Choke Advice Please

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spottydottypony

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Does anyone have any suggestions for the best type of feed i.e chop, mash to feed for a horse that chokes. My horse is currently eating Dodson and Horrell Safe and Sound but choked last week quite severly on this. He has the same problem with Happy hoof and Healthy Hooves! I feed it very wet but am still quite worried about him. I thought maybe a very course chop and nuts to slow him down when eating any suggestions please!
 
Forage based feeds should ideally slow a horse down when eating. If he eats quickly, try putting a salt lick or big stone in his bucket to slow him down.
If its a regular problem, maybe get the vet to check him out to see if anything could be causing it.
 
We had the vet last week to an oldie with choke that had to be tubed, we were advised that chaff is the worst thing to give them, they are much better with a soaked feed such as sugar beet or fast fibre etc that can be fed at a sloppy consistency.
 
As touchstone says, I would avoid the chaff foods, especially if he has choked on them before. My horse choked quite badly last month on alfa-a (later discovered the bag was out of date and it was coarser than normal) and so we have now changed him to a small amount of hi-fi lite and sugar beet so his food is basically slop. it sounds like your horse may need all hard feed and chaff cut out completely, in which case you could try just sugar beet or one of the ready-mash type feeds.

However if your horse has choked a few times I would seriously be considering getting it properly investigated by a vet - it may be that he has damaged his oesophagus with an initial bout of choke and now has some kind of ulceration/stricture which is causing repeated episodes. I am writing my final year case report on a case of a mare who developed a stricture after choke and now chokes approx every 2 days and when fed anything other than grass.

I'm not trying to scare you , I am just very aware of this stuff now - oesophageal problems in horses are quite rare, but i think it might be worth just checking that there isn't something more serious causing the choke. My horse choked twice over a weekend, and the vet and I had decided after the 2nd bout that if he choked again we would scope him to check for damage (thankfully he recovered and hasn't choked since).
 
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