cauda equina
Well-Known Member
Ride and lead with the wheelie bin is brilliant!
I wish mine would do that, my bin has to go nearly 1/4 mile to be emptied
I wish mine would do that, my bin has to go nearly 1/4 mile to be emptied
How on earth do you even begin to teach that? ? and what happens when it goes pear shaped?
Wow, I'm not the best at skipping on my own ?
so both heston’s are from the same cut/field if im understanding correctly? If so, and theyve been on it since winter, the hay doesnt sound like a trigger culprit.
But if you bought another heston from same supplier and dont know if it was same field/cut than the winter bales youve been using, it might be a causative factor.
Im not referring to sugar levels of hay causing sudden symptoms resembling lami/gaining weight. Im referring to herbicides and possible pre-harvest ‘dessication’ of hay fields with glyphosate - it helps the grass dry quicker - as a causative factor.
Glyphosate causes pancreatic changes and sugar metabolism issues, and many herbicides used now are ‘persistent’ endocrine/hormone-disrupting technology. They’re often used as they require only 1 pass for stubborn weeds like dock etc, the older types of herbicides would do a partial kill so many required 2 tractor sprayings. So the newer class of herbicides are called endocrine-disrupting as the chemical is designed specifically to interfere with the endocrine/growth/reproduction cells of the plant, killing it.
So far there’s been 1 study linking endocrine disruptors to ems conditions in equines. The research for equines is sparse and most studies refers to other test subjects aside from equines.
I never considered it before i got a batch of hay from a supplier - old meadows, low sugar grasses, mixture of grasses - ideal in terms of sugar. Literally within 24hrs of feeding it both horses were footy. even the younger gelding with massive soles and sturdy feet got footy. It was bizarre. The farmer who sold me the hay first said to me “we’ve got a clean farm here, spray for everything” - he meant no weeds in his hay, he sprays the whole place annually.
Mine experiencing symptoms like this prompted research for the past 18months into this subject. The equine world is awash with lami/ems and similar endocrine issues, and sugar is being ‘blamed’ for the whole lot. Of course feeding high sugar foods all the time causes issues, but we’ve got horses so bad in the equine world they cant be on a paddock at all!
I personally think we need to widen our focus and start to see the correlations between agri chemical changes/use and increasing swaths of equines suffering with weight/lami/ems symptoms while practically being on starvation paddocks and very lo calorie foods.
If the horses gut and pancreatic balance is altered by herbicide and glyphosate, that is why grass/unsoaked hay/any grain is a big no-no, as they cant process sugar. Sugar is being identified as causative to increasing symptoms, while the root cause is what’s causing endocrine disruption in the first place. Sugar doesnt cause endocrine disruption. Sugar metabolism is controlled by the pancreas and some minerals. Sugar doesnt cause the pancreas to go awry - its designed to deal with sugar. Something else causes the pancreas to stop being able to successfully break down carbs.
Don’t forget, we’re not talking about grains here, we know theyre higher sugar, we’re dealing with horses not being able to
Consume relatively low sugar hay Without it being soaked to death.
Did our previous generations of horse folk before 1990 have to soak all hay, avoid grains completely, muzzle 24/7, and ensure badly kept grass paddocks due to equine obesity/lami epidemic?
The elephant in the room no-one likes to talk about is what most forage is sprayed with. Many dont realise edocrine-disrupting new classes of chemicals are being used routinely now, especially these past 10yrs.
Dosage of spray is advised on the labels but that requires compliance by farmers in the field. for a particularly heavy infested field of weeds a farmer would be inclined to make a stronger batch.
Im a member on a popular uk farming forum, i read regularly the attitude towards sprays and their use.
If sugar was the cuprit mine wouldnt be able to graze the long grass fields theyre in, year in year out, while having no weight/feet issues. Yet a new batch of hay added to their regimen caused classic lami symptoms, and fat pads etc….switch to hay not sprayed and they recover.
Enquire how your hays are treated - what’s used for weed control….get supplier to tell you the actual product, and whether pre-harvest dessicating spray have also been used (indicating a glyphosate treatment - these will be very dry bales completely bleached throughout the bale with no green in it at all, hay also that was left laying on a field and got rained on and not regularly turned daily will also be bleached with no green so dont assume all bleached bales are dessicated with glyphosate, either way its badly made hay we shouldnt be feeding)
It took me 3 months to find out from a huge uk supplier of haylage what herbicides they use. Their agronomist skirted around the issue for months, telling me what they dont use….whereas all i asked was, what they DO use. It turned out to be a persistent endocrine disrupting spray, of course. So good luck finding out what‘s sprayed on crops, its like drawing blood from a stone.
We need to support organic hay merchants. Try yourself, switching to a hay you know for sure isnt treated with modern agri sprays.…note changes in your horses weight/feet/gut health.
Wow, that is a very informative reply. I was keeping horses back in the 80s and you are correct, only fat ponies on really lush grass seemed to get laminitis. It seems like an epidemic now.
We stopped spraying on our own land long ago. Use local hay, same supplier each time, but not the sort of person where I could easily enquire what is sprayed onto it without being shown the door! Old school. I am soaking though.
In winter, now mine is no longer showing EMS, I had planned to move to a laminitis friendly haylage. Just because we are not on mains drainage and dealing with hay soak water has been a headache. I wonder what they are sprayed with? I may email them this reply and enquire, if that is OK?
It also helps explain how Trinity Consultants L94 may work, as Simon explained how it helped the organs detoxify. That would make sense as to how it improves the condition. I had been ready to feed P45 as well when he was at grass, but we are up to 4 hours a day now, and he is on the slimmer side still; us using no sprays may help explain why there has been no resurgence in symptoms.
Do you have a link to that study? I would like to send it to my (very supportive) vet.
All progress. And Rigsby has at least worked out that you pick both front feet off the floor before either of the back ones ?
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