Emergency colic transport: getting to surgery in time
When a horse colics and needs a clinic, every hour counts. How emergency horse transport works, what to do in the first 30 minutes, and how we dispatch.
The 4-hour window
Colic survival is a race against strangulation and tissue death. Once a twist is suspected, the best outcomes come from horses that reach a surgical clinic within 4 hours of the first symptom. Beyond 8 hours, surgical survival drops below 50%.
That clock is what professional emergency transport is built around. Every minute of loading delay, every mis-planned border, every wrong clinic choice is real risk.
First 30 minutes at the yard
Call the treating vet and the nearest surgical clinic in parallel. Don't wait for the vet to arrive — the clinic can triage by phone and tell you whether transport starts now or after a vet's call. Most major clinics (Brno, Liphook, Utrecht, Essex) have 24/7 emergency lines.
Call the haulier at the same time. A horsebox in our dispatch system 3 hours away starts rolling while you're still on the phone to the vet. If the horse stabilises, we turn around and bill zero kilometres.
What the driver does en route
The horse travels with hay removed and water offered at every stop. Walking the horse every 90 minutes if it can stand reduces the risk of torsion. The driver relays symptoms by phone to the clinic — pain score, heart rate, gum colour, any attempts to roll.
Modern trucks have a partition that folds flat so the horse can lie down safely if it must. Vet-prescribed pain relief (flunixin) can be administered by the driver under phone supervision from the treating vet — a small amount buys the minutes that matter.
Arrival and handover
Clinics expect a verbal handover: horse identity, owner contact, insurance details, timeline of symptoms, any medication already given, eating/drinking history, current pain score. The driver has all of this ready and hands it on in 90 seconds, straight to the surgery team.
Payment and paperwork happen after. A horse in the crush waiting for pre-surgical paperwork to be completed is a horse that doesn't make it. Professional clinics and hauliers understand this.
How HORSETRANS handles emergencies
Our dispatch runs 24/7. An emergency call at 02:00 gets a horsebox moving within 15 minutes anywhere in Central Europe, 45 minutes within Germany/Austria, 90 minutes in peripheral regions. Clinics on our hotline list are pre-authorised — Brno, Kostelec, Prague Medi-vet, Tulln (AT), Graz, Liphook (UK).
Price is discussed after. If the horse doesn't survive, we bill only the kilometres driven — not the booked route. Humane commercial terms are part of what emergency transport means.