that point, he's like, okay.

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Kris Hiney: Obviously, there's something going on, because our physical examination is not matching, and I was…

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Kris Hiney: I'm very lucky that, unlike a lot of horse owners, the hospital, that clinic was 5 minutes away. But when I… he called ahead, I said, Gerald, I want you to call, talk to the other veterinarian, refer me there to the clinic. She's gonna probably have to spend the night, and tell them what you have done. And,

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Kris Hiney: When we got there, they immediately drew blood when we walked in the door, and it was, like, purple. Wow, so… And did not show up on a physical exam. Did not show up on a physical exam. Huh. So, he either said she's just very stoic.

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Kris Hiney: Or, I mean, she's a little mare, she's, you know, 14 hands, kind of a husky mare, so I don't know if she's just…

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Kris Hiney: Stoic, but she did not present.

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Kris Hiney: dehydrated. Really? But when you pulled her blood, and then when we got the blood results, there was no question that she was severely dehydrated. Interesting.

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Kris Hiney: Interesting. So now we all are a little bit more suspicious, but even both of those veterinarians kept saying, and they're both excellent veterinarians, we've just never seen this. We've just never seen it this bad. You know, we've just…

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Kris Hiney: It was sort of an odd situation, but again, when it happened last week.

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Kris Hiney: It was winter, it was 20-some degrees.

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Kris Hiney: We removed the hay immediately, and within 12 hours with zero interventions. The first thing I called, I'm like, I call my vet, like, you have to get here? We're gonna get foods in this mayor right now, and he's like, Krishona, why don't you just wait?

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Kris Hiney: He goes, there's really nothing I can do, like…

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Kris Hiney: Right. There's, you know, I don't… at this point, let's just…

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Kris Hiney: let it… let's just watch her. A little PTSD there, though. A little. And she recovered, as we tell people horses will. So obviously, the first time in October, it was my fault for not removing the feed source, which we tell people, quickly enough.

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Kris Hiney: And it was obvious, like I said, I thought my automatic water was leaking. There was so much fluid around her pen. Wow. Yeah. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: So we call this a teachable moment, right? Oh, yes, and it's bad news about ourselves! I know, right? I hate it when it's like, oh man, I lecture about this! I know. But, you know, if nothing else, yes, this might be an anomaly, maybe it's a one-off.

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Kris Hiney: But we all know that sometimes with horses, the worst case scenario can come true. So again, the takeaway is be vigilant.

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Kris Hiney: And even in my gut, I was like, God, this is really bad. But I'm like, nope, it slobbers, it will recover. And I remember I was kind of sitting at the box stall thinking.

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Kris Hiney: Should I do something? And obviously, I should have trusted my gut. Right. And done something, and none of this would have happened. Yeah.

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Kris Hiney: Yeah. Okay.

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Kris Hiney: Very good. Well, that's the story of Slobbers from Krishona!

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Kris Hiney: Well, I love it! I think we covered some great stuff, gave, hopefully, some practical advice, life lessons for fellow horse owners, and yes, we can't all feel bad, like, we make mistakes too, so that's… the learning never, never quits, and horses never quit surprising us.

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Kris Hiney: And treat them like an individual, because obviously this horse, for whatever reason, at 25 years old, has decided this is the year we are going to become sensitive, very much so, to slobbers. Okay, well…

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Kris Hiney: Good luck with your, hay selection going forward, so… I was gonna say, we always try to say we'll link to more information, but I don't know that there's a whole lot to link to in this case, but, like…

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Kris Hiney: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of universities have a little paragraph on slobbers. Yeah, it's a paragraph, yeah. Because it's really… it's not really newsworthy. Right. But, I think,

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Kris Hiney: I do think there's been more reports of it in hay, which has caught people off guard. So it is a good reminder that slobbers can happen when horses are completely off pasture and non-hay. Yeah, no, that's a good reminder, and I'll have it on my radar from now on. So, without a doubt. Well, really appreciate your time being back on the podcast. Missed ya,  haven't heard from you for a while.

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Kris Hiney: But this has been another episode of our Tech Box Talk, Course Stories with a Purpose.