Hay and scouring horses

B

Bramley

Member
Joined
11 July 2010
Messages
18
Visit site
I have ten horses all fed on the best quality hay. All ten are scouring. i have tried hay from two other sources , had the vet but they still arn't right. Could this be because the farmers have put to much nitrogen on to help the growth this year? I have had horses for 45 years and never had this problem. Apart from hay they get Cubes, Alfalfa, oats, carrots,vitamins . They all look really well and are full of energy, wormed teeth done etc. Any ideas to help appreciated.
 
I know how you feel.
2 of my 3 recently had this, so called vet. Mine were worse than yours tho', one was off his food. This one was treated with antibiotics for ten days and given a course of psysilum (sp?), the other had just psysilium. We also have top quality hay and there was not too much sand in their droppings when we analyzed them.

Round here in Norfolk there have been many other horses with exactly the same and the vet was not really able to offer much insight. Lots of mild colic occurring.

I am not familiar with how nitrogen affects horses guts so i'd be interested to hear if that might be a causal factor. Both mine are now better -ish, at least the appetite is back in my main riding horse.
Good luck finding out what has caused it with yours, I really feel for you, it's messy, smelly and generally horrid dealing with this.
 
i am in aberdeenshire and have good quality hay also - but have found my horse is scouring. I thought it was because he had got access to the field lick i bought for my sec A, but I took it away about a week ago and he is still scouring. All he gets is lowcal balancer, safe&sound and a drop of speedibeet to dampen with a carrot. A friend suggested the warm water we have been putting in his water bucket might be causing a slight chill so have stopped doing that as of today...
 
Are we talking about 'dry' hay or hay that is vacuum-wrapped in plastic?
The latter is known to cause scouring sometimes but usually 'dry' hay only causes scouring if it hasn't been left long enough to 'die off' before it is fed. This 'die off' period must be at least 8 weeks ... considering the time of year I would expect that this shouldn't be a problem.

Are there alot of herbs in the hay? This could also be a cause of scouring ... a slight reaction to the herbs present.
 
My boy was having troubles a couple weeks ago although he has been on the same farmer's haylage since August and grazing the same paddock since Sept. The haylage is really nice quality and not very wet. I decided to try him on the same farmer's hay as that is good quality too so started mixing it to introduce him to hay again and now he is fully on it and am happy to say his droppings look so much better. Shame I havent been able to ride to see if he feels happier in himself cuz of the snow!
 
I do feed it dry but soaking it dosent help either. Just been out and bought a different type to see if that helps. Thanks for your replys.
 
How long have you soaked it for? I'd be tempted to soak for 12 hours and rinse before feeding for at least 3 days to see if the scour settles. Or send samples off for NSC content and or full analysis.
My pony got laminitis from a new/different batch of hay earlier this year! :(
 
Are you very sure its hay and not carrots u are giving I saythis because a friend was. Feeding her mare carrots each day
The mare as a result ended up scoring she couldn't work It out I told her to remove carrots
She stopped And the mare went back to normal
Have you tried give live yogurt ?
 
I have had horses scour on very good, almost too good haylage in the past, but never soaked hay!- in fact I put them back on to soaked hay and the problem sorted itself out. Have you had rain (or snow!) where you are? years ago I had a pony that would keep getting infections in flood/wet conditions and she used to get Baytril antibiotics for it which cleared it up when she was really bad with it- the Vet said it was caused by the rain, strangely enough. I've also used Protexin probiotics/ and more wormers when they were bad too, which helped, as does Pink Powder or as Ischa has mentioned some live yoghurt.
 
Had a horse blood tested and he had a low white blood cell count. The test said a virus. it seems to be going through the horses, another mare is poorly today. Most of the others seem to be recovered. I thought i had got them better on different hay but now this mare is ill. Vet again tomorrow i think.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top