Jabbo: Eye Inflammation and Cleft Palate

About “Jabbo”, my colt

Sport Type M: Maritta - Jerrry
F: James Bond - Julius Caesar

Jabbo was born 4 weeks prematurely with severe deficiencies: inflammation of the cornea of the right eye due to the Herpes virus, and cleft palate. In the vet’s opinion the animal had no chance of life.

He said: “ He’ll be able to suckle for 1 to 2 days, but what after that?”

Fortunately Jabbo’s mother had sufficient milk, therefore the loss of milk through the nostrils was not a problem.

Since he had been born in the evening, I spent the night in the foaling box to observe the little one. I noticed he was behaving like any other newborn foal and displayed a strong will to live: he rose time after time to suckle the milk vigorously, yet the milk continued to flow back out through the nostrils.

As my nursing experience had taught me how BIOPTRON Cold Light Therapy works, and I had 2 lamps of my own, I decided to use this treatment for Jabbo also.

It was obvious that treatment would take a lot of time. Therefore, the next day, in order to have mother and foal close to our house, we moved them into a small wooden stable in the orchard. I wanted to support Jabbo's will to live.

Full of anticipation I treated the eye, as well as right and left of the nasal bone, for five days, every 4-5 hours, for a duration of 4-6 minutes. Then I reduced the treatment to 4 times daily, 4-6 minutes at a time.

On the seventh day I believed I could see a dark stripe on the lower rim of the eye, however I did not want to get too excited, as it is commonly known that Herpes can be very hard to get rid of.

After another three days I was now convinced: Hurray! BIOPTRON helped!

12 days later the eye had lost its milky veil. There were only two white spots left. Apart from these, the eye was clear. The cornea did not separate from the eye, as we had feared.

We have found, when the Herpes virus resurfaces, as is generally the case, immediate treatments of 4-6 minutes are easily able to contain it.

Today Jabbo is 4 years old and we’ve had no complaints in the last 6 months.

Now the Cleft Palate:

For strengthening we fed Jabbo Aminolite mixed with water. We put it into a syringe and fed it into his mouth. Soon Jabbo started to nibble from his mother’s horse muesli. Then we gave him his own bowl - I wanted to see how much he ate. His appetite was normal, though accompanied by coughing, which did not seem to disturb him much. When the cough was over, he cheerfully kept feeding

Having been born in May (in Germany), he also loved the young grass.

His coughing continued to diminish. Today he is eating the freshly fallen snow. I was not able to completely close the cleft palate, but he seems to be able to live with it quite comfortably.

Jabbo has become a spirited stallion. Together with my other seven horses, he moves in the paddocks the entire day. When they are racing, he keeps up with them. He is agile and very fast and he tries to fight with my two roans.

Each time I look at them, I am so glad that I’ve used BIOPTRON. It was worth it.

Ursula M. Kirschner