BF horse bored of food

[FfionWinnie]

the choke may have been an early sign of the grass sickness as it effects the ability to chew and swallow so the dried grass nuts may be a red herring so to speak. choke does not cause EGS.

sorry for your loss all the same it is heart wrenching to loose them

I can assure you the mare was completely healthy before she choked. I have had two horses die from EGS in the last two years, it has ruined my life, and I know more about it than I ever want to know about it.

It is my complete belief that the stress of the choke and the subsequent disruption in her gut due to the choke allowed the EGS to occur. I was there, I know what I saw.

Frankly no one who actually knows about EGS would make the statement "does not cause EGS". No one knows why EGS occurs in some horses and not others - stress IS thought to be a contributing factor so you CANNOT say the choke didn't ultimately cause her to die from EGS.

You want to lecture me about my dead horse feel free but since it's my dead horse and my broken heart I will reserve the right to my own theory.

 

[TPO]

SF- I had similar issues in that 1) my TB isn't that food orientated and 2) we had LOTS of hoof issues including some very serious (2 surgeries worth of serious but that's a whole other story) conditions that weren't related to BF but trying getting vets to understand that...

Before pulling shoes almost 5yrs ago I fed speedibeet, Alfa-A oil, Baileys no.4 and Equimins Omega Diamond.

When I first went barefoot by then trimmer "encouraged" me to use Thunderbrooks base mix and chop. My boy dropped loads of condition alarmingly quickly and when I called TB for information they were disgustingly rude and completely unhelpful.

So that led to a pretty steep learning curve as I crammed in as much information as possible. I've been to pretty much every extreme in an attempt to find the "right" way to feed.

When we had abscesses (not BF related per se as through frog) I was micro managing all minerals and additional supps like brewers yeast and yea sacc etc

I had been feeding Fast Fibre in summer and speedibeet in winter then stopped that due to learning new information basically relating to the NIS in FF and the undigestible carbohydrate in beet that *can* stress the guts.

I swapped onto a diet of grass nuts (that can be fed unsoaked - every cube expands when soaked...- but I soaked them), copra, linseed and Pro Hoof with a pure grass chop. All 3 of them had improved hooves with this diet BUT the main change was swapping to living out 24/7.

My 14yr old TB dropped a bit of condition so I tried soaked oats but they didn't work for him although they were digested.

So at this point I decided that I was perhaps over complicating things and micro managing isn't the best way to go so I swapped (slowly and gradually) to a slightly more commercial diet.

My TB now gets Top Spec Just Grass (has "bad" soya oil), Top Spec Ulsakind cubes, linseed, copra and Equimins Advance complete powder.

The connie x gets the Just Grass, Pro Balance, Turmeric (& pepper) and linseed.

The 3yr old QH gets Just Grass, grass nuts, linseed, copra & Equimins Advance.

All of them are doing well on their feeds, I'm feeding less, the cost is less and it's easier to get a hold of the feed now. The TB is rock crunching over the hardcore gravel tracks to the fields (new for him) and he loves his feed and is tucking in.

I've always fed linseed and just added copra when "more" was required during winter mainly. The point of my whole ramble is that sometimes it's easy to fall down the rabbit hole re "good" BF feeding.

Starting to feed TS cubes & Just Grass (TS seems to have a bad rep with BF peeps) was the turning point for my TB and his hoof health has only improved. The gradual switch to TS happened at a similar time of swapping "BF" supplement to Equimins Advance so I can't pinpoint one element exactly.

 

[Maesfen]

This has all been interesting.

While mine aren't in work at all being youngsters, they are all of course unshod.

Today, my farrier of some ten years said he's never seen the feet in such good condition; solid and hard in spite of being in a bog of wet clay every day (that wet that when they come in, up to and over their knees are covered by wet runny mud which is completely untouched, allowed to dry naturally overnight) In spite of not being touched, there isn't a trace of mud fever either which is a first for here, never been a winter before that we haven't had it. I was dreading having Rowan, my Dales with his feathers thinking I might have to clip them off but they were the easiest to clean off today, soft and silky with not a trace of MF, cracked heels or bog burn.

The only difference this year is that apart from not touching the mud at all, the only 'made up' feed I have used are bog standard local pony cubes. The rest of the diet has been Speedibeet, micro' linseed, brewers yeast with added Turmeric for Rowan; he and Merlin (3 & 2) both had D&H Suregrow too. With having such wet conditions, I am convinced that the very low sugar feed, with BY, has been the key to their skin and hooves being in such good condition, after all, neither have had the care they would normally have had - or perhaps it is the 'normal' care of cleaning, brushing and applying lotions and potions to combat mud fever that has been the problem all along?