[RC] chronic colicker; need some words of wisdom - Karen Sullivan
Hoping for some good basic info I can send to a
friend.....and I have already sent him some of Susan G.'s articles on feeding
alfalfa and bran and beet pulp.
Anyway, friend has 24 year old QH, who is a
chronic colicker. He gets extremely crampy and uncomfortable, the vet
diagnoses a gas colic, treats him and it resolves. Her current thinking
is enteroliths; the horse was recently scoped and no visible ulcers. She
now says that the gas is probably building up behind the
enterolith......
However, the horse is kept, in my opinion, in the
worst sort of stabling situation. He lives in a big box stall in a barn
that feeds hay cubes. To the owners credit, the horse gets some kind of riding
or turnout ever day.....but rest of time is stalled. Owner has been
giving bran mash every day with equine senior, despite my squawking at owner
about dangers of too much bran. I am still trying to find out what kind
of hay is in the hay cubes!!!!
I have talked until I am blue in the face that
this is not a healthy way to stable a horse; that the horse needs more moving
around with his head down (picking and foraging); that he should not feed bran
every day; look into beet pulp, etc, etc.
Stable vet has now said to cut equine senior as
it is to high in carbo's (molasses), which can fermennt and cause gas....limit
amounts of soaked beet pulp, but the BRAN is fine!!!!
Any other words of wisdom I can send to my friend
would be appreciated.
