>How long does it normally take a horse to process their food? Say my horse
>is eating hay right now...how long till...ah...it comes out the other end?
>I know that time will vary greatly depending on many different factors.
Hay takes a day or two to completely go through the horse. What you feed
Thursday night and Friday is the hay that is sitting in the gut doing the
majority of "work" while you ride on Saturday. Grain goes through the
digestion cycle in a much faster time, completing the cycle in less than
a day.
>
>I'm just curious to find out how long on average it should take a horses
>gut sounds to pick up if they are diminished and the horse is currently
>eating. For instance, I know that if I stop at about 42 miles into a 50
>mile ride and let my horse eat for 15 minutes, that by the time we finish
>and vet thru his gut sounds will be really good.
>
You feed hay throughout the ride to keep the gut moving.
When you feed at the vet check, the digestive track says, "Oh boy more
food," grumble, grumble. So you hear the sounds of the digestion doing
it's job. If you let the horse drink lots of water, or give a really
wet mess of food, you'll hear the gut reacting very quickly.
>Does exercising a horse throw off their normal rate of digestion? It seems
>that during a ride they seem to stay pretty 'regular'.
As the horse exercises to extreme limits, the digestive track tends to
slow down or even stop. That is one of the reasons that the vets listen
to gut sounds. No gut sounds means the horse is very tired and needs
to stop. No gut sounds also means that the horse is likely to colic
soon.
-- Wendy\|/ /\ -O- /**\ /|\ /****\ /\ / \ /**\ Here there be dragons / /\ / \ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\/\/\ /\ / / \ / \ / \/\/ \/ \ /\/ \/\ /\ /\/ / / \/ \ / / \/ /\ \ / \ \ / \/ / / \/ \/ \ / \ \ / / \/ \/\ \ / \ / / \ __/__/_______/___/__\___\__________________________________________________
Wendy Milner HPDesk: wendy_milner@hp4000 Hewlett-Packard Company e-mail: wendy@fc.hp.com Mail Stop A2 Telnet: 229-2182 (898-2182 as of Nov 1.) 3404 E. Harmony Rd. AT&T: (970) 229-2182 (898-2182) Fort Collins, CO, 80528-9599 FAX: (970) 229-2038 (898-2038)