Low or no sugar electrolyte

[Roxylola]

Is this a thing even?
Charlie is on low sugar diet with added vitamin e following ulcers and tying up symptoms brought on by mollichop and occasionally stress at the time.
Hes doing great on that, but for a cob he's blooming high maintenance!
He currently gets alfa oil, baileys performance balancer, vitamin e, msm, aloe vera and I add electrolytes when he's getting sweaty. But I'm trying to find the lowest sugar I can and they've all got some in at least. It's making my brain hurt!
Should I just give up with them? Is the sugar a worse thing than the benefit of the salts? I could just add salt, but that's apparently not good for ulcers ?‍
I've just ordered the summer balancer from forage plus as it's got a decent amount of magnesium in and I'm trying to work out if switching his magnesium for electrolytes as I did at the end of last year has contributed to his mallanders flaring up or if that's just coincidence.
Any suggestions or just tell me I'm over thinking (again)

 

[milliepops]

so... i'd be interested to see if someone else can find more info. but i think the salt vs ulcers thing is about electrolyte pastes used in high quantities. which is not the same as slinging a spoon of salt into a horse's feed. I feed wet feed, the salt generally dissolves so is no longer abrasively granular which is the other effect I've seen written about.


David Marlin makes salt coated in oil, you could use that if you are concerned? it's called SafeSalt. he also makes coated electrolytes but they have a bit of dextrose in.

 

[Roxylola]

I've seen the safe salt, and wondered about that, but there's more in electrolytes than just nacl and it looked a but gimmicky tbh ?
I also feed wet feed so anything would dissolve, but then recently I've read alfa isn't great for ulcers so I'm also wondering if I dare change that now

 

[PapaverFollis]

I thought alfa was good for ulcers on account of the pH!

The world of equine nutrition just gets less and less clear I think!

I'm interested in low sugar electrolytes too. At the moment I just put table salt in their feeds but as you say there's more in electrolytes than NaCl...

 

[Roxylola]

Apparently it's because it's spiky PF, there's so much available now but searching low sugar electrolyte doesn't seem to bring anything up specific so I'm guessing it's not really a thing.
Hes so flipping complicated as well with all his needs, I'm reluctant to change anything as it's all "ok" but I'm also keen to be better if that makes sense

 

[milliepops]

I've seen the safe salt, and wondered about that, but there's more in electrolytes than just nacl and it looked a but gimmicky tbh ?
I also feed wet feed so anything would dissolve, but then recently I've read alfa isn't great for ulcers so I'm also wondering if I dare change that now

I don't feed alfalfa cos my horse gets lumpy but I think I'd go for soaked alfa nuts if I needed to, the small bits would be softer on delicate tums than coarse chaff. you could mix lo-salt with table salt and get the potassium, i think that ticks off the main ingredients in most electroyltes.

 

[Roxylola]

I don't feed alfalfa cos my horse gets lumpy but I think I'd go for soaked alfa nuts if I needed to, the small bits would be softer on delicate tums than coarse chaff. you could mix lo-salt with table salt and get the potassium, i think that ticks off the main ingredients in most electroyltes.

The only alfa nuts I've seen also have sugar beet in and I darent feed beet after it apparently triggered a huge mallanders flare up at the end of last year.

 

[milliepops]

oh that's strange, I have had emerald green ones in the past which are just alfalfa, i think the dengie nuts are plain too

 

[Roxylola]

Dengie definitely had beet, I'll look up the emerald green though

 

[milliepops]

was that alfa beet? they do just alfa nuts now. https://www.dengie.com/horse-feeds/pelleted-fibres/alfalfa-pellets/

just banging on in case they are easier to get, I used to get EG delivered.

 

[SEL]

I feed electrolytes to a PSSM horse (a very sensitive one) and tbh the dextrose content is so low that it isn't really going to push the overall content of the meal up enough to trigger an significant insulin response. Hay is the biggest trigger - even soaked - and I guess that's because she eats so much of it that any bale with a larger than average sugar content is going to cause an issue.

 

[PapaverFollis]

Apparently it's because it's spiky PF, there's so much available now but searching low sugar electrolyte doesn't seem to bring anything up specific so I'm guessing it's not really a thing.
Hes so flipping complicated as well with all his needs, I'm reluctant to change anything as it's all "ok" but I'm also keen to be better if that makes sense

I know exactly what you mean.

What Milliepops said rang a bell to something I read when I was thinking about this... that a mix of lo-salt and normal salt would work as an alternative to standard electrolytes.

I gave my two just normal electrolytes for a couple of days in winter for some reason. No issues,but they weren't in work so hard to say if it had any effect on the tying up one. Then I freaked out that it might cause an issue so I stopped!

 

[marmalade76]

Why not just feed table salt/lowsalt mix? Yes, there's more to electrolytes but surely the balancer would make up for this?

 

[Nudibranch]

It's 2 parts table salt to 1 part Lo Salt.

 

[mavandkaz]

I know they don't get a good rep on here, but hack up bespoke do an electrolyte that appears to be sugar free.
I have used it and it smells nice, and all horses have eaten it.