Annagain
Well-Known Member
Poor old Monty's on box rest. He came in hopping lame on Tuesday night, the vet saw him yesterday and he suspects some sort of injury to the suspensory ligament. He's 25 but was fit and healthy before this so all we care about at the moment is getting him comfortable enough to be in the field with Archie but even that means an initial 6 weeks box rest and we'll take it from there. He's a model patient in that he'll box rest very quietly, will go out in hand for some grass and not get in the slightest bit wound up but he tends to go on hunger strike when he's on box rest. He'll eat hard feed and won't lift his head from the grass when he's being hand grazed (we're aiming for 3 times a day for about 30 mins a time, luckily there are a few of us to do this) but will only eat about 1/2 the hay he should, and doesn't drink much either. He's never been one to eat much hay in the stable but he's normally out 12 hours a day on fairly decent (even in winter) grass so it doesn't matter.
We need to tempt him to eat more than he is at the moment. To complicate matters, we were told by the dentist last week that he shouldn't eat any short chop fibre as he's getting it stuck between his teeth and it's causing problems with his gums so any sort of chaff is out. The dentist recommended grass nuts but he can't have them due to his sugar allergy. He's currently eating high fibre cubes with a lot of water added (and he'll slurp the excess water up when the cubes are finished) and a tiny handful of very sloppy wet sugar beet to get Danilon into him (it's the only way to get drugs into him). Any bright ideas to make sure he eats enough please? Any really tasty haylage that he'll find irresistable? High energy is ok as long it's not ridiculously high in sugar. We've got some apple juice to add to his water but again have to be careful sugar wise so can't give him too much of that.
Hopefully, in a few weeks we can sort him a pen in the field so he'll have a bit more time on the grass but at the moment he needs to move as little as possible and the area we could do it is quite a distance away.
We need to tempt him to eat more than he is at the moment. To complicate matters, we were told by the dentist last week that he shouldn't eat any short chop fibre as he's getting it stuck between his teeth and it's causing problems with his gums so any sort of chaff is out. The dentist recommended grass nuts but he can't have them due to his sugar allergy. He's currently eating high fibre cubes with a lot of water added (and he'll slurp the excess water up when the cubes are finished) and a tiny handful of very sloppy wet sugar beet to get Danilon into him (it's the only way to get drugs into him). Any bright ideas to make sure he eats enough please? Any really tasty haylage that he'll find irresistable? High energy is ok as long it's not ridiculously high in sugar. We've got some apple juice to add to his water but again have to be careful sugar wise so can't give him too much of that.
Hopefully, in a few weeks we can sort him a pen in the field so he'll have a bit more time on the grass but at the moment he needs to move as little as possible and the area we could do it is quite a distance away.
