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Re: [RC] selenium - heidiHeidi, my vet told me that horses have died having selenium given as an IV. I was not willing to take a chance. The anaphylaxis rate is the same, whether the injection is IV or IM. It is about 1 in 30,000. (I unfortunately have all that data, as I lost a horse at one point to anaphylaxis following an IV administration.) There may be a slight difference in the rate of onset of anaphylaxis, but in the data that we got, the death rate following anaphylaxis was no different if the route of injection was IV or IM. Another vet who vets rides, told me that one shot would not be enough. She had a horse herself that was low on selenium. Because it did not cost her anything to test, she tested the horse everytime she gave it a selenium shot. The horse only went up by 10 points each time. . She suggested that I would need more than one shot. What we found routinely testing several dozen horses in central Oregon was that many horses will not absorb selenium orally very well until they have an injection. We also did a very nice study in calves where we showed that post injection the levels were normal at 48 hours but were down almost to preinjection levels by 4 weeks. The protocol that worked best for us in horses was to inject and then to immediately begin supplementing with 8-10 mg orally daily. This cut down on the number of injections needed, and in many cases kept it to one injection. Since my horse's level was 240 a couple of years ago, my vet and I thought that was just a tad too high. Nope--right smack in the normal range. I like my guys to be around 180 - 200 but I am done with the shots. Borderline deficient... The normal range suggested now is 200-250 ppb. Mags will have to get a higher level with the supplement. My vet does not give the shot in the thigh unless I haul to his clinic and he can put the horse in stocks. Well, I can't blame him. And that's one more reason why I like to give it IV--I can IV most of my horses by myself. Best of luck getting the levels up with supplements alone--you may be able to do it, depending on the level of deficiency, but my luck with that has been erratic, not just in my own horses but in several client horses that were religiously followed with testing. I can't feed megasel since my mare won't eat it!! It is a good supplement too. But I can give ABC selenium vitamin E which all our guys eat. This is a good supplement too and in fact is the one that got my mare up to 240. So these are the reasons why I went the way I did. If that worked before, by all means go for it! Heidi ============================================================ I still prefer what it is that BH100, Tevis, The Duck's Soup of Endurance, etc. has to offer...but, to see a horse canter over sand for those distances...Good Lord, it humbles me. ~ Frank Solano ridecamp.net information: http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/ ============================================================
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