A Strathmore-area family is mourning the death of four horses on their property and is now warning others to know what trees are growing on their property.
The horses were like family to the Judsons. One of them was a therapy animal for their daughter who had brain surgery.
“It’s a pretty big deal for us,” Nichola Hamilton-Judson said on Thursday. “So losing them is really heart-wrenching, especially to watch them suffer through the toxins that were going through their bodies.
“One of the horses helped my daughter with mood swings, so rather than paying for counsellors, we could come out and talk to the horses.”
It was during the first week of December when their horses started to appear weak. A local veterinarian came to check on them and the first diagnosis was colic.
“One of the horses got up and she staggered out into the other part of the field and she lay down,” Hamilton-Judson said. “And she slams her head on the ground just trying to get up for us. It was just heart-wrenching to watch.
“I don’t want anyone to have to feel the pain that we went through.”
But when more of the animals became severely ill and began dying, an expert from the University of Calgary was consulted.
“Some were really weak and some were actually lying down,” said Dr. Ashley Whitehead, who teaches about large animal internal medicine at the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. “And their urine was quite a dark colour when they could urinate, which some of them couldn’t. There were a whole bunch of signs that just weren’t fitting, so we went through all of the potential diseases that could cause it and the one that came foremost to my mind was a condition that we call, in North America, seasonal pasture myopathy (SPM).”
SPM is a sickness that can be caused by eating the seeds of the Manitoba Maple tree. Even with early diagnosis, the fatality rate for this disease is between 75 per cent and 95 per cent.
Characteristic signs of SPM include stiffness, difficulty walking or standing and dark urine. It’s a little known ailment but likely more common than reported because it can be mistaken for colic. In fact, the only other reported case in Alberta was in Edmonton seven years ago, and those results were sent to the University of Minnesota for research into the relatively new subject.
“That contributed to our global understanding of this disease, because they were able to identify the specific toxin related to the condition,” Whitehead said.
According to Whitehead, each horse reacts differently to ingesting seeds.
“Sometimes we will only have one horse and that’s it. And we don’t really think about it as the initial cause versus when we have multiple horses on a farm that are all affected – then we start to really look for something more like a toxin.
“So there are quite a few cases that we are probably not noticing or not checking out because it’s a single or solitary case,” Whitehead said.
Veterinarians are thankful for the Judson family for coming forward with their tragic story which will help research into the subject.
“As we hear more about it… one of the important things is to say this is here in Alberta. And let’s look at what our pastures contain,” Whitehead said.
She recommends that all horseowners go and walk the pasture where their horses are kept to see what is growing there.
“We need to know if there are any trees that are potentially toxic to horses. It’s not just box elders or the Manitoba Maple, but other maple trees can have some toxic effects. The Oak tree can have some effects and Black Walnut.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help the Judsons pay their vet fees.
“If you’re not sure what kind of trees you have on your property you would be shocked to find out that as those little seedlings drop and then they start to bloom because we have another chinook, your ground is toxic. And you have no idea how quickly you could just lose your horses and there’s no help,” Hamilton-Judson said.
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