My horse lost 20 centimeters of his tongue - how can we help him?

Hi,
Our horse lost 20 cm of his tongue yesterday. He is at the clinic now, getting intravenous dripto stay alive. He seems to feel good, he's happy and acts as usual, but he can't drink or eat. We should appreciate all kinds of share of experiences and advices if there is anyway for him to learn to eat/drink again. Is there anything we can do to make it easier for him? He is a big horse who use to eat a lot each day - so this is a very urgent problem.

Thank you!

Wow! I can't imangine how that could even happen??? Does he have any interest in eating at all?? Horses tend to pick stuff up with there lips as apposed to there tongues I believe. I'm very curious to here updates.

He is hungry and try to eat all the time. So happily he has a geat intrest in eating! For the moment his tongue is covered in wounds, so that might be a reason (that it hurts) that he can't eat... As i said, he try to pick it up with his lips, but he doesn't get any further, ut falls out all the time..

what happened?

I hope Fehrgroundranch reads this, a colt of hers was bitten in the side of the face and lip. It did figure out how to eat and drink with a hole in his lip. Maybe your will learn too.

here is one of the threads One Last Update on Dillon's Lip!

If you go to google and type in " horse lost tongue"
you get a few results.

I read one where a horse lost like half of its tongue and it managed to eat. It just tosses its head up to get the grain to his molars.

I'm sure, once his wounds heal, he'll figure out a way to eat and drink.

thanks for all answers! do anyone know a good "ask the vet"-site? or veterinary forum, where I can post the same question?

A horse at a barn I taught at had its tongue cut. In his case they stitched it together ( was not cut completely off) but the problem was the bits of grain getting into the stitches. Somewhat the same as yours and this is what I told them and the horse thrived and didn't lose any weight.

What I suggested is they get some extruded feed and put it in warm water (will not expand well in cold water). The feed will expand into something like a mush ( no bits of grain will be there to get in the way of healing) and is easily eaten and digestable. This can be done with pelleted food but I find the processed extruded seems to go into a better mush than other complete feeds.

o wow.. never seen anything like that before. But maybe try wetting the food, like soak the pellet feed? we do that for a horse who doesn't like chewing and tends to choke. Maybe it will be easier for him to grab?

Wow! this is very tounge in cheek!! Im sorry I couldnt help myself!! As a couple of other people asked 'how the heck did THAT happen?"