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Richard Maxwell
20 Dec 2009 16:31
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"Thanks Max & Spotted Cat for the suggestions. What do you think of the idea behind NAF haylage balancer to reduce acidity from haylage? "
I am always sceptical about the number of supplements on the market but one of our liveries has put their horses on this as her horses had very loose droppings, and I have to say that it appears to be doing something as their droppings are looking much better.
Also a quick point on the gastro care, they have done trials with this product and they have found that horses with low grade ulcers scope clear after 30 days and high grade ulcers scope clear after 60 days.
My client that told me about Gastro care also scoped her horse on a regular basis and didn't have a clear scope until she had used gastro care. I saw her again last week and her mare is still scoping clear.
My own mare is going from strength to strength............I am really pleased with the results.
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christina
08 Dec 2009 09:57
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Thanks Max & Spotted Cat for the suggestions. What do you think of the idea behind NAF haylage balancer to reduce acidity from haylage?
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SpottedCat
06 Dec 2009 13:02
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It may be of interest to people to know that neighlox is the only antacid which has been clinically trialled in horses and therefore it is the only one where it is known how long it is effective in the stomach for (6 hrs).
However, settlex (by feedmark), has almost identical ingredients (bar one antacid and the ingredients used to make the pellets in neighlox - settlex is powder). I have been feeding settlex and the last time my horse was scoped he showed up as 100% normal for the first time in a year.
The regime I now use is as follows - and it is definitely working as evidenced by the scoping results:
1. He has adlib forage when in stable/lorry.
2. 30mins before exercise he gets 200g Protexin acid ease/prosoothe (they are the same product marketed to different sectors so I buy whichever is cheaper!) - this is an antacid in pellet form which he eats happily so I can feed it prior to exercise and in the lorry park etc easily. If he's been out on grass I mix chaff with this, just a small handful. I use mollichaff high fibre alfalfa because it is unmollased, has alfalfa in which is good for raising the stomach pH and has straw in it so is a good source of long fibres for buffering against splash ulcers.
3. Settlex in am and pm feeds.
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Richard Maxwell
05 Dec 2009 21:39
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"my horse is currently on gastro guard and coming to the end of his treatment, i wanted to know if there is an alternative before i re morgage the house to buy another box?"
My mare also suffers with ulcers and I have struggled over the last year to find something that works............I was recommended Gastro care by horse health, for the first time since coming off gastroguard I have a horse that is happy in her work. she has now been on it for 4 months.
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Fiona Price
05 Dec 2009 12:10
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SpottedCat posted this excellent information on on 3rd December, on David Marlin's blog on the subject of Splash Ulcers in reponse to a post by another user. I have re-posted her response here as the subject is worthy of wider discussion and participation:
Splash ulcers are indeed caused by acid splashing up due to the way the musculature of the horse causes the stomach to contract during exercise. It is accepted practice now to feed a handful of chaff 30mins before exercise to help buffer the stomach against splash ulcers. Essentially horses are designed to live on long stalky fibre which provides a buffer across the top of the stomach when exercise intensity increases. The types of fibre then 'layer' within the stomach so that you have the leafy short fibres at the bottom as a kind of grassy soup. Now this is all well and good until you start keeping horses on predominantly rye-grass fields as we do in the UK, which were mainly produced for dairy cows. Rye grass is mostly leaf, especially the way we manage it in the UK (I am a professional ecologist if that helps add credibility to this!), so it does not provide enough of the long fibres needed to buffer against splash ulcers - hence why feeding hay or chaff before exercise helps. However that does not cover the glandular ulcers which are found in the base of the stomach in areas which are supposed to be constantly covered in acid in the horse (which produces stomach acid constantly unlike humans who only produce it in response to the stimulus by saliva). For this type of ulcer to occur, there is something affecting the mucus which covers the lower portion of the stomach and which cannot be doing its job properly if ulcers occur. In humans this has been proven to be Helicobacter pylori, however in horses all attempts to isolate it have failed to date (as far as I am aware) - therefore vets treat it by extrapolation from human knowledge. The one caveat is that there are v few antibiotics which work on this infection which don't have nasty, possibly fatal, side effects for the horse - most of the drugs used on humans cannot be used on the horse. My horse was treated with doxycyline as were a number of other horses I know, although a friend's horse did have a different antibiotic regime. Although this could have occurred in my horse due to low immunity from competing this seems unlikely as prior to diagnosis all his bloods ran clean and normal. I would imagine your internet research threw up the information from Merial - well they do have a vested interest in people not thinking it is a bacterial issue - but although gastrogard cured my horse's splash ulcers it did nothing for the glandular ones which actually got worse during the ggard treatment (horse was grade 3 borderline g4 - the worst they can be - and went to grade 1 splash and grade 4 glandular after a month on ggard). Other research which is thrown up by a google scholar search suggesting it is not caused by bacterial infection was undertaken by Kentucky Equine Research - who are associated with the production of neighlox...a widely used antacid. In fact in their paper which says H. pylori has been proven not to be a cause of ulcers in horses they provide no references to back up this claim. However the vet who is treating my horse has been involved in clinical trials and research of treatments for horses with EGUS, and is suitably convinced that in some cases bacterial infection is the cause of the problem where glandular ulcers are concerned. Not one of the abstracts I pulled up from google scholar mentioned that horses can get ulcers in the glandular tissue of the stomach, in fact many mentioned that this was unlikely and that most ulcers were splash ulcers on the non-glandular tissue at the top of the stomach where no protection against the effects of stomach acid is available.
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jo2171
14 Jul 2009 12:27
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My horse is currently on Gastro Guard and coming to the end of his treatment, I wanted to know if there is an alternative before I re morgage the house to buy another box?
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