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.  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......

 

The first step, if feasible, would be to get some abdominal radiographs to see if there are indeed enteroliths.  Dunno if it's an option for him to do so, as an ambulatory vet doesn't have a high enough powered xray unit for the abdomen---the horse will have to be trailered into a referal center with a larger unit.  The other bummer is that even if they don't find any rocks in there, they might still exist.  Just didn't show up due to positioning that particular day.

 

 

>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!!!! 

 

You can pretty much guarantee the cubes are alfalfa based if the horse is anywhere in the west.  So with the high alfalfa and a lot of bran, yes, enteroliths are a reasonable differential.

 

> 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. 

 

I agree with what you already were telling him.  The excess bran is not helping in any way with gut motility issues (it does for humans, not for horses), and the excess phosphorus is pontially contributing to the formation of enteroliths and thus the chronic colic.  Keep in mind there are other causes that might be causing the colic, but no way to know that for sure without some pretty intensive diagnostics.

 

So I agree with your suggestions.  I would eliminate the bran from the ration entirely---it's doing no good and potentially contributing to further enterolith formation.  I would add well soaked beet pulp to the ration---not as good as foraging through diverdified pasture, but at least it takes awhile to slurp up.  In this case, I also like beet pulp because the soluble fiber contributes to a more acidic pH in the hindgut.  Less conducive to formation of stones, and possibly contributes to dissolution.  More so than vinegar will, anyway.  A more acidic pH is also better for the friendly bacteria in the hindgut and less so for the pathogenic bacteria like salmonella, but that's just a nice perk.

 

I'm fine with trying to minimize the molasses for the time being, although horses produce a lot of gas normally, molasses or not.  I've never found addition of molasses to be particularly gas-colic-inducing, but no harm in minimizing it for awhile anyway.  Over the long haul, I kind of like it for this type of situation, as it does have some minimal effects in acidifying the hindgut.  However, that should only be considered if the horse does not have any insulin-resistant issues, such as cushings, laminitis, equine metabolic syndrome, etc.

 

The main point that really needs to be addressed is minimizing or eliminating the alfalfa from the ration, as assuming it's typical SW-grown alfalfa, the high protein, unavailable magnesium content and calcium all contribute to an alkaline hindgut pHand enterolith formation.  IMO, if you just reduce the alfalfa, without eliminating it entirely, you're probably just maintaining a status quo back there---no new formation, but not much dissolution of existing enteroliths, either. 

 

So I would go waaaay out of my way to eliminate the alfalfa (and bran) entirely.  Put him onto grass hay (timothy is really the gold standard, but see what you can find), switch him slowly to allow several weeks for the microbial population to adjust and stop feeding bran right now.

 

Now here's the rub about the beet pulp that you should be aware of.  Yes, it's terrific feed that does all kinds of good things.  However, beet pulp, regardless of molasses content or source, is a highly fermentable feed.  And that means it normally produces gas as a by product.  That's not a bad thing, except when your horse potentially has an enterolith sometimes acting as a ball valve to block normal peristaltic movement.  You should be very clear that in the long run, the addition of beet pulp will probably contribute to dissolving the enteroliths.  In the SHORT run, there's no guarantee that the additional gas may not produce a few more episodes of gas/spasmodic colic.  However, just remember that the horse is chronically colicking with no improvement in sight.  At least with the beet pulp, there is improvement coming.  You can mediate some of those gassy effects with lots and lots of regular exercise.  Daily riding is great, turnout into a great big pasture with water at one end and shade at the other end is even better.

 

Anyway, those are my suggestions---get him off the alfalfa and bran entirely, do something about regular exercise and add some beet pulp.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Susan Garlinghouse, DVM