Inventive ideas for feeding horses pills please

0ldmare

0ldmare

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ANY ideas welcome. My mare has laminitis and I'm having to give her Danillon and 1 x Pergolide and its getting increasingly difficult. Trouble is she hated speedi beet and Safe and Sound so I'm only left with Hi Fi lite which has worked until now for the Danillon. Except for the last couple of days its taken an hour to coax her to eat it and today she just won't. I've syringed it down but quite a bit got spat out. The pergolide I'm putting in the middle of a cube of carrot and that's worked fine but she's now suspicious of carrots!

Obviously I don't want use anything with sugar in it, but has anyone any ideas at all?

Edited to say, has anyone tried peppermint essense? Also I do know carrots have sugar but she's only getting a 1cm bit!
 
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I use the syringe method, it's the only thing that works with my suspicious 13.2 NF :)

You have to make sure you put your hand under the horse's jaw and lift the head as high as you can so their nose is the highest point, then aim and squirt with the syringe. If you do it right, the mixture goes straight down, and they don't have anything to spit back at you :)
 
I had to feed my lad 3 and a half gabapentin tabs and 6 danilon sachets twice a day before when he had a back problem. The quantity of danilon meant there was no way he was eating it in a feed - I made a thick paste by adding a small amount of water in a syringe and squirted it in like a wormer. The thicker the paste, the harder for them to spit it out. Followed that straight away with a polo or 3! (you can buy sugar free polos!)

The gabapentin tabs I used to give whole - headcollar on, hold head firmly in the air (I'm 5'3 and he's a big 16'2 so harder than it sounds) so head and neck are in straight line, open mouth and pop tabs far back as possible on the tongue with hand. Hold mouth closed and with other hand rubs throat to stimulate swallowing. Pretty easy with my lad as he's such a good boy. But can also manage it with half wild rescue pony too! Again follow with tasty treats
 
Not sure about sugar content so maybe this would be a no-no - but what about in a marmite sandwich? I gave my slightly sweet-itchy pony a marmite sandwich every day from Feb onwards and he loved them - I'm sure if there had been a tablet in there he wouldn't have noticed and I would think the marmite would be sticky enough that it would not fall out. Also, perhaps the powder could be mixed into the marmite?

I guess you could try a sandwich with no meds in it for a few days to acclimatise them to the taste, before adding meds at a later day.

????? just a thought.
 
zoon said:
I had to feed my lad 3 and a half gabapentin tabs and 6 danilon sachets twice a day before when he had a back problem. The quantity of danilon meant there was no way he was eating it in a feed - I made a thick paste by adding a small amount of water in a syringe and squirted it in like a wormer. The thicker the paste, the harder for them to spit it out. Followed that straight away with a polo or 3! (you can buy sugar free polos!)

The gabapentin tabs I used to give whole - headcollar on, hold head firmly in the air (I'm 5'3 and he's a big 16'2 so harder than it sounds) so head and neck are in straight line, open mouth and pop tabs far back as possible on the tongue with hand. Hold mouth closed and with other hand rubs throat to stimulate swallowing. Pretty easy with my lad as he's such a good boy. But can also manage it with half wild rescue pony too! Again follow with tasty treats
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God I'm impressed! Makes me look v v inadequate! What a huge number of pills to have to feed
 
boxers said:
Not sure about sugar content so maybe this would be a no-no - but what about in a marmite sandwich? I gave my slightly sweet-itchy pony a marmite sandwich every day from Feb onwards and he loved them - I'm sure if there had been a tablet in there he wouldn't have noticed and I would think the marmite would be sticky enough that it would not fall out. Also, perhaps the powder could be mixed into the marmite?

I guess you could try a sandwich with no meds in it for a few days to acclimatise them to the taste, before adding meds at a later day.

????? just a thought.
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That's an interesting idea, I'll try that. As you say maybe try it without pills for a day or 2. I guess there is a bit of sugar in the bread but, judging by the label on my loaf, not a lot. Thanks
 
0ldmare said:
That's an interesting idea, I'll try that. As you say maybe try it without pills for a day or 2. I guess there is a bit of sugar in the bread but, judging by the label on my loaf, not a lot. Thanks
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That souns like a great idea, i'll keep that in my "mental note book" incase I need it in the future.

Just a thought maybe a weightwatchers bread is lower in sugar content - i'm not sure as i've never looked at bread labels but it must be lower in something if its supposed to be better for you ;)

Good luck hope it works.
 
one easy way is marmite (yuk) trust me it will hide the taste of anything and also they seem to like it, i mix it with water to wet some chaff with the nasty tasting things in

just the thought of the taste and smell yuk yuk yuk :(:(:(:(
 
Right I've syringed it reasonably effectively for now - at least this time she got 99% of it rather than it mostly piddling out of her mouth on my head... :D

Now off to buy marmite..... I'll report back later!!

I'm away for 24 hours in couple of days time and so really need something easy so that my relatively non-horsey friend can manage. So the plan is I will syringe her for the next few days and in tandem try tempting her with marmite to lull her into a false sense of security so hopefully friend can do that trick while I'm not here :)

Oh and better get some weight watchers bread (good thinking)
 
Jam sandwiches!!!

ETA: My old boy will ONLY eat his pills if they're squished into malt loaf...
 
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