cushings/laminitis - help

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fruit03

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hello, i have apony who was diagnosed with cushings back in may after suffering laminitis, she recovered and has been on limited grass, soaked hay and happyhoof and hi-fi lite. she has now suffered with laminitis again - only mildly, so i have bought her off the grass again. i have her on the herbal supplement vitex for the cushings and have just started her on cushinaze too. she is not fat in the slightest and i have to put a small rug on her at night and when its cold, wet and windy(its august!!). i am now concerned for the winter - how can i get some weight on her? also, can anyone advise me on pergolide? i am awaiting a call from the vet to discuss it, i have been told it may cost up to £5.00 a day for a tablet for her - which i can't afford, then i look on the internet and see that i can get it from a pharmacy, with a prescription for considerably less. any help/advice would be greatly appreciated :) thank you
 
I look after an old pony with cushings,he is not really laminitic and is not a good doer. He is on 1/2 a tablet a day at the moment which seems to keep him well.
He has ad lib hay/haylage depending on which he prefers at the time[he is fussy]
Feed wise he will not eat what he should so I gave in and he has small amount of mix.
I was recommended to feed Allen and Page fast fibre,this can be used to partly replace hay,it is low in starch and sugar and ,if he would eat it, could have had as much as required.
Pinkpowder is a useful balancer that will help with weight gain.
There is loads of info on the forum about cushings if you do a search it may give you more ideas.
Your vet should give you a prescription so you can purchase the prascend elsewhere,I dont pay for it as pony is not mine,I dont think it is anywhere near £5 a tablet.I think it works out cheaper than the herbal supplements and it does work.
 
We have three here with Cushings and we don't give them any medication. Their feed is carefully managed but we don't use commercial feed with all the additives, chemicals and sugar that that contains. In the winter they have a whole grain organic cereal mix which is cooked, minerals and salt added, and lucern granules to boost the fibre and protein content. They are on grass all year but careful attention paid to the qulaity and quantity in spring and autumn. They are very happy and healthy and have never suffered from laminitis and the regime they're on also seems to have reduced the symptoms. Age range is 22 to 27 years old.

Hope this helps.
 
I have a cushings pony, we didn't realise she had it until she had a lami attack in the middle of winter!

We just feed soaked hay in the winter with a low calorie chop to mix in her Lo-cal balancer, brewers yeast (to maximise food digestion) and micronised linseed (very good for hooves and condition). In the summer and winter she is on very poor grazing and we would rather chuck in some good oat straw or hay than let her have more grass, that way she can stay outside all daay.

I pay £150 for 160 1mg tablets from my vet, so I think £5 per tablet is VERY overpriced! After 4 years we have had to increase her dose to 1.5 tablets as she had a lami attack at Christmas. As long as she is on pergolide we treat her as you would any lami pony. I would be very surprised if your pony was prescribed 5 tablets a day. Get a prescription and start googling! The improvement in our pony was very dramatic.

The one thing we have discovered since her second lami attack is to have her bloods tested at the end of October to ensure the dosage is correct. Winter is the time when a lot of cushings ponies suffer setbacks because of the shortening days.
 
My mare has Cushings and is on 1mg pergolide a day, your vet has to write you a prescription if you ask for it and you can then get it yourself either online or over the counter, think Boots was about £68 for 100 tablets.
My vet did warn me that the change in sugar levels in spring and autumn could set off the laminitus, my mare also gets blood tests for EMS (Equine Metabolic Syndrome) which raises the insulin levels and causes laminitus as well she goes on Metformin if these tests come back with high insulin, she gets blood tests about every 3months, now just to make sure we have the pergolide level correct, she did go down to a half a pergolide, but at the last test the levels had nearly doubled so she went back up to 1 a day.
£150 from the sounds about right, but you can get it cheaper direct from the pharmacy vets just can't source it competetively, my vet charges me £10 for the prescription, have found it online at about £54 but I'm really paranoid about buying from an unknown source and tend to go with a high street name.
 
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Pricing has changed recently as its now prascend - you can't buy pergolide (the dog version) of the drug for horses anymore.

Even still though that is way over priced.

I don't have a cushiness pony (I have a pony who has every symptom of it but the blood test though!!!) and find micronsied linseed great - it also really helps with condition of the coat/itching/skin etc. I feed that, with ample dried thistles/nettles (in a separate bowl to pick and eat and free), and speed beet with an all round fit and min supplement. She then has hay on top of that :)
 
many thanks - you have all been extremely helpful to me :) i have found a website that does the prascend considerably cheaper than the vets price, i am also trying to work out a diet for her, another question though - am i able to give her unsoaked hay? reason being i hope to turn her back out for the winter with my other pony and they share the hay.
thank you all again :)
 
i have a horse recently diagnosed with cushings and she has been prescribed prascend at 1 a day.. could you let me know the web site please as money was very tight before , and now is almost non existant....., pm if prefer..thanks
 
I only soak the hay in summer, otherwise it can freeze solid if we have a winter like last year! Try throwing out a mixture of good clean oat straw and hay. The straw will fill them up but they won't get as fat as hay only.
 
Our local chemist has been very helpful in sourcing the cheapest Pergolide for us. I pay £44 per 100 tablets.
Pergolide was originally a human drug prescribed for Parkinsons disease and unfortunately for owners of newly diagnosed horses, Prescend, which is exactly the same drug, is marketed specifically for horses, which means vets are not allowed to prescribe Pergolide any more. My vets practice have had permission however, to continue to prescribe to owners of horses/ponies that are stable on Pergolide.
My advice would be to try all your local chemists as well as the internet.
 
I am doing a bit of reading up on Cushing's (otherwise called PPID) as I suspect one of my mares is showing early signs, and have just had her tested. Awaiting results.

I found this link to Liphook Equine Hospital really useful:

http://www.liphookequinehosp.co.uk/documents/PituitaryParsIntermediaDysfunction.pdf

There's a graph half way down the first page which shows just how dramatically the levels of a particular hormone (ACTH) increase in Cushing's horses during late summer and early autumn. From what I've discovered so far, this is a period when quite a few people have their horses retested and up the dose of pergolide to counter the effect of the ACTH.

So the period August to October can be a time when Cushing's horses first show a laminitis attack, although of course it can occur at other times of year too.

There's some really interesting stuff on the Prascend (horse version of pergolide) website too:

http://www.prascend.co.uk/

Googling on the net, it looks as though around £1 per tablet is about the price for prascend.

Sarah
 
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