Feeding a fussy cushings horse

Dopeydapple

Dopeydapple

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Hi, after some advice, my very good doer got diagnosed with cushings about 18 months ago, main symptom was loss of weight and topline. She is doing well on half a pill per day and is a good weight and got quite a bit of topline back but as she's retired I'm not sure how much is reasonable to expect. She used to be a very greedy mare but since diagnosis just picks at her feed. She's currently on 16 plus and spillers senior balancer. The problem is she won't eat the balancer without the mix but when you add the mix to a ratio that is acceptable to her she'll only eat a few mouthfuls before she wanders off. She's had various mashes and except for the recovery mash she won't touch them anymore. It's really just a case of wanting her to have a balancer each day but are there any feeds that are good for cushings horses with it already in?
 
I do wonder whether these strong drugs change the flavour of things for our Cushings ponies. Maybe her food just doesn't taste right to her now?
Are you giving her feed right after her pill? I only ask that because the first time I had to increase the dose of Prascend I noticed he was slightly slow for about an hour afterwards, not really interested in food at all. Now I split his dose so we don't get zombie-pony these days.
 
suestowford said:
I do wonder whether these strong drugs change the flavour of things for our Cushings ponies. Maybe her food just doesn't taste right to her now?
Are you giving her feed right after her pill? I only ask that because the first time I had to increase the dose of Prascend I noticed he was slightly slow for about an hour afterwards, not really interested in food at all. Now I split his dose so we don't get zombie-pony these days.
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She stopped eating hard feed or apples / carrots all together for a bit due to prascend, now she gets her pill in a pill capsule so she can't taste or smell it and is eating again but only in very small quantities, when she was on a bigger dose of the pink pill a vet nurse told me it has to be given in 1 dose not split.
 
Cushcare is very conditioning, so you might need to feed less than the recommended amount. it is very palatable though and it's like a crumb texture. I used to put a small handful of high fibre nuts in my old mare's food, then she'd eat it. If that's what it takes, I can't see any harm in carrying on with the Sixteen Plus added.
 
my old girl used to go off her hard feed, but would still eat hay, when her dose of prescend was too high. so might be worth testing her levels again to see if she's on the right dose! that said, mine was on 4 a day, so it didn't take much for it to be too high.
 
Dopeydapple said:
She stopped eating hard feed or apples / carrots all together for a bit due to prascend, now she gets her pill in a pill capsule so she can't taste or smell it and is eating again but only in very small quantities, when she was on a bigger dose of the pink pill a vet nurse told me it has to be given in 1 dose not split.
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Splitting was recommended by a friend. I checked with the vet before I did so and the vet said it was fine to do that. I've been splitting the dose (it's a high dose and a small pony) for some years now and his bloods come back OK each time.
So here we are, you've been told one thing, I've been told the opposite...it's no wonder we all get a bit confused!

If she won't eat a balancer, would she eat a powdered vitamin/mineral supplement in something? Maybe grass nuts, most horses seem to like those and you can mush them up.
 
suestowford said:
Splitting was recommended by a friend. I checked with the vet before I did so and the vet said it was fine to do that. I've been splitting the dose (it's a high dose and a small pony) for some years now and his bloods come back OK each time.
So here we are, you've been told one thing, I've been told the opposite...it's no wonder we all get a bit confused!

If she won't eat a balancer, would she eat a powdered vitamin/mineral supplement in something? Maybe grass nuts, most horses seem to like those and you can mush them up.
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Maybe, she ate bute on dry mix with a bit of apple juice! It's just such a pain and so expensive to keep buying new things just to try to cover all the nutrients bases as she's on a pretty bare paddock and just eating hay.
 
Cushcare is very conditioning, I feed it to my elderly poor doer and he stays fat on 1 stubbs scoop a day which is just under the recommended amount for him per day vits & mins wise.

What balancer do you have her on? Mine seem to find Topspec balancer like crack and go crazy for it. I don't actually feed it as it sends the ridden one loopy so god knows what's in it but it must be tasty! They are less enthusiastic about Spillers & Baileys, so obviously something in the TS one.....
 
Maybe half cushcare topped up with a powdered balancer? That way I'm not trying to get her to eat a bigger quantity than she wants, she's not getting so much cushcare that she gains weight but between that and a powdered balancer she gets the additives she needs??
 
Cushcare is very palatable and soaks into a nice mash, it's quite heavily cinnamon flavoured so you could try adding a bit of cinnamon to her feed initially to trial if she'd eat it! I've also fed Re-Leve Mix when I couldn't get hold of Cushcare which seemed to be even more palatable and you could feed in small quantities, it's slightly less conditioning but still pretty low in sugar & starch.
 
KikiDee said:
Cushcare is very palatable and soaks into a nice mash, it's quite heavily cinnamon flavoured so you could try adding a bit of cinnamon to her feed initially to trial if she'd eat it! I've also fed Re-Leve Mix when I couldn't get hold of Cushcare which seemed to be even more palatable and you could feed in small quantities, it's slightly less conditioning but still pretty low in sugar & starch.
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Does it need to be a mash though? She seems to be totally off those ones, even the recovery mash had to be less sloppy than the instructions said.
 
Dopeydapple said:
Does it need to be a mash though? She seems to be totally off those ones, even the recovery mash had to be less sloppy than the instructions said.
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You can feed Cushcare & Re-Leve dry, the Cuschare is a bit dusty dry as it's a crumble so I mix with a bit of water and feed straight away. The Re-Leve is more like a mix and can be fed completely dry.
 
My cushings mare went completely off her normal feed even though the prascend wasn’t in it. She also stopped eating her hay and lost so much weight I was almost at the point of PTS. I contacted a few feed companies and got lots of samples for free and found she would eat Bailey’s lo cal balancer (smells really minty) and fast fibre and bought some high fibre haylage and mixed it with hay. I wondered if the medication changed her taste buds as she’d had the same feed for years ..
 
Dopeydapple said:
She stopped eating hard feed or apples / carrots all together for a bit due to prascend, now she gets her pill in a pill capsule so she can't taste or smell it and is eating again but only in very small quantities, when she was on a bigger dose of the pink pill a vet nurse told me it has to be given in 1 dose not split.
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My elderly mare is exactly the same, tried so many different feeds, currently accepting Baileys 26 but as I have just ordered 4 bags will probably stop eating it! Can I ask where you get your pill capsules from? Struggling to fry mine to take the tablets.
 
KikiDee said:
You can feed Cushcare & Re-Leve dry, the Cuschare is a bit dusty dry as it's a crumble so I mix with a bit of water and feed straight away. The Re-Leve is more like a mix and can be fed completely dry.
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Don’t feed Releve dry, says on the bag. We had one who got choke from eating it dry (before they printed it on bags)
 
Domirati said:
Don’t feed Releve dry, says on the bag. We had one who got choke from eating it dry (before they printed it on bags)
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By dry I mean it doesn’t need soaking into a mash. I don’t feed anything completely dry and always mix cubes or mix with a slug of water to avoid choke, I just assumed everyone did tbh.
 
Ideally you want to be no more than 10% sugar/starch combined.
D&H 16 plus is: Starch = 17.0% Sugar = 5.5% and Spillers Senior Balance is 14% combined.
Cushcare would be ideal if she would eat it.

Could she be going through "the veil" even though it is low dose?
My horse wasn't affected but it can be bad for some horses.
 
I split the prascend into 2 doses, always have done.

My suggestion for feed will no doubt produce cries but it works for both of my cushings horses. I feed molassed sugar beet, only a small quantity, with spillers lite and lean. Both do well on it and the sugar beet causes no problems with the big plus that they can't wait to eat it and the supplement.
If your horse is on minimal grass and a lot of hay I would guess you are also supplementing vit E. For a cushings horse I think the recommendation is up to around 5000iu per day.
If you finely grate a carrot into her feed she may find it tasty enough to eat.
 
Archangel said:
Ideally you want to be no more than 10% sugar/starch combined.
D&H 16 plus is: Starch = 17.0% Sugar = 5.5% and Spillers Senior Balance is 14% combined.
Cushcare would be ideal if she would eat it.

Could she be going through "the veil" even though it is low dose?
My horse wasn't affected but it can be bad for some horses.
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The 10% is for the overall diet though, not necessarily every element within it. If forage is relatively low NSC then a small amount of a higher NSC feed for palatability is not going to do harm to the non IR/EMS cushingoid.
 
Domirati said:
My elderly mare is exactly the same, tried so many different feeds, currently accepting Baileys 26 but as I have just ordered 4 bags will probably stop eating it! Can I ask where you get your pill capsules from? Struggling to fry mine to take the tablets.
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I get mine from a company called capsulin but if you Google pill capsule there's loads on Amazon, I'm just on an Amazon boycott.
 
Archangel said:
Ideally you want to be no more than 10% sugar/starch combined.
D&H 16 plus is: Starch = 17.0% Sugar = 5.5% and Spillers Senior Balance is 14% combined.
Cushcare would be ideal if she would eat it.

Could she be going through "the veil" even though it is low dose?
My horse wasn't affected but it can be bad for some horses.
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To be honest I'm not overly fussed of the sugar / starch is too high as she's eating such a small amount. She is bright and engaging otherwise so not like when she had the veil a few weeks after starting prascend. I do think it effects their taste buds and she's just not very interested in anything she's had before as she knows she doesn't enjoy it so much?? Hopefully the capsule stops that and new things will be tolerated better.
 
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