Any ideas on what would cause a horse to disunite in canter?

[SEL]

Hi Casey - my mare never tied up visibly either and when I got the vet to pull her muscle enzymes she had been off work for 5 weeks & they were still elevated. She's always been on low sugar, starch too.

It will be a blow for the breed, but I believe about 60% of Belgian drafts have the gene and around the same % of Percheron horses so it isn't something that can be bred out of those old breeds overnight. I'm convinced that my 2 horses with it would be absolutely fine if they were ploughing the fields at a walk for hours on end daily - its just when we ask them for the faster work that the problems start to show up. I know it affects slow twitch / fast twitch muscles differently.

If you horse does have it then you will need to keep her working or the symptoms get worse. I did a LOT of in hand walking with mine and when the time came to get her trotting I had to lead her in hand up and down the lane outside our yard. She was too sore to lunge. 7 months on we are hacking and although improvement is slow it is definitely in the right direction.

 

[Casey76]

Make sure no supplements or anything else she eats contains fillers or molasses. Nearly every off the shelf supplement will be bulked out with some sort of junk she can't have.

Is your powdered vitamin e natural or synthetic. If synthetic she needs double the amount of natural. If natural she needs 5000-10000iu per day. I wouldn't use synthetic myself as natural is more bioavailable. Also I'm sure you know this but be careful it doesn't contain selenium. I had a woman contact me for advice last week who had been doubling the supplement to provide more vit e without realising the implications of too much se.

Unfortunately it only requires one copy of the gene to make the horse symptomatic so highly difficult to breed out in such a small gene pool. Also people will be in denial because they always are.

It's not a death sentence but it's something buyers need to stand together about and encourage breeders to test and eradicate.

All her feed is Agrobs (less than 10% starch and sugar combined), and all her supplements are from Pro Earth (currently her all around supplement is Pro Laminae+) - this includes the vitamin E, which I believe is synthetic as I didn't want to pay for natural at the time I bought it a year ago. It will have to do for now, as I'm having issues getting the vitamin E oil from Equimins (not very obliging posting overseas). My ALCAR should be arriving today.

I am getting a selenium yeast separately, as despite normal supplementation, T has levels below the lower limit of normal (we are in a very selenium poor area). I know not to buy a combined Vit E + Selenium sup