Horse coliced on weekend & need help with his diet

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missparis

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Unfortunately my horse had a bad bout of Colic on Saturday and thankfully is OK now, however, he has dropped a lot of weight. The vet has recommended a high fibre, low protein & sugar diet. This is currently what he is fed as well as normal hay/grass:

Alfa A
Pasture Nuts
Soya Oil

Supps:
Feedmark Extra Flex HA
NAF Pink Powders
Equine America Magnitude Powder

Due to his weight loss (and he is about to move yards and be heavily schooled), are the following products considered high fibre but low protein/sugar?

Equijewel
Releve

Any help is appreciated :) I have to admit, I am not that clued up when it comes to feeds.
 
Personally I'd keep him on the feed you have him on - minus the additives.

There can be many reasons for colic - it's not always diet related.
 
EquiJewel and releve are both based on rice bran which is not normally what horses would eat. The golden rule should be that forage based fibre should be fed rather than fibre derived from cereals.
 
I can't comment on the diet but what I will say is that diet is not the only factor in causing colic. For many years I had a horse who was prone to colic and I found that the following needs to be borne in mind:
1. Feed on time - dont make the horse wait.
2. Keep your horse stress free. Stress can bring on colic quickly.
3. Make sure your horse is wormed. A worm burden can cause colic.
4. Dont make sudden changes to his or her routine.
5. Trickle feed if you can to keep the gut moving.
Hope this helps.
Good luck.
 
amymay said:
Personally I'd keep him on the feed you have him on - minus the additives.

There can be many reasons for colic - it's not always diet related.
Click to expand...

I would be very cautious about changing his feed. I would cut out all the suplements to start with as this wont harm him and it might be that he is allergic to somthing in one of them.Do you know how he was kept before you got him . A lot of continental show jumpers never get much turn out if any.It may be that his gut simply cant handle large amounts of fibre.He is already on a high fibre low starch diet .
 
Also - you say your horse is going off for intense schooling shortly - he may well not be up for this for some time. My boy had a bout of perontanitus and I am having to go very VERY slowly in bringing him back into work. He was quite fit previously but now is on 15 mins walking in the school every other day to ensure he doesn't go backwards. It is also taking a while to build up his condition again. He dropped weight so fast it was scary, even though it was expected.
 
My gelding had a 'random' bout of colic - a large impaction in february this year. NOTHING had changed in his feeding or routine and he was and is still on a high fibre low protein diet. while he did lose weight initially, it did come back on very well and we haven't had a problem since.

You need to consider a few other causes of this colic.

Teeth - have they been checked since the colic to make sure they aren't impeeding digestion

Worms - do a faecal worm egg count and lood test for tapeworm to rule these out as a cause.

does your horse eat his bedding?

have you recently started feeding hay - dry? this is the only plausible reason for my boy's colic, so worth considering. I now dampen hay and feed feeds very wet.

what you are feeding sounds fine, although you could try adding some speedi beet for more weight.

I also wouldn't be working your horse very hard anytime soon. in fact he should have a few weeks off to recouperate before bringing him back slowly.
 
Thanks everybody for your replies & advice.

The vet confirmed that it was Impaction Colic - I think it may have been caused by feeding him an apple in the morning that he pretty much swallowed whole, although, not 100%.

Will look at getting his teeth and worm count rechecked, although both done in the past 2 months with no problems.

His hay has always been fed dry. Although imported, and I think he used to be on a strict routine, his previous owners of 6 years always had him turned out in the day, fed him dry hay & normal feed and he has never coliced before (cannot comment before the age of 6).

He is kept on shavings, however, as he throws his food around, he is generally searching through his shavings for more food, so dare say that he does eat it too.

I will mention to the new yard next week and delay his schooling for a couple of weeks/month if he needs it.
 
Worm counts do not detect tapeworm (and sometimes also not small encysted redworm) - for tapeworm you need to either bloodtest via your vet (autumn) or worm them for tapeworm at least annually, spring and autumn if there is a serious problem. Small encysted redworm should be wormed for once a year, again in autumn. Everything else the worm count will show up.

I would be much more suspicious of the shavings/dry hay than of the apple. Horses who have previously been ok with dry hay can suddenly not cope with it anymore, so I would soak it. And spray the shavings with very dilute disinfectant, it then becomes unpalatable to them :-)
 
I have a horse that colicked every few weeks for a couple of years - was very worrying as you can imagine - wil this one be the last kind of thing.

I found a couple of things - for a start oils are not always good. A solid seed oil is better - so linseed meal has oil and also mucilage - that is a sticky substance that helps to soothe mucous membranes.

Second - all grains out of the diet, especially barley. None at all. Don;t know what is in your pasture nuts - but as soon as I took grains out of his diet he was fine - no more colic.

I do feed oats now - but soaked and sprouted.
 
Just looking at your post again - did your vet do bloods? test your horses liver? just that the low protein option might suggest helping the liver out but feeding sugars would contradict it. Just being nosey!
 
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