17/08/2026
Jinx is home.
She's still in foal and she came off the float and put her head straight down in the grass like the last week hadn't happened. Late last week I wasn't sure I'd be writing that sentence.
For those following along, she had a uterine torsion corrected by standing flank laparotomy at 258 days in foal. The surgery went well. But in typical horse style, she had to find some other way to try to die. She stopped eating (yup, a Fjord, not eating) and developed hyperlipaemia. She was in what we call a negative energy balance, taking in less energy than her body needed to function.
When a horse stops eating, the body does the sensible thing and starts burning body fat. Stored fat gets broken down into fatty acids and sent to the liver, which repackages them into triglycerides and posts them back out into the bloodstream for the muscles to use. It's a good system and most horses run it without any trouble. The catch is the unloading end. Triglycerides can only leave the blood as fast as the tissues can take them up, and that step needs insulin to work properly.
A mare in late pregnancy is already drawing heavily on that system, because a foal in the last third of gestation is expensive to grow. This is why we increase their feed intake in the last trimester.
Being a Fjord (or a pony, or a mini, or a donkey, all of them naturally good doers), she's less insulin sensitive to start with, and the deliveries pile up faster than they can be unloaded. The triglycerides bank up in the blood, the liver keeps sending more because it's still being flooded with fatty acids, and it starts storing the overflow in its own cells. Blood samples at that point have serum that is visibly milky (not clearish). Mildly raised triglycerides are normal in any sick horse and don't mean much on their own. Hyperlipaemia is the point where the numbers have gone well past normal and the horse now has a second disease on top of whatever made them sick in the first place.
The cruel bit is the loop it creates. Jinx felt rotten, so she didn't eat, this means she mobilised more fat. More fat means a sicker liver, which made her feel worse, so she ate even less. It builds on itself, and reported mortality has historically been very high in ponies and donkeys. Late gestation and early lactation are two classic windows where it can show up, and a stressful event like hospitalisation or surgery is a common trigger. Jinx is a classic overachiever and ticked all the boxes...
What made it hard to spot is that she just looked flat post surgery. Dull, off her feed, quiet in the box, very weird because fjords eat when they're dead. A mild impaction post surgery was a thought, as was pain. But even a methadone trial changed nothing, which suggested that pain wasn't what was keeping her off her food. So more blood tests were done, and I'm glad we did that, rather than waiting to see how she went. When a vet suggests a blood test and you're on the fence - think about Jinx. The blood test gave us the answers we needed to not only explain her inappetence, but act fast to reverse what could have been fatal.
Treatment is calories, however you can get them in, plus supporting the liver and sorting out whatever stopped her eating to start with. Sounds like an easy task, right? Get a Fjord to eat more. But she was so not herself that it was a challenge, she didn't even want to eat the high energy food the vets offered (and any Fjord would have LOVED that candy). Between Sarah Fulton McIsaac and myself we got her own food up to her, and the nursing staff took her outside for picks of grass regularly. Eventually she started eating more and feeling better.
She isn't out of the woods. We could still lose the foal, and she'll be watched closely for months yet. I'll be dusting off my vet nursing skills for sure. But she's home, she's eating, and this afternoon she was snoozing in the sun with the sort of contentment only a Fjord can manage.
Thank you to the team at Ballarat Equine Veterinary Hospital, who have been extraordinary, and to everyone who's asked after her. Jinx certainly has a fan club.
