Keeping the older horse 'solid' !!

[Joules]

I'm after some advice with an ongoing issue I have with my old horse.
Over the last few months I have been stuggling to keep his stools completely solid. The vet has been and done numerous tests on him and found nothing unusal, initially I thought it was because I changed his feed to senior products which were too rich for him. So we went back to old fashioned pony nuts, oats and hi-fi.

This seemed to work or a while, but now its gone back to how it was. It fluctulates from extremly runny, half n half and solid apart from when he passes wind and liquid comes out. I have tried plenty of products, ranging from Pink Powder, Hayledge Balancer, Diarraezza etc etc, out of these I found the hayledge balancer worked best for for a few weeks, then back to runny again.

Any advice would be great, and experiences would be gratefully shared.... losing the will and feeling guilty that im not helping my horse. I'm thinking the only way forward is to get the vet out again, but to be honest I found them a waste of time last time. (

Thanks and sorry for the essay.

 

[irish_only]

I have lots of horses, and just occasionally I may have one a bit like this, and have found that they are much better on hay as it is drier. A few years ago I had a youngster that just could not tolerate haylage, no matter how dry it was. Worth a try?

 

[JennBags]

It could possibly be the Alfafa in the Hi-Fi?

Recently changed my chaff to Westaway(?) Mollichaff (calmer) as it had no Alfa in it - and my younger horse is much more solid now. Didn't have any probs with the older one except when he was on box-rest.

Also, my YO swears by natural yoghurt - I guess as it's a pro or pre-biotic, it is supposed to help, but I find it easier to just add the haylage balancer.

 

[Bug2007]

My old man is like this he is 27, he is fed on Badminton High Fibre Complete and it solved all the problems, it used to come out like water, all sorted now. Insure he is on a really high fibre diet.