grumpy or something more?

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Parisexx

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Morning guys,
My mare has never liked having rugs but on but it was literally her pulling a face at me thats all. Lately though she has been behaving out of character and when her rugs are being put on she is really biting the air, ears flat back, biting her stable door etc clearly more unhappy than usual.
She has also lost a bit of condition with no change to diet at all. Is she just being grumpy as shes.getting older or something more? Thanks x
 
First, is she clipped? Does she have to be rugged? Is she worse when you buckle it? What is she like with saddle and girth? Are her poos barely formed soft or sloppy?
Gastric ulcers or some sort of hind gut irritation spring immediately to my mind as something to consider. Could she be too hot in her rug? Just a couple of ideas.

If you do a search for ulcers on here or google you should get loads of info.
 
Hi thanks for replying
she is worse when being buckled yes. She is now retired due to arthritus but when ridden she didnt like saddle or girthing, same reaction. X
 
Parisexx said:
Hi thanks for replying
she is worse when being buckled yes. She is now retired due to arthritus but when ridden she didnt like saddle or girthing, same reaction. X
Click to expand...

My guess would be gastric ulcers or kissing spine. Both conditions cause this type of behaviour when being rugged or tacked up.
 
You need a scope to confirm gastric ulcers and treatment is the drug omeprazole and people have had success with symptoms feeding this product http://www.succeed-equine.com/ Also you need to look at management and ensure there are no periods without forage, not too high sugar diet.
A vet check is probably your next step...

Here's some stuff on hind gut discomfort. Getting horses hind gut working properly is very important to their general health as well.
http://www.barefoothorseblog.blogspot.com/search/label/hind gut acidosis
http://barefoothorseblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/managing-your-microbes-or-how-to.html
 
Shes not clipped but i do feel she needs rugging to keep condition.
If i call the vet is he going to think im a cotton wool owner by getting him out just because she doesnt like being rugged?
She is fed on original molli and sugarbeet and gets half a bale of hay a night. Out for 12 hours, in for 12 x
 
It's the buckling up, the saddle and girth previously what you have observed and what your mare is telling you that are the pointers for the vet. :) Never feel inhibited or silly if you feel something is wrong. ;) I believe horses often put up with stuff for a long time or it's got bad before we notice in many cases. I've been there. :(
 
Def check for ulcers - sounds similar to my boy but he wasn't losing weight.

Our bill for consultation, scoping, overnighting at vets, Gastrogard treatment & VAT came to about £1800 from memory. Covered by our insurance.
 
Hi, my gelding is elderly and is very grumpy at the moment. He is TB and has very high withers and when I first bought him 17 years ago, before seamless rugs were invented;) his withers became very sore due to the weight of his New Zealand rug! Could it be that, has she high withers? If she has lost some condition, perhaps they are more pronounced now?
If not, I feed brewers yeast for his suspected ulcers in the form of Equimins Fibre Digester.
As I said tho, he has been grumpy again just recently and I think it may be due to pain. When this happened in late summer, I tried giving him a sachet of bute a day for three days and he went back to his placid self again so I started him on Devils Claw liquid,again from Equimins which seemed to do the job, then when the cold weather set, I started giving him half a sachet a day which again seemed to help so now I am debating whether to up it to 1 sachet.
If you are not insured like me due to her age, you could try these things first to establish if it is more pain from her arthritis, or try the brewers yeast which is good for ulcers, or another is Aloe Vera juice, again sold by Equimins.
I also had his teeth checked as at my geldings age 24, he may be starting to lose teeth, you could check that too? That might explain her weight loss if that needs doing?
Let us know how you go on, I'd be interested.
 
You could do a ranitidine trial - there have been posts about it on here. It's cheap to do and will indicate if its ulcers or not but it won't get rid of them. Example thread - see CPTrayes post:

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=496564&highlight=ranitidine

This product has research evidence behind it, indicating healing of ulcers in the group treated with this product. It's not cheap at about £5.70 per day for a 500 kg horse for a minimum of 28 days but its way cheaper than GastroGard.

http://www.petdrugsonline.co.uk/site.aspx?i=pr183707
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.2042-3306.1999.tb05178.x/abstract

Are there any management tweaks you could make? Is there enough forage in the field? Is there hay left in the morning? If not then she's spent time without access to forage so consider using some form of slow down feeder. I'm doing 2 of these with his soaked hay, so he's slowed down by the nets but gets to eat from a relatively natural position, and free access barley straw in his hay bar. I'm doing several forage sites because my vet told me there is some evidence that having several sites, so they have some movement when stabled, has been shown to be advantageous. I've not seen the evidence myself but figured there's no harm in it and its no hardship for me to make up two hay nets - in fact it mean I can actually carry them LOL:

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=10320875#post10320875

I plan to switch to a trickle net in the summer when he gets less hay in his stable.

I'd ditch the Molichop and go for an unmolassed chop, such as Just Chop. The added sugar in Molichop probably isn't helping.

I'm also going to use these Timothy hay blox, for added variety:
http://www.halleysfeeds.co.uk/equinehighfibreblox.html
 
if she is an older mare have you thought about cushings? my mare is always a sweetie to deal with but one of the things which made me suspect a problem was she started to become a bit grumpy . ( the other thing was she didnt lose her winter coat and she seemed to be hungry all of the time) hope you find your answer soon...
 
ali2 thanks for the detailed post, will look into all the links etc thank you :) she doesnt have any hay in field as plenty of grass still and has 5 sections of hay at night but none left in morning so may need to up this :) have just brought a new bag of moli but once this has gone will look at just chop thank u :)

splashgirl, i am thinking she needs a test for cushings as i believe she has some symtoms for this but then i think im a very hypocondiac owner lol! what did your horse display symptom wise? x
 
also ali2 them tablets you suggested, is it the whole packet at a time eg 12 tabs one day, 12 the next.. and how long shall i give them to her for x
 
I've not done this type of trial but I believe it's 12 per day and you should see some relief after a few days. So if you were to do it for a week you should be able to decide if it is ulcers or not. Let us know how you get on with whatever you decide to do :)
 
Am going to buy the tabs tomorrow and give them a go, also willget some brewers yeast which is meant to be good for hindgut thank u all x
 
My mare has just started gastro guard exact same symptoms you have described...vet came didnt think i was silly, i did buy rantinidine sp? and symptoms improved hence calling vet, is horse insured as this stuff is pretty expensive :)
 
Hi horseandshoes :) yes is insured , only exclusions are arthritus and sweet itch so insurance should cover yes? So vet visit needed? X
 
sorry only logged back in tonight. re cushings question, my mare didnt shed her coat, was extremely hungry all of the time(unusual), was a little bit grumpy and seemed to not be herself, she was much quieter to ride and handle ,the hollows over her eyes filled, she was also cribbing MUCH more than usual...her levels were quite high at 172 (should have been 47 then). hope that helps a bit...
 
Update, started mare on brewers yeast and no improvement, if anything shes now getting worse. She is now taking chunks out of my back when picking up front legs?!!!
 
Parisexx said:
Update, started mare on brewers yeast and no improvement, if anything shes now getting worse. She is now taking chunks out of my back when picking up front legs?!!!
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I had similar. My horse was almost dangerous, biting, kicking etc and it was due to pain somewhere in his stomach/gut.
I considered scoping. As a last resort before going down that route I cut out all molasses. Both sugar beet and molichaff have molasses so if you are still feeding these it is quite a high molasses burden.
I fed charcoal. I used stable label but there are other makes if you prefer. I learnt to give all the charcoal in one feed for maximum results. Cost of stable label charcoal to try would be £14. This would last 3 /4 weeks and determine if it worked. You would have to do this for 10 days or so (maybe less) to get results. I then also added limestone flour.
Cutting out molasses improved things by about 10% and suggested that I may have a gut problem, the charcoal resolved about another 60% and the limestone (which presumably acted as an antacid) was the icing on the cake.
Having done this I now have a very happy horse.

I tried mine on yea sac which is not that different from BY and it didn't help at all.

ps you are not a hypocondriac if this doesn't work and you have to call the vet for tests. Your horse is clearly telling you it is in pain and needs help.
 
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