Re: [RC] Follow up on "tying up" episode - SHEILA A WALSH
Lee.......
Please don't even think about injecting your Buddy with Se
(Selenium). It may kill him. A quote from my ancient text:
"Selenium is essential for domestic animals but the margin of safety is
relatively narrow. A low level of Se is essential to prevent
myopathies, liver injury and congenital abnormalities in domestic and laboratory
animals and poultry. ........High dietary Se is toxic to animals and a
defined set of signs and lesions has been established for acute and subacute
exposure to toxic concentrations in several species........The minimum dietary
level of Se, which results in accumulation in the tissues of animals and
ultimately produces signs of toxicity, is about 3 to 4 ppm of the dry
diet." Modern Nutrition in Health and Disease, 6th edition; by
Goodhart and Shils.
The best way to get any minerals into your animal is via feeding them a
food source. This way their guts can discriminate and reject an overload,
somewhat.
Another way to reduce Se is via an overload of S(Sulphur). Is there
lots of S in your water - smells like rotten eggs - this might contribute to a
reduced Se absorption.
Otherwise, my guess is that a .09 is normal for Buddy and perhaps the
bigger picture can be reviewed: how many miles/week are you
training? how was the weather at the time? had he had a big altitude
change? was he dehydrated for some reason? blah, blah
It's important to note that we can't fix anything with an injection.
As mammals our horses are complicated and there are thousands of relationships
going on in their bodies that we only know a little about.
Can you tell that I am a conservative horse husband? I don't mean to
lecture, but the word injection scared me. If life were that
simple......
for what it's worth; jmvho
Sheila Walsh, MPH (miles per hour), RD (registered dietitian)
!!;p)
Okay I finally got all the blood work back on Buddy after his tying
up/cramping episode. Even with daily dosing of electrolytes, his levels
were still low. Also the selenium level came back at 0.09 (with the low
range of normal being 0.14). So my question is........
Would this level of selenium depletion require an injectable
supplementation in conjunction with the oral supplement (selenium yeast) that
he is now receiving twice daily?
The vet that I am using didn't even want to do a selenium level (he felt
I it was a waste of money to even do blood work after the tying
up/cramping episode because it would only show elevated enzymes,
which BTW were not that high) so I do not feel confident in his
recommendation for oral supplementation only. Anyone out there have any
input/.experience that they would like to share?
