Can someone help me with info on horse tranquilizers?

Question

I am an actor researching a role as a veterinarian.

Can someone please tell me how horse tranquilizers are administered?
Shot or pill?

If as a pill, how many mgs? What size is the pill? What color?
How big is it? (Is there any common, everyday food or candy that could look like it?)

How is it packaged? In a bottle (brown?) with other pills? Or is it blister sealed like common cold medicines?

Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Generally when a horse is tranquilized, the tranquilizer is given by an intravenous injection, usually right into the jugular vein of the neck. The most typical equine tranquilizers used are Rompun or Acepromazine ("Ace"), which can be administered intravaneously, intramuscularly, or subcutaneously.

I've owned horses for close on 30 years and have never known a horse to be given a tranquilizer or sedative orally. Generally, when you have a reason for tranquilizing a horse, you want the drug to work FAST, and orally-administered drugs are just going to work very fast.

The tranquilizer comes in the typical sealed vial that injectable medications come in, and is typically clear in color.

When it's being administered by a vet, the vet usually injects it directly into the jugular vein. Someone restrains the horse while the vet raises the jugular vein in the deep throat groove horses have on their neck. You squeeze hard and can feel the vein, which is about the diameter of a pencil, come up. You insert the needle into the vein, withdrawing a little blood to make sure you're in the vein, and then shoot the tranquilizer in. Then you wait for it to take effect, as evidenced by the horse's head drooping, getting relaxed, etc.

This website has some information that may help you:

http://compepid.tuskegee.edu/syllabi/clinical/large/clinical/chapter3.html

One of the craziest things I ever saw happen with a horse being tranquilized was when a vet student at Texas A&M accidentally shot the tranquilizer into the carotid artery rather than the jugular vein on a yearling colt they were going to geld. Within seconds of administering the shot, the horse dropped to his knees and went down with convulsions!!!! You ain't seen nothin' until you've seen a nearly 1,000-pound horse on the ground thrashing in convulsions. Man, we thought we'd lost the poor guy.

Fortunately he recovered, but that was really scary.

You might administer a tranquilizer intramuscularly or subcutaneously if you didn't need it to act fast, but in most cases you're going to give it IV because you want it to act fast so you can do what you need to do to the horse quickly.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

why don't you phone a vet? Look in your yellow pages and talk to a vet who also does large animals or look up horse clinics. Ask them if you could come and watch, much better than any description and it will give you a much better appreciation of the difficulties involved.

I am sure what you do depends on circumstances and on the time available. Shots work much faster, so I think that's what generally used. At least when the vet tranquillized a friend's horse he stuck a syringe in its neck. As the horse wasn't tranquillized at that point, it didn't really appreciate that...

Answer 3

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Can someone help me with info on horse tranquilizers?
I am an actor researching a role as a veterinarian.

Can someone please tell me how horse tranquilizers are administered?
Shot or pill?

If as a pill, how many mgs? What size is the pill? What color?
How big is it? (Is there any common, everyday food or candy that could look like...