laminitic horse and hay

0ldmare

0ldmare

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My old mare who has laminitis/recently diagnosed with cushings is really hating soaked hay. She thinks its the work of satan. Show her a single strand of old dry hay and she's onto it like a rat up a drain pipe.

At the moment I'm persevering with soaked but I'm mixing in a *tiny* little bit of dry as well (yes I know its dangerous, but she's got to eat something and if she 'gets started' she will eat a little of the soaked, but I'm chucking away 3/4 of it!)

I posted in stableyard that I wanted to get my new season hay tested to see if I could feed it dry but one of the replies was that the sugar content can vary even off a single field? So what else can I do? She's losing weight. Would steaming reduce the sugar? (Not sure she will eat that either) Horsehage was suggested? Or something else?

I'm running out of last years poor August cut hay to use as an incentive so need to figure something out.

(NB I've got a barn full of beautiful june hay!)

My mare is *a little* better and is now able to shuffle around/is happier I'm please to say (fingers v v crossed, as she is still crippled)
 
I'm not sure how long you've been trying to feed her the soaked hay. My mare had laminitis in March and she refused to eat soaked hay for 2 whole days, the vet was getting worried too.

When you soak hay for 12hours it takes nearly all the sugar out, when you steam hay it reduces the spores so it's better for a horse with COPD. I hope she eats soon x
 
Quick question... what feed is she getting now? I know unrelated to hay but bear with....

edited: p.s. can't believe I just said 'bear with'!! Must stop watching Miranda.
 
Eventually, she will eat it. Can you get hold of any straw? She'll be so disgusted by it that she wolfs the hay down! Only kidding. I think your answer is to mix in some of your dry stuff. I used to take small tubs of hay in the house and soak it for 30 mins in hot water and drain it in the sink. Kept popping out with these. Have you been on themetabolichorse yet? Might have some more ideas and updated science since I needed to go on there.
 
give your vet a call for advise

What about straw? Hifi light ?

http://www.laminitis.org/approval.html

scroll down to bottom of the page for lami approved feed, perhaps you could put a bit in with her hay so she has to search through the hay for it and will eat some in the process
 
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tallyho! said:
Quick question... what feed is she getting now? I know unrelated to hay but bear with....

edited: p.s. can't believe I just said 'bear with'!! Must stop watching Miranda.
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She's being a total twerp with 'hard' feed too. Won't touch the super dooper D&H Safe and Sound I bought, nor the Speedi Beet. Won't eat Leisure mix which used to be her feed. Only darn thing she will eat at the moment is Hi Fi lite! Bizarre, she eats her Danillon no probs if its just Hi Fi Lite!!
 
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Oh good! She knows whats good for her.... hi fi lite, happy hoof, you can feed tubfuls of that. You don't need to soak hay for 12hrs, sugar molecules are the first to leach out of hay (well anything actually hence why humans get diabetes). It only needs about an hour tops. Anything after thay will make it taste sour. No wonder your mare will spit it out. It's like eating wee-grass! :D

I don't know how some horses eat it though!!!! Anyway, another alternative is haylage. Believe it or not, haylage has much much less sugar than hay. hay is baled dry so sugar is preserved. Haylage is baled damp and then wrapped so it breaks down but preserves protien - good ingredient for recovering lami as hoof will need protien molecules to rebuild damaged hoof walls etc.

I would probably keep trying with speedi-beet, lots of calcium - good for hooves.
 
Oh I didn't know that about haylage! She ADORES haylage, its her fave thing in the whole wide world (well except for extra stong mints that is!) Are you sure it would be ok?
 
it's expensive but no reason why you can't feed her buckets full of hifi light until she changes her mind and goes off that too!
 
Ella19 said:
it's expensive but no reason why you can't feed her buckets full of hifi light until she changes her mind and goes off that too!
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That's exactly what worries me about feeding more of it. At the moment she's excited to get her 'feed' so eats the Danillon. (As long as I feed it dry she likes it, that is - wierd old mare, add water and she won't touch it!)
 
http://www.horsefeeds.co.uk/laminitisresearch.html
http://www.ehhaylage.co.uk/forage_article.asp

Yes I'm sure. I've done it myself with my own lami and I panicked and jumped up and down too. It's awful to have one!!!! But, to prove my YO owner wrong I got it tested and she was right. It WAS lower in sugar.

You have to feed more of it as it has a high water content so pound for pound, you need more of it to get the same amount of fibre. All the other essential nutrients are still there though.

It is expensive this year, you're right ELLA19.... so you could mix it with barley/oat straw. Cheaper and packed with even more fibre. I didn't have to do this as I changed to a straw bed and he helped himself to that, thank you very much.
 
Brilliant, thanks! I will try to get some tomorrow (wonder if they would like to swap for lovely, beautiful hay)
 
When my lad was on box rest for laminitis he soon went off all food too, would not touch soaked or steamed hay, his feed with bute in it...nothing. He lost so much weight in a short space of time that the vet said enough is enough get him on dry hay, hi fi horsehage, anything to get him eating. He was barely pooing by this stage and what he did was pure liquid...it was dreadful.
I bought some dengi healthy hooves as he had gone off his high fi lite too and he wolfed it down. I gave him a big bucket full in the morning and one at night and some dry hay.
I got my hay analysed and found it to be higher in sugars and digestible energy than high fibre horsehage and also high in pertential moulds due to its high stalk content. So I started feeding him a slice of horsehage twice a day with less hay and he picked up in a week. It transpired that he hated the hay I was using when wetted down and in the end I got rid of it and found a supplier of year old meadow hay, which he has been happy every since to eat soaked. Good luck it is worrying when they wont eat, try upping the hi fi and perhaps soaking the hay for less time. Also make sure you use fresh water each time too.
 
Hello,

You could also try the timothy horsehage. I switched to this from the
blue ryegrass for my native pony a few years ago, and that switch helped
her lose the last bit of her cresty neck and has kept her weight in a
normal range since then. She also stopped gorging the haylage, and
instead sort of grazes it, so the net lasts all night, not just an hour!

Good luck -- dene
 
Is she that lami prone that she can't just have old hay dry? I've always fed mine hay (dry) even when they went through their very occassional lami-episodes. If she won't eat soaked hay, there's not really any other choices! You can feed buckets of hi-fi etc. which I have done in the past but its very expensive...
 
OldMare without picking out individual responses (don't want to cause a bun fight). I would suggest that some of the replies to this thread could cause some laminitics to get worse - and even induce laminitis in some sensitive horses.

As you seem to be struggling maybe it would be best if you could consult an independent and qualified equine nutritionist.
 
I certainly would not be feeding happyhoof (and probably not HiFi lite either) as both contain mollasses.
You need to find something totally un-mollassed.
 
I swear by Simple System feeds for laminitics. If you give them a call they are very helpful and will tailor a diet for your horse. As joeanne says, I would touch neither of the above. Top Spec Top Chop is completely unmolassed but other than that there is a lot of misleading labelling going on out there. Not as many feeds are approved by the Laminitis Trust as the feed companies would like you to believe.
 
PeterNatt said:
Hay and haylage do not contain protein.
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I'm sorry but that is not the case at all! Hay and haylage both contain protein, although the amount in them varies according to the grasses it is made from and the way it is stored etc. Hay could be as low as 4.5 protein if it is poor quality, or generally up to about 10% protein. Haylages do tend to be slightly higher in protein - usually in a range of about 7-14% protein.

But going back to the OP, yes Dodson & Horrell do offer a reasonably priced hay analysis service. :)
 
Ladyinred said:
I swear by Simple System feeds for laminitics. If you give them a call they are very helpful and will tailor a diet for your horse. As joeanne says, I would touch neither of the above. Top Spec Top Chop is completely unmolassed but other than that there is a lot of misleading labelling going on out there. Not as many feeds are approved by the Laminitis Trust as the feed companies would like you to believe.
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Last time I checked the LT does not test the feeds it approves. Many of the feeds have molasses in - sometimes called 'Moglo' but it is still molasses.

For some horses any amount of molasses is too much.

Regardless of sugar content, some haylage is too acidic and many vets will not recommend because acidifying the gut is unhelpful for laminitics. Again even if low sugar an acidic haylage can tip a lami horse over the edge because it disturbs the ph of the gut.

It is unwise to generalise regarding sugar content of either hay or haylage and it is equally unwise to suggest that one is consistently higher in sugar than the other. There are so many factors in play including; grass species, weather, environment, time of day cut, whether fertilised, soil fertility/mineral balance. The only time you can be sure is when you have had the forage tested.

Also to suggest that one hour soak for hay is sufficient is again unwise. It is fine for some and not fine for others. I care for a number of laminitics and a one hour soak would have them toes up in no time at all. Steaming to remove sugar is pointless. A common mistake when soaking is to use insufficient water and/or to reuse water. Because the process uses osmosis more water is helpful. Also the hay is better rinsed after soaking - partly because of the build up of natural yeasts but also because if any nitrogen fertiliser was used on the crop then the nitrogen undergoes a chemical change which can make it toxic.

Simple systems feeds are fine, although I find the recommendations for lucie nuts/bics a little worrying - simply because quite a number of horses have a bad reaction to alfalfa products. The ingredients for a basic lami mix can be bought very cheaply if owners want to make their own. Otherwise an alternative is Thunderbrook, although again this doesn't work for everyone.

For the lami owner it is important to learn to read your horse and their hooves for yourself because sadly the professional help out there can be somewhat lacking.
 
I just want to add that two of my horses got laminitus last year in winter DUE to the haylage. The pony got it really badly, and my event mare also had mild signs of it. We changed them back onto meadow hay,and fortunately both are now fine, but it was really touch and go with the pony for a while. Neither had had laminitus before we changed to haylage, and neither have had any signs of it since we changed back to hay... We never soaked the hay for the laminitic pony, we fed it dry without problems, just used low quality hay. The thought of you changing onto haylage is scaring me.
 
Oh goodness what a complicated area this all is!

Right, I've posted my hay sample for analysis (a mix of hay from 10 different bales, so will hopefully give a reasonably representative sample). All the hay came off the same field, same cut and the field is only used for hay so (I'm told) is less likely to have massive variance.

If it comes back very low sugar then I'll feed it dry, if it comes back borderline I'll try soaking it for an hour and see if she will eat it, although the odds are stacked against it to be honest as she is so blooming adamant that she will not have it - (miserable old goat that she is). If it comes back as high then I'm going cry at having wasted so much money on hay and then buy in blue horsehage as it seems to be the only sure fire option thats reliably tested.

Re the Hi Fi Lite, based on the fact its on the Laminitic trusts website as approved and given that it is the only thing she will eat with her pills in, I'm going to have to carry on feeding 1/2 a scoop twice a day.

Oh and pray!
 
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