Comprehensive veterinary care for companion animals , equine and livestock.
Equine
CLARK FORK VETERINARY CLINIC ANNUAL EQUINE RECOMMENDATIONS
We recommend an annual wellness exam for your horse companion to make sure they are healthy and have no underlying issues we need to resolve. Systems we assess in an exam include: eyes, respiratory, cardiac, skin, mouth, hooves and gastrointestinal.
Dentistry is extremely important for our horse’s overall health, as their teeth affect everything else. Signs your horse may need a dental include: dropping feed, being underweight, tossing their head, or noting a foul odor around their face. We need to take care of our horse’s teeth as they wear, so they stay healthier longer. Regular dental care allows the horse to get more nutrients out of their diet by making their feed more digestible. It also provides comfort by removing sharp points. Oftentimes, we can prevent some colic episodes if they are chewing their feed properly (impactions). We strongly recommend annual dental exams and dental floats as needed.
Vaccines are very safe and provide excellent protection from many diseases in our equine patients. We follow the American Association of Equine Practitioners guidelines. Core vaccines are defined as: protective vaccines for deadly diseases. Core vaccines include: rabies, tetanus, west nile virus, eastern and western equine encephalitis. Non-core vaccines are semi protective vaccines for less severe diseases and are given depending on the risk of the horse’s lifestyle. Non-core vaccines include: influenza, rhinotracheitis/herpes, potomac fever and strangles. We recommend core vaccines for EVERY horse and non core depending on your horse’s lifestyle.
We strongly recommend strategic deworming in Montana. This includes running a fecal flotation to see which parasites are present in each horse. If the parasite load is high, then we recommend deworming with the proper dewormer for the specific parasite present. Two weeks later, we analyze another fecal float in order to know if the parasites were actually killed. The old notion of deworming every 3 months and rotating dewormers is no longer advised as we have created resistant parasites that we are having a hard time killing.
May is Equine Health Month
We schedule our Annual Equine Vaccine and Wellness Days in our surrounding communities. We usually have a day in Avon/Elliston, Helmville, Deer Lodge and Anaconda. We perform physical exams, give spring vaccinations and deworm. We have had such interest in this we have made follow up Float Days as well.