grass nuts or pellets with cushings disease

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lucymay9701

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Please can someone tell me if it is suitable to feed grass nuts or pellets to a horse with borderline cushings? I'm not sure if there are any higher fibre versions availabe and if so whether they will improve the taste of her feed? My mare is having problems with allergies at the moment and we have started her on an elimination diet but we are having trouble getting her to eat her supplements on only hi-fi (she's currently on dengie hi fi molasses free but going to be changing this to something free from soya and alfalfa) and speedibeet. Its only day 2 so hopefully she may get used to her new more basic diet but I think we may need to add something so the grass pellets/nuts were just a thought, as long as they didn't worsen her allergies. She will need something added to keep weight on her in the winter anyway. She has borderline cushings though. She is just on chasteberry supplements at the moment but is monitored by the vet and has her ACTH levels checked. They're due for checking again near the end of the year. The vet was really pleased with her last level which had gone back into the normal range. I'm just not sure if grass nuts or pellets would be suitable for her to improve the taste of her feed as don't want to feed anything that is unsuitable for cushings? I've tried fenugreek before but she doesn't like it. Any tips would be much appreciated!! Thanks
 
Thanks for the replies, I've had a look at the simple systems website and was thinking of contacting them but I was thinking I could maybe put a similar diet together through my local feed suppliers. They're looking into which grass nuts or pellets they'd be able to get for me and then I'll be able to look further into it. The vet doesn't think she's particularly high risk for laminitis at the moment so hopefully they would be OK and will encourage her to eat. This morning she only ate 2 or 3 mouthfuls of her breakfast. She's really not impressed that we've removed her cubes at the moment and I feel very guilty! She usually has top spec cubes.
 
Just a thought, I tried Simple systems feeds to my horse (not the one that had cushings) as I like the idea of low sugar, molasses free etc, but as soon as the grass was good he wouldn't touch it.
He was tucking into his haylage like there was no tomorrow, but unless I mixed high fibre cubes in he wouldn't eat it.
He was fine earlier when the grass was scarce, but he did need to put weight on which was why I had to change.

Talk to a few different feed manufacturer's and see what they advise - Dodson and Horrell are pretty good.
 
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