Are Horses Lactose intolerant?

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moneypit1

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The reason I ask is that I work for a yogurt manufacturer (hate that phrase, our yogs are the dogs ***) and i often used to feed my dogs natural yogs to help with digestion. Now horses have a complicated gut, they cannot vomit and need a steady influx of feed to keep it all ticking over. Natural yog is sooooo good and i can't help feel that it would be beneficial to their digestion. Just wondered, is there anyone out there with any knowledge of this??
 
I don't know - my dog is sick if he drinks milk. In nature animals only drink milk whilst they are suckling, once weaned they eat what they are supposed to eat. Yogurt obviously isn't part of a horses natural diet so I don't know whether it would be beneficial or not. I think the jury's out as regards the benefits of probiotics etc.. for us humans.

I'm sure someone out there knows more about it than us.
 
You can give horses natural yoghurt-usually to those once scouring or sloppy poo's. It does actually work when fed daily but you do have to use one of the big pots.

A lot of the feeds now have lots of probiotics for the hind gut.

We only had to feed natural yoghurt to 1 horse in the yard and thats due to the sloppy poos and the probiotics did not work for him but the yoghurt did-we only did this with the vets helping us though.
 
I've fed natural yoghurt for scouring and it was very successful. But I'm lactose intolerant and I can eat most types of natural yoghurt. I can't touch ice cream, cream, full fat milk and butter though.

I think it might possible that horses could be lactose intolerant. Perhaps a vet can answer this - humans who lack the enzyme lactase in the small intestine cannot break down the disaccharide lactose into glucose and galactose. Do horses have this enzyme commonly? Or would they digest this disaccaride in a different way?
 
probiotics are all well and good but I don't think I'd give my horse anything lactose based! Their gut won't have evolved to deal with it.....probiotics in feed wouldn't have lactose - you can buy them for humans without them having it in.

always makes me laugh when people drink actimel and stuff like that - you're taking probiotics to help your stomach but the carrier has shed loads of sweetner and sugar in it - what causes alot of people to have bad stomachs in the first place.

sorry, I digress!
 
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My vet suggested live yoghurt the help with gut function after colic.

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that's interesting .......
 
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