Help Two Starving Horses Recover

Hollow Creek Farm Equine and Canine Rescue in South Carolina rescued and brought in two very severely neglected horses.  This post was June 24, 2022. Can you help us help them? We receive only donations for them, no grants, no funds for rescue, just donors. Please donate here: https://hollowcreekfarm.org/donate/

Shimmers and Olive Oyl

Shimmers is an 11-year-old mother, and her four-year-old daughter Olive Oyl. They were removed by animal control June 11 from a horrific 38-horse neglect case in another city. We found out Shimmers is pregnant as a stallion was running loose among the herd. Both were starving, neglected, wormy, very weak, and still physically unstable.

Farm Friends We Need Your Help

Farm Friends, we need your help! We don’t receive a cent to care for them. Their extremely poor health increases the need for food, medical, vet, and farrier.

Health Problems:

• Rain Rot from being wet in all weather for years no shelter
• Starvation requiring special Alfalfa hay @$25/bale every day
• Bad Feet with thrush from standing in wet manure and mud
• High nutrition grain pellets to slowly get them strength they so desperately need, but cannot eat quickly
• Special flooring to give their poor legs and bodies a break
• They can’t have any straw in the barn because they’ll eat it and get sick
  
• Shimmers is pregnant

Current And Upcoming Needs

As of 6/23/22, we have spent $745 on just their initial vet care and hay (less than 2 weeks). As mentioned, Hollow Creek Farm gets zero support. Here are their current and upcoming needs:

• Hay: Western Alfalfa 1 bale per day = $25/day
• Fly spray: Tri-Tec
• Rain Rot: Coat Defense
• Thrush Buster
• Fecal worm test and another deworming
• Feed: upcoming this week available at Tractor Supply Company:  consulting the vet for refeed program to meet their individual needs including pregnancy.
• Annual Vaccinations
• Farrier Care: including a tip to the farrier for dealing with Olive Oyl who will take extra time, patience, and handling to safely make it a positive experience for her.
• Dental exams and possible floating once healthy enough if tranquilizer is required.
• Pregnancy test for Olive Oyl
• 6 stall mats for the new run-in shed built for them in their private pasture for their poor achy, weak legs to give them some comfort and relief
• Fencing: 2 rolls (400 feet) of no-climb horse fence to finish up their private pasture
• Disinfectant: for grooming tools used on them — we’re almost out now
• Vetricyn: we’re almost out

Outdoors In All Weather With No Food

We’re working with the vet to help them recuperate physically. But it’s a long, slow road to health. They’ve been starved for years, left outdoors to fend for themselves with thin grass, dirt, rocks, bad dirty water, no food, no medical care, no nothing, out in the hot sun, cold weather, rain, snow, and outside weather year-round.

The vet gave us their test results and thankfully, Shimmers is Equine Infectious Anemia (EIA) negative. But the very bad news is that she is pregnant. Don’t know how far along yet.

We are consulting with the vet to decide the best plan of action for her. She is still very weak after having very little food for years, and on top of that, she was feeding her daughter for way too long. Olive nursed off of her for four years! We think it’s what kept this little scrawny foal-sized girl alive.

Working With Olive Oyl

We have been working with Olive who has no training at all or any handling before us. In the cooler mornings (it’s over 90 degrees and close to 100 degrees every day here) but we pick up her feet to get her prepared for trimming. She is responding well with the front legs but is a little touchy with the rear legs.

Poor Olive is in dire need of a trim, but we do not want to over-stress her in this heat, nor have the farrier injured by either horse. 

Shimmers Pregnant, Rain Rot, Thrush

Shimmers has rain rot and the treatment is coming along, the scabs are dried and sloughing off so we can move forward with a sunblock treatment. This happened because she was left out in the sun with no shelter for four years. Her skin wounds from horse bites are healing and she is mostly cooperating.

The horses were unattended and were left wild where they beat each other up quite a bit with bites and kicks.

We are able to put on fly-repellent applications and her alfalfa hay intake has been increased each day. They have three feedings per day at this point.

This week, they’ll be getting regular grain in pellet form slowly introduced as she is responding well to the refeeding program. We have to carefully give them food to prevent them from getting sick from the food that they’ve never been given.

Drama Queen aka Olive Oyl is thankfully also EIA negative. But her pregnancy test came back inconclusive so we will be retesting.

Olive Oyl Not Responding As Well To Food

She is responding to the refeeding program but not as well as Shimmers.  It is obvious by her stunted growth that her lack of nutrition has been ongoing for a very, very long time.  Nursing on Shimmers as a 4-year-old horse was probably the only thing that saved her life.   

She has not been handled much in her previous life and has some issues. She’s easily spooked and not used to us Hoomans. Even though we are slowly teaching her ground manners and getting her used to being touched, it will take time. She is in dire need of a trim.

Teaching Human Touch and Handling

We’re working with her to teach her to tolerate human touch so we can safely accomplish this without overstressing her. She is slowly improving. But if pushed too hard she could overreact and could harm herself. This is a very careful, slow process to gain her trust and get her used to being handled by us hoomans.

As of 6/23/22, we have spent $745.00 on just their initial vet care and hay (less than 2 weeks).  That amount includes a generous discount given by a vet clinic, use of products and items/medications we already had on hand that is now almost gone, and use of equipment already on hand-pulled for their quarantine paddock. They had no medical care, or annual vaccinations, for many years.

We did ask for help and five bags of Purina Feed were generously donated by Purina Mills.

Built A Special Private Pasture

We’ve been building a special place for them and Shimmers and Olive’s new private pasture with a cross-cut fence will be finished shortly. The fence posts are here and now we’re just waiting on the excavator to work on a creek bank before the fence can go up.  

The run-in shed just needs some interior wood installed and mats. We are not putting bedding down yet for them as they started eating it of course – poor things are just starving! But we have to control all their food intake so they don’t eat too much too fast and get very sick.

We Need Your Help

That’s why we’re putting in stall mats in the new run-in because they are a safer solution at this time. Now, they’re with us, but gosh Farm Friends, we need your help.