Faecal transformation

Those are in the herbs which are on order teddyt, but thankyou.

As it is, vet is now doing a biopsy tomorrow to rule out untreatable things such as cancer.
 
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It's actually transfaunation; some results come up if you google it but nothing terribly scientific. The risks are fairly minimal, but it's not a proven method of treating diarrhoea, although as a low cost last ditch attempt it's probably worth considering.

It's actually done fairly routinely in cows but they digest their food in their rumens, so it's easy to put the good bacteria etc where they need to go. Horses are hindgut digesters so getting the bugs where you want them is more difficult as they are likely to get broken down before they reach the caecum.

It's still used in foals with gut upsets to try to re-establish intestinal fauna, and it's actually normal for foals to transfaunate themselves by eating faeces during the first few weeks of life.

Even if referral is not an option I would ask your vet to speak to a medical specialist regarding your horse as they are usually quite happy to provide advice.

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Done routinely on cows? Really?

In the 65 years my father in law has lived and worked on our dairy farm he has never seen it done once....or even herd of it!
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No, I made it up.

Yes it's a common procedure although done a bit differently; the rumen contents of a healthy cow are aspirated and then tube fed to the sick cow. Works a treat.

Your father in-law may have used a product called vetrumex which contains freeze dried rumen contents, so the same principle but less messy.
 
Oh god! what a hopeless situation!!

I'd second the natural yogurt route and pssibly even trying adding limestone flour to his feed which would be retatively cheap.

I'd also take him off the mollassed chaff and put him on something blander.
 
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Oh god! what a hopeless situation!!

I'd second the natural yogurt route and pssibly even trying adding limestone flour to his feed which would be retatively cheap.

I'd also take him off the mollassed chaff and put him on something blander.

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Tried limestone flour (again, yet another thing I missed off the list - I was using it for antacid properties which is why!).

The chaff is not mollassed - I have avoided any kind of molassed feed due to the ulcers. Mollichaff High Fibre Alfalfa is one of the few chaffs on the market which has no coating of any kind on it, which means it needs damping for him to eat it (part of the reason for the speedibeet) but he is purposefully on an entirely grain-free, unmolassed diet (as he always has been FWIW).

Yes, hopeless just about sums it up!

The vet came yet again today (I fear I am single-handedly keeping the business afloat) in order to take biopsies and check for cancer, salmonella and other nasties, and if that it all clear then the next step is faecal transfaunation - poo porridge up his nose and into his stomach. How delightful! Thankfully, the state of the stomach and small intestine is vastly improved from the last scoping so the vet is now more optimistic that it is not anything untreatable.
 
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It's actually transfaunation; some results come up if you google it but nothing terribly scientific. The risks are fairly minimal, but it's not a proven method of treating diarrhoea, although as a low cost last ditch attempt it's probably worth considering.

It's actually done fairly routinely in cows but they digest their food in their rumens, so it's easy to put the good bacteria etc where they need to go. Horses are hindgut digesters so getting the bugs where you want them is more difficult as they are likely to get broken down before they reach the caecum.

It's still used in foals with gut upsets to try to re-establish intestinal fauna, and it's actually normal for foals to transfaunate themselves by eating faeces during the first few weeks of life.

Even if referral is not an option I would ask your vet to speak to a medical specialist regarding your horse as they are usually quite happy to provide advice.

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Done routinely on cows? Really?

In the 65 years my father in law has lived and worked on our dairy farm he has never seen it done once....or even herd of it!
smirk.gif


[/ QUOTE ]


No, I made it up.

Yes it's a common procedure although done a bit differently; the rumen contents of a healthy cow are aspirated and then tube fed to the sick cow. Works a treat.

Your father in-law may have used a product called vetrumex which contains freeze dried rumen contents, so the same principle but less messy.

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Slightly off topic but related to cows and stomaches... in South Africa when they have a Blue Tongue outbreak they slaughter an infected cow and take it's stomach contents and stick it in the other cows.

SpottedCat - fingers crossed for you both, when will you get the results?
 
Thanks DD - 10 days for the results or thereabouts. About another 10 days after that for the vet to call me if past experience is anything to go by! Aside from the popularity issue which makes him hard to pin down, I can't fault him, he's been v good with all of this - I did not envy him sticking his hand up my horse's backside today to do one of the biopsies - even I try and avoid that end of B if I can at the moment!
 
In my experience yoghurt's naff all use if it's made from pasteurised milk, raw goats milk however has been know to work wonders.
(Where do you live?! If you're near, you're welcome to some for nothing!)

We had a pretty bad one, but he responded to a)Blue Chip b) dry bran and c) raw goats milk
 
Personally I would cut out the speedi beet and therefore any trace of additional sugar.

If the horse is holding his weight then surely it has to be a digestive intolerence to some ingested matter or so you would have thought?

We had a horse that was as fat as a pig but could "do" through the eye of a needle.All his additional sugar intake was removed and he improved no end. He is now !normal" in that department..
 
It isn't the speedibeet - he's only gone back up to 'normal' weight since I started feeding it. This has been going on for over 12 months, his diet has been completely changed in that time. It doesn't have to be digestive intolerance, it could be cancer (hence biopsies), it could be abnormal fermentation patterns, it could be low-grade endemic salmonella.

April 09 (no speedibeet):
n533551873_2403563_2557218.jpg


October 09 (with speedibeet):
9435_183278046873_533551873_3718929_3481730_n.jpg
 
does the vet think that the antibiotics killed off the normal microbes in the gut?
or just that one type of micobe has overtaken the rest causing an imbalance and diarrhoea?
iv heard of the " shovel in [****]" treatment to try to fix the flora in a cows rumen in passing but ive never heard of it actually being done....
have you had a faecal sample done to check for odd things like coccidia or protozoa parasites?
 
Sorry if this has been mentioned, I've only skim read a lot of replies. But have you tried Coligine?

My foal have very bad scouring, it was the only thing that cleared him up.
 
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does the vet think that the antibiotics killed off the normal microbes in the gut?
or just that one type of micobe has overtaken the rest causing an imbalance and diarrhoea?
iv heard of the " shovel in [****]" treatment to try to fix the flora in a cows rumen in passing but ive never heard of it actually being done....
have you had a faecal sample done to check for odd things like coccidia or protozoa parasites?

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Maybe and maybe - the biopsies are because horses can harbour all kinds of things in the faeces which have no real effect - background noise if you will - and it is apparently only by checking what is present in the gut wall that you know what is really going on, hence the biopsies. Apparently checking dung samples doesn't give a clear picture, or that's how I understood it. The vet does not know - the options currently are cancer, abnormal fermentation (caused by either of the two scenarios you have listed) or a low-grade endemic infection such as salmonella. The biopsies should, hopefully, tell us more.

wasjosiejo - I suspect coligone worked on your foal because it has pre and pro biotics in it and that was enough to solve the problem, possibly alongside the antacids which it has in it. Not only does coligone not touch this, but neither have 3 other types of pre/pro biotic including protexin, biotal equine gold and topspec balancer, but he has also been on several different antacids, including protexin (which again has pre and pro biotics in it) which have not helped. I wish it were as simple as requiring a pre/probiotic/natural yoghurt etc etc, but it just is not.
 
What a nightmare T.
But I have to say that recent picture of him is the best I have ever seen him looking, he has started to fill out and muscle in the right places and look much more in proportion. Crazy really, as with all this digestive problem you might expect the opposite.
 
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What a nightmare T.
But I have to say that recent picture of him is the best I have ever seen him looking, he has started to fill out and muscle in the right places and look much more in proportion. Crazy really, as with all this digestive problem you might expect the opposite.

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I know, it makes no bloody sense does it?! I agree, this is the first time he has looked 'right' the whole time I have had him. However since I got him back in July is also the first time he has been consistently worked correctly without me blocking him, and it shows. I do wonder if he has had low grade ulcers for a long time though, as now he is much more willing to work over his back - but how much of that is being pain free and how much is the fact that I am now a much better rider on the flat is anyone's guess. I suspect I was always the problem...
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I suppose the difference at the moment is that he used to hold condition well enough to event to Novice on half a scoop of pony nuts once a day. I agree about the muscling being better now, but purely on condition he was fine. Now he needs two decent feed a day or he looks like picture one. He lost 50kg when this all started, looked like a hat rack, and it is only in the last month or two I have got him looking like pic 2.

It is really getting me down, I did not ride this morning as I could not face being covered in sh1t yet again.
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Oh, apart from the egg protein, it looks like it is basically rice bran, which is not dissimilar to equijewel, which we tried right at the start, and pre/pro biotics. Arrrgh!
Thanks anyway.
 
It's what worked on that yearling I was on about! I found the notes last night! We generally use this in combination with tuffrock and protexin on rotavirus.
 
Sorry, I assumed it was a long term problem and therefore digestive because of your comment re his weight in initial post

"- he seems perfectly happy and well in himself aside from this, is holding weight fine, competing fine etc.
 
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Sorry, I assumed it was a long term problem and therefore digestive because of your comment re his weight in initial post

"- he seems perfectly happy and well in himself aside from this, is holding weight fine, competing fine etc.

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It is long term in that it has been going on for over a year, and it is digestive in some way shape or form, but I can promise you that if it was as simple as a dietary change then it would no longer be a problem! That's not to say it is not abnormal fermentation caused by the intestinal fauna being imbalanced, or that it isn't a salmonella infection etc - could be either of those or, as I mentioned, cancer. He is holding his weight well, out competing etc, but he is only holding that weight since he was started on the speedibeet, so i am confident it is not that as until July he was not being fed it.

Basically he had gastric ulcers, needed antibiotics to clear them which was when the issue started, and nothing since has helped. I am sure I mentioned it was ulcer related in the OP.
 
Faecal transfaunation, or bacteriotherapy, is actually used sometimes in the treatment of c-diff and salmonella in humans when anti-biotic therapy has been unsuccessful. It was used as early as the 17th century. An effective and very cheap therapy.....
 
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