Choke- saracens releve

Well credit to Saracen for taking the time to contact me. Not so much credit for phoning my vet before me yesterday, without my permission (I had given the details but had assumed they would speak to me first). Bit of an odd way to go about things.

Anyway hopefully at the very least they will update how long it should be soaked for and with how much water, in case that has some benefit to others feeding it.
 
This may have been said, I haven’t read all comments yet! I’ve seen a recent thread on FB about someone who had the same issue. The man ALOT of people said they had the same issues with this particular feed. I believe Saracen we’re looking into it
 
Very interesting to have stumbled on this thread tonight after a scary experience with choke in one of our TBs this evening! I switched him onto re leve around 6 weeks ago on advice from Saracen as he’s a fractious type that needs help with condition over winter. I’d fed it previously to a dressage horse I had around 10 years ago - he was on it for a long time and ate it well dampened down with no issues. When switching this horse onto it, he ate his way through the first bag no problem and it seemed to be suiting him well. The next bag however was the rebranded ‘re leve mix’ which came with advice from my feed merchant to make sure it was fed damp with chaff, after feedback from people feeding it dry. As this is how I’d always fed it, I continued to do so. However, tonight was just awful, he’s never had choke before and it was horrible for him. Our vets were amazing and thankfully got him some relief very quickly, but it appears that the re leve was the cause. I was intending to phone Saracen tomorrow anyway as he’d not been particularly keen on it since opening the new bag - will certainly be speaking to them now! The new bag has the vague advice about soaking it (no mention of with how much water or how long for) but this doesn’t tally with the advice given to my feed merchant about dampening it. Slightly horrified to discover this link between the feed and choke tbh!
 
RoRock said:
Very interesting to have stumbled on this thread tonight after a scary experience with choke in one of our TBs this evening! I switched him onto re leve around 6 weeks ago on advice from Saracen as he’s a fractious type that needs help with condition over winter. I’d fed it previously to a dressage horse I had around 10 years ago - he was on it for a long time and ate it well dampened down with no issues. When switching this horse onto it, he ate his way through the first bag no problem and it seemed to be suiting him well. The next bag however was the rebranded ‘re leve mix’ which came with advice from my feed merchant to make sure it was fed damp with chaff, after feedback from people feeding it dry. As this is how I’d always fed it, I continued to do so. However, tonight was just awful, he’s never had choke before and it was horrible for him. Our vets were amazing and thankfully got him some relief very quickly, but it appears that the re leve was the cause. I was intending to phone Saracen tomorrow anyway as he’d not been particularly keen on it since opening the new bag - will certainly be speaking to them now! The new bag has the vague advice about soaking it (no mention of with how much water or how long for) but this doesn’t tally with the advice given to my feed merchant about dampening it. Slightly horrified to discover this link between the feed and choke tbh!
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Ahhhh that’s awful I’m so sorry. Saracens have confirmed to me that they are updating the bag with a soaking time (but not amount I don’t think). Which tbf is a good result post what happened to my horse and they did take it seriously.
 
Michen said:
Ahhhh that’s awful I’m so sorry. Saracens have confirmed to me that they are updating the bag with a soaking time (but not amount I don’t think). Which tbf is a good result post what happened to my horse and they did take it seriously.
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I think they should state the ratio of dry feed to water required to make it safe to feed. Other manufacturers do, Allen and Page clearly state ratios on their bags plus length of time to soak before feeding.
 
Michen said:
Ahhhh that’s awful I’m so sorry. Saracens have confirmed to me that they are updating the bag with a soaking time (but not amount I don’t think). Which tbf is a good result post what happened to my horse and they did take it seriously.
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That’s good to hear that they took it on board and are working to clarify things, it is rather worrying though. I don’t think we’re going to risk keeping him on it after this, so I’ll see what they suggest when I speak to them tomorrow. I will speak to my feed merchant too as the feeding advice has now changed since their last newsletter.
 
Michen I know how frightening this situation is and tell the story below to illustrate another way things can go wrong.

This is what happened to my pony many many years ago. The only non straight feed available at that time was pony nuts and bagged chaff wasn’t made either.

It was my first winter of pony owning and I was extremely inexperienced. My pony was not keeping weight on and on recommendation from others I fed soaked sugar beet shreds with pony nuts. Poor pony dived into the feed and ate so fast his oesophagus became completely blocked. The beet pulp was very sloppy but no one had told me to introduce the feed very slowly in small quantities.
Fortunately after vet intervention he was fine. I won’t say how as it is so out of date.

In the years since I have used Speedibeet, Allen and Page, Copra,Equerry and Rowan Barbery feeds without incident on various horses by introducing soaked feeds in small handfuls very wet, slowly increasing the amount over a quite a few weeks, however, I have never used Saracen feeds.

I hope Bear is feeling much better tomorrow.
 
Hi Everyone, I am the owner of the horse that died after feeding Re Leve. Firstly I'd just like to say that I have been a horse owner for over 30 years, I'm a qualified riding instructor and have worked as a groom in racing, eventing, showjumping and hunting yards and yet this still happened to me. Many people commented on my post that water should always be added to feeds. In my experience in the various professional yards i worked in I can say that many trainers don't wet feeds unless the feeding instructions say otherwise.

I'd just like to let you know my experience with Saracen and the circumstances around my post on Facebook.
My horse choked very badly after feeding her Re-Leve, as a result of inhaling saliva and feed into her lungs she developed aspiration pneumonia. A huge abscess formed in her lungs and burst despite mine and my vets best efforts to treat her with antibiotics immediately after the choke. Seeing her in agony after the abscess burst was horrendous and will haunt me for the rest of my life. Thank god we had decided to check her late that evening and were there when it happened and called the vet out. Unfortunately she could not be saved. I noticed some posts on social media and the Horse and hound forum going back to 2017 and people saying they had reported it to Saracen back then.

I decided to immediately put a post on Facebook to warn others as I felt had I seen these posts sooner I would have soaked or not fed this feed. I was shocked at just how many people responded to my post having had choke issues from Re-leve too. I had read the feeding instructions on the back of the bag and it did not mention adding water. I later read on my post a comment by Lizzy Drury (saracen Nutritionist) that they recommend the feed is fed Dampened with Chaff and it states this on the label on the bag. I immediately checked my bag and it did say this but it was printed in tiny writing at the end on all the foreign translations on the white composition label that is stitched to the top of the bag and not on the back with the main feed advice.

After my post on Facebook Saracen said they would launch an investigation into all the choke reports. They said "due to the majority of the people that posted on the thread, either not being prepared to provide any supporting evidence, such as vet reports, batch detailsand best before dates etc, or not wanting to communicate directly with us all". HOWEVER this was not true. Saracen did NOT contact these people and ask for this information. They did NOT even ask me for this information, they only spoke to my vet. This makes me question a few things;
1) why did Saracen put those very specific feeding recommendations on the composition lable? It is not written on any of their other feeds ( I checked). Could it be that following reports from other people in the past they added that instead of reprinting the bags with clear instructions as it was cheaper?
2) why didn't they ask the people on the thread this questions if it was so crucial to their investigation? Maybe they already knew the answers and didn't want to link all these choke cases directly to their product?
3) why only "recommend" how to feed the product? Surely they should know exactly how it must be fed? If you don't soak it and your horse chokes they can cover themselves by saying they recommend it is soaked?

They concluded their investigation with "from this investigation we have been unable to definitively link the chokes as being direct link to the re-Leve, however, what we can say from our investigation and something that we picked up from the thread on the BSJA social media site, is that our feeding instructions need to be in a more visible, clearer and prominent position, rather than being on the feed label, which is where they were. We have taken immediate action to resolve this with new bags being printed with revised and clearer feeding instructions".

They have changed the feeding recommendations many times on their website since their "investigation". Firstly it said it should be soaked and fed with chaff. Then they added IF you soak it.

I am not at all happy with the way they have dealt with this, and as for their offer of some complementary bags of their new and improved Re-Leve mix, how bloody insensitive!!!
I feel they are playing Russian roulette with peoples horses and its totally unacceptable. If this was a feed for Humans it would have been withdrawn from sale immediately.

I just wanted to let you all know what has been done by Saracen regarding the reports of choke they have received not just from me but from others years ago so that you can make up your own minds as to whether you want to continue feeding their product.

All I ask is that those of you who have had issues please report it to Saracen and also share your experiences with other owners so they too can make their choice as to whether to feed this product. I would hate for any other family to go through what we went through as it was absolutely devastating.
 
This is awful. Thx for those posting. I do think if this was human food there’d be a far stronger reaction and sanction. Does anyone here know who you could report this to formally? I feel like people with these cases should please report them!
 
Slightly off topic but could anybody recommend an alternative to Re-Leve please? Although I'm not too worried about the product itself as he's always eaten it with sloppy Fast Fibre and his feeds are made up in the morning and given at night, I'm disgusted with the way they've treated people like Barker for several years and would rather not buy their products.

The problem is, it took us a while to find a product that suited Monty and Re-Leve was the one. He has to have a low sugar diet due to an allergy. He's very responsive to grass so loses weight once the grass has gone (January onwards) and doesn't really pick up again until April so he needs something high calorie but low sugar. He won't eat anything if we add linseed although feeds with linseed already in them seem to meet with his approval.
 
annagain said:
Slightly off topic but could anybody recommend an alternative to Re-Leve please? Although I'm not too worried about the product itself as he's always eaten it with sloppy Fast Fibre and his feeds are made up in the morning and given at night, I'm disgusted with the way they've treated people like Barker for several years and would rather not buy their products.

The problem is, it took us a while to find a product that suited Monty and Re-Leve was the one. He has to have a low sugar diet due to an allergy. He's very responsive to grass so loses weight once the grass has gone (January onwards) and doesn't really pick up again until April so he needs something high calorie but low sugar. He won't eat anything if we add linseed although feeds with linseed already in them seem to meet with his approval.
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if he can eat a little bit of alfalfa I'd give Baileys Ease and Excel a go, my fussy one who liked Re-Leve did well on it. he also wouldn't eat linseed but didn't mind it "in" things.
 
milliepops said:
if he can eat a little bit of alfalfa I'd give Baileys Ease and Excel a go, my fussy one who liked Re-Leve did well on it. he also wouldn't eat linseed but didn't mind it "in" things.
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Thanks - yes alfalfa is fine. When the itchy legs started I was convinced alfalfa was the culprit but he was totally fine when we reintroduced it. As soon as he had anything mollassed though, they went mad. Further experiments revealed any sort of sugar is the problem - even a carrot. The poor thing gets celery as a 'treat' while the others get carrots, apples and bananas. I then thought it could be cushings related but he's had 2 tests that were very slightly elevated (in the 20s) and has no other symptoms so as long as we can control the issue with not feeding sugar, we're happy.
 
Michen said:
Interesting!

https://www.saracenhorsefeeds.com/performance/re-leve-cube
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Interesting - the ingredients are a bit different. Some it might be different wording, but even allowing for that, there is a fair bit of change.

Old Re-leve

INGREDIENTS
  • Soya Hulls
  • Dried Sugar Beet Pulp
  • Pea Flakes MISSING from Cubes
  • Soya Flakes MISSING from Cubes
  • Molasses
  • Grass Pellets
  • Soya Oil
  • Sunflower Extract MISSING from Cubes
  • Dicalcium Phosphate
  • Sodium Chloride
  • Maerl (calcareous marine algae) MISSING from Cubes
  • Vitamins & Minerals
  • Blackcurrant Flavour MISSING
  • Yeast MISSING


New cube Re-leve

INGREDIENTS

  • Soya Hulls
  • Oatfeed NEW
  • Wheatfeed NEW
  • Full Fat Soya NEW
  • Dried Sugarbeet Pulp
  • Sunflower Seed Meal NEW
  • Molasses
  • Soya Oil
  • Full Fat Linseed Meal NEW
  • Vegetable Oil NEW
  • Sodium Chloride
  • Calcium Carbonate NEW
  • Soya Bean Meal NEW
  • Dicalcium Phosphate
  • Vitamins & Minerals
  • Magnesium Oxide NEW
  • Mixture of Flavouring Compounds NEW
 
milliepops said:
it's quite common that the composition of cubes and mix is different, the Baileys Ease & Excel cubes are made of different quantities/ stuff to the mix.
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I think it is due to the appearance of mix being important that the pieces look visibly good, whereas cubes the appearance is irrelevant when powdered and compressed.
 
Since my horse died after choking on the old Saracen Releve I have been contacted by another lady that had six episodes of choke from 4 different horses all from Releve. After the first 4 episodes she contacted the company who replaced her bags of old Releve with the new mix and she had two chokes in that even after following the instructions to soak. Her horse was hospitalised and she was left with a substantial vet bill as her insurance company would pay out a second time. Saracen have refused her request to pay the vet fees and are being generally unhelpful. I am still in dispute with their insurance company who are equally unhelpful to the point of being very inept. I would avoid this company at all cost!!! ?
 
I don’t feed this but do feed soothe and gain which I soak into a soup. I also feed Metaslim to Toggle my nieces tank shaped section b pony, that says feed dry or soaked, so I also soak it into a soup type feed.
 
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