Frozen Horses

We had our first big cold snap of the year yesterday. Some horses have a hard time coping with the sudden change in temperatures so I issued stable blankets to everyone and asked them to put them on last night. Unfortunately, I was not quick enough with one of the horses. As I was sitting in my office in the early afternoon trying to stay out of the wind, I heard a loud whinnie from out back. This is Duke's way of telling me he's hungry. I went out to get him a flake of hay (and to get him to shut up) and noticed that every horse on the row of pens had eaten all of their hay. This is not uncommon when the weather turns cold because the horses rely on the food to warm themselves up. So I walked around and gave each horse an extra flake of hay. However, when I got to Kidd's pen I noticed that he had not eaten all his hay from the morning and that he was laying down. It is not normal for Kidd to not be hungry so I went an got a halter and got him to stand up. It seemed to me that he had a case of the ADRs (Ain't Doin' Right) so I commenced to walk him around. After a short while it was clear to me that he had colic so I put him back into his pen and called the vet. His vitals were normal accept his temperature was down to 94 degrees and he had no gut sounds. The vet also took his blood and ran an analysis of it. His blood counts came back indicating anemia which was disconcerting. The vet gave him a pain killer and asked me to take him home with me so I could observe him over night and them bring him into the clinic the next morning. By the time I got him home his temperature was back to normal and so was his appetite. We checked his temperature a couple more times but he seemed to be back to normal. When I took him in to the clinic the next morning, the vet told me the blood analysis machine had given a false reading and that his blood counts were normal. With a big sigh of relief, I took Kidd back to the stables and fed him. Apparently, he just got a chill. It doesn't happen very often that a horse gets colic due to a temperature change but it is the reason I put blankets on them at the first cold snap of the season.