Ridecamp: Re: [RC] Wine Country/Gastroguard

On Friday, we didn't even know that ANY endurance horses 
had ulcers.  Today we know a lot more.  We don't know 
the genetics of the horses being sampled.  And these are 
endurance horses - not halter horses, so just because my 
horse, bred for halter, had them, does not mean that 
horses bred for halter are predisposed to gastric 
ulcers.  I bet there are horses of so called "old time" 
bloodlines in the sampling that also show positive for 
ulcers.  In fact, I bet there are very few horses that 
were bred for halter at this particular ride, on surface 
inspection, and they are still having a high ulcer rate.

I still think whatever discussion we have on genetics 
and gastric ulcers is totally premature.  I hardly think 
that it's related either.

Oh - about the gastric emptying/not feeding issue - 
there were only a couple of horses that they were not 
able to get any results from the scoping from having 
food in their stomaches.  I think that everyone pretty 
much rode the ride they normally rode and fed like they 
normally do at a ride except they got scoped before they 
were taken back to the trailer to be fed.  I wasn't 
planning to withhold any feed from Beau and in fact he 
was nibbling here and there after the ride.  I just 
stopped him from nibbling a half and hour before the 
scoping.  

Don't worry about it folks, the horses were fine...  If 
you are able to participate in any future studies - you 
should do it!  It is worthwhile to know.  You can 
actually watch them scope and they show you the ulcer, 
so you know that they ain't lying.  And believe me, 
you'd want to know if your horse has an ulcer.  I don't 
believe in some of the scare tactics they are using, but 
just to make sure that your horse is comfortable, 
healthy and is performing optimally - what else can I 
say?  

K.
> > Also, related horses may be horses that were raised at
> > the same or similar facilities, and that may be more of
> > a factor than the genetics themselves.
> 
> Actually, we've tried to look at a much broader picture than just immediate
> parent/offspring/sibling sorts of relationships when making comparisons in
> performance, and are often comparing horses from broad general families that
> are raised all over the country--both in terms of successes AND failures.
> Part of accurately looking at genetics is taking into account the very sorts
> of things you mention.
> 
> Where veterinarians often go amiss is looking at a breeding farm where ALL
> of the closely related horses have a problem, and saying "this looks
> genetic"--when in fact, if the problem were genetic, it would tend to
> segregate, and only a percentage would have the problem (the percentage
> varying depending on the mode of inheritance).  Hence, in the above sort of
> scenario, the problem is likely environmental.  By the same token, people
> will point to a success story and say "that problem can't be inherited,
> because look, here is a horse bred like that that is excelling."  Given
> segregation, one would only expect to see the problem in the appropriate
> percentage of offspring, not all of them, so yes, the problem may well still
> be genetic, and the success story is just the lucky horse that ended up in
> the "good" half that didn't get that gene copy, so to speak.
> 
> Heidi
> 

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