Hay Belly

[-Sj-]

Any advice for the above? We have a little mare that came to us with no muscle, no topline, visible ribs and a sunken backbone. She is 12 years old, sec a. She was wormed as soon as she arrived on the yard and vet sent off a fecal sample which came back favourable. She has been tested for pregnancy and chushing's both clear. When she arrived vet advised giving her plenty adlib hay (which I soaked) and after a few days I started to give her a scoop of fibre beet in the evening. She has developed a massive haybelly. We are on winter routine at our yard so she is turned out 8am-5pm and coming into a large haynet and her scoop of FB. The paddock has plenty grass as we have managed it well over the year to allow the ponies some winter grass eating. As she was so thin and unfit when she arrived at the beginning of oct I started off walking her out in hand for 15 mins every day and have now upped the exercise to walk and trot for 15-20 mins a day depending alternating lunging and older daughter riding. Any advice as to how I can help settle her tummy down?

 

[claribella]

My mare gets this but I swapped to thunderbrook base mix and most recently started adding their liquid gold to her feed and her belly is starting to go down. The base mix contains a pre and pro biotic and the liquid gold is a base of seabuckthorn amongst other things. Id efintely recommend their feeds. Ive tried everything for my mare and she never looked better on it and you feed such tiny amounts that it saves on my pocket.

 

[flintfootfilly]

Ask for a copy of the full blood reports.

The Cushing's test will probably have been a baseline ACTH test. The report will give you your mare's figure, plus a reference figure (which varies according to the time of year).

With ACTH testing, there is a grey area between positive and negative results, and it may be that your vet has oversimplified things and said negative when in fact she might have been in that grey area.

One of my mares was in the grey area, and I was able to convince my vet to prescribe pergolide because she was suffering with laminitis (and her diet was already good in that respect) and was also very depressed/lethargic. She would stand with her nose nearly on the ground, looking like she'd been sedated. Very different from a normal pony snoozing. Her feet had horizontal event rings on, despite having been on the same hay only regime for 6 months (and my other ponies did not show this).

So personally I'd check out that result more fully before looking for any other cause. Pergolide made a massive difference to my mare.

Sarah