Call it what you want

Healing with Honey

I went to feed my horse on the way home from work one day. He was standing in the middle of the paddock, not waiting for me at the gate or even wanting to more.

This in its self was very unusual. So I walked out to the paddock and there was dried blood on his hind leg.

I was a vet nurse, but because it was my animal that was injured I was in the panicked horse owner mode.

So I was the one calling my vet, and messaging my other vet and vet nurse mates to ask for advice.

Migs had staked his rump on a star picket. One of those things that our horses do and sadly I have more than one story about horses and star pickets.

It was a very large gaping wound, the bleeding had stopped itself and there was nothing that could be done other than giving pain relief, which I did as I had some on hand.

I popped him in a stable that the agistment property had and left him for the night.

I checked in on him in the morning on my way to work as did the owner of the property but there was nothing more at this stage we could do.

So I went to work spoke with my vets, contacted other vets that I had worked with during my time as an equine nurse at the UQ and we all came to the same solution.

Flush it, keep it clean and monitor it.

So that afternoon with antibiotics in hand and sterile flush from work, I started my treatment plan with Migs.

I tried giving the needle of penicillin, done it a million times on horses, but for me & Migs it was not worth the hassle.

Migs had been gifted to me from the university of Queensland from one of the Vets, Dr Claire Underwood VetMB, MA, PhD. She had been conduction researching on a mass that was found on his heart during a routine ultrasound as a part of his pre race check. The owner then had made the decision that he might not be a suitable racehorse and donated the unnamed gelding to the University of Queensland Equine Clinic for research.

After Claire had finished her initial studies she put him out to pasture for about a year I think. So when he came back into start his next round of research is when I met him.  I had spent my fair share of time nursing and bonding with this horse. He was always a character, getting himself cast in the stables was his night time party trick when I was on shift. I knew him very well and had helped nurse him though - A full hoof wall resection because of a keratoma in his hoof, constant tummy upsets due to being fed super green lucerne as Clair loved to come and give him extra treats because she loved him and we were left with the clean up from the other end, ongoing heart monitoring session and the list goes on. Because he was a research horse, he was the go to horse for vet students to lean on so. 

So after much fascinating research, Migs heart mass had seemed to have magically disappeared and there were no clinical reasons for him not to return to a life as a race horse. But as luck would have it Clair gifted Migs to me.

So that is why I treated Migs the way I did.

I only ever gave him one antibiotic needle...

I only even used the sterile flush until it was gone.

Then I used honey straight from the bee hive from my parents place.

I would lather the outside of the wound with Vaseline, syringe honey into the wound - I could fit my hand into the wound up to my knuckles when it first happened, and put him back out in the paddock.

Migs had spent so long being stable when he was at the Uni, he was so sour after being in the stable just one night.

He was never once lame, only ever stiff that one afternoon taking him out of the stables the following day.

I stopped pain relief after a few days as I watched him canter around that paddock happily. I needed him to know that his body needed time to go slow and rest, not hoon around the paddock, which led to this situation in the first place. The pain relief was working too well.

The wound healed absolutely amazingly.

There were no complication or infections or any vet intervention needed. At the start my vets and I thought they may have had to come out for a visit to cut off bits that weren't healing but the body just did the magic and healed itself with basic care and monitoring.

So after sharing my updates on the wound on facebook back then, I had a vet I had worked with contact me saying there was a veterinary company that manufactured and sold manuka honey products for wound care and they wanted to get in contact with me to use their product. I declined because the honey that my dad had stollen from the bush bee hives on his farm was the purest form AND I didn't have to pay a cent for it.

So I kept doing what I was doing. Now I'm in the position that I can sit back and reflect on the knowledge I have gained and slowly chip away at writing about it so that I can help others save a few pennies and use what they have access to.