Re: Re: Thin Horse

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

> Hi,
>
> Thanks to everyone with their suggestions. Susan, I
> sent 2 notes to you yesterday but it looks like Yahoo
> choked on them. Sorry if this is the 3rd note from me.

Sorry, I just may not have seen it.  I've been camped out down in the ICU
unit at the vet hospital with my poor old dog since Wednesday and am running
a tad short on sleep.  (But my good boy Solo is doing better, so I'm a happy
camper.)  :-))))))



> The oat hay was a disaster. The horse was a mess and I
>  switched him back to alfalfa after writing this
> group. I also tried plain beet pulp with grain. It
> seems that the Complete Advantage is better as the
> main advantage of the plain beet pulp is to put other
> stuff in  - like oil.

Well, sorta but not quite.  There is something to be said for straight beet
pulp even without anything else added just because it's a forage and you can
feed alot of it, while a huge amount of Complete Advantage may be too much
for some horses.  I know CA was formulated to be a complete feed, but I'm
not real comfortable with it as the entirety of the ration.  But, that's
another issue, since you're not feeding it that way (see, I'm still goofy
and wandering off onto tangents).


This horse cannot do oil - I
> think that is why the equine senior was not all that
> great for him. BTW - I talked with my vet and he told
> me that chronic runs are very hard to treat. If it is
> ulcers (confirm with a scope) then it is pricey for
> the meds.

Well, that's true, sucralfate and such don't come cheap.  However, if that
*were* the problem, and were resolved by meds, you'd probably make up the
cost just in reduced feed bills fairly quickly.


> What worked best for this horse was alfalfa, complete
> advantage, probiotics and grass pasture. Maybe he does
> better with a little bit of food in his belly all the
> time? Not sure.

EVERY horse does better nibbling his way through the day (and night) then by
periodic meals.  When you're feeding him the above diet, do the runs
resolve?  Does he put on weight or just barely maintain?  And when you've
tried switching to oat hay, and/or added oil, did you do it gradually or
make a fairly large change?



Likes colder weather better? I would
> do this pasture arrangement forever but I only have
> access to the grass pasture for a few winter months a
> year. Right now he is on 1 acre dry paddock with a
> pal. When he lived alone (over the fence from pals) he
> did worse

Why did he do worse?  Was he upset and running off the weight pacing up and
down?  If so, that might make me tend to think of ulcers again.


>
> I can test again for the sand if you think I should -
> sounds easy enough to do. If it is sand or might be
> sand, then what?

It won't hurt to try again with the bucket method, just because you have a
larger sample size, and the passage of sand from the colon fluctuates, so
you can get a false negative (that is, no sand in the glove even though
there's sand in the colon).  If you do get some sand, then you *can* feed
some therapeutic doses of psyllium (therapeutic meaning several cups for
about a month)---but, since you mentioned you're not rolling in money, you
can probably do just as well not feeding psyllium.  There was a recent
article in the Journal of Veterinary Surgery that indicated psyllium is only
really beneficial in horses that have abnormal hindgut motility, ie after
abdominal surgery.  For horses that havent just had colic surgery, you'll do
just as well (and cheaper) by removing the source of sand
ingestion---feeding off the ground or in feeders the horse cant yank the hay
out of; feeding plenty of forage to move the sand out of the gut and
providing plenty of consistent exercise.  Exercise does more to getthe
hindgut motility moving than anything else, so now you have one more reason
to go ride on a regular basis. :-)

Once you've taken care of that, then beet pulp would be a good way to go.
There's some recent research that's indicating that the butyrate produced
from ther fermentation of soluble fibers (such as that in beet pulp) is the
preferred substrate for the cells that line the intestines---so in short,
beetpulp will help a horse with an irritated gut repair faster so the gut
can go back to what it's supposed to be doing.

You might also try one of the non-legume hays other than oat hay.  See if
you can find some grass hay in your area and introduce it slowly to give the
hindgut time to adjust.  If he still gets the runs on anything other than
alfalfa, well, then you'll probably have to feed him alfalfa.  Though,
especially if your alfalfa is coming from the Southwest, really try hard to
reduce it to less than 50% of the hay ration.  A study out of UC Davis a few
years back observed that some 95% of the horses admitted for enterolith
surgery were on rations that contained more than 50% alfalfa.

Keep up with the probiotics---my personal preference is for Yea-Sacc, as
it's the only one I've seen that actually had some research data behind it
indicated it helped maintain body weight.  All the others have just jumped
onto the same coat tails, even though they're not the same product.

And, you might consider putting the horse onto one of the daily wormers, ie
Strongid C.  For some unknown reason, it seems to increase the digestive
efficiency by a substantial amount, and helps quite a few horses get their
weight back.  I've used it myself in a couple of hard keepers to good
effect.  There are some people that have reported problems when used in
endurance horses, but to my knowledge, the hard numbers to back it up arent
there, so until they are, I'm going to use it.  There are some generic
versions of Strongid C that are most economical than the name brand.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm so wiped out I can't remember anything.  Let
me know the answers to the questions above and maybe I can think up other
stuff.

Good luck.

Susan G