LBird
Well-Known Member
My horse was 'scoped yesterday and my suspicion that he has ulcers was confirmed. He has several grade 2 ulcers in the squamous tissue. His current work and feed regime appears to be appropriate so I'm wondering if he could have had the ulcers for a long time, perhaps since before he came to me. I've had him 2 years.
He currently works for about an hour 6 days out of 7. It's mostly light schooling with the odd intensive session (i.e. when we have our weekly lesson!), one session per week on a water treadmill which is relatively intensive but which he seems to enjoy, and the occasional hack. He travels twice a week, to the lesson and to the treadmill. He loads easily, travels quietly, eats his hay and doesn't sweat up - in other words he doesn't appear to find traveling stressful.
At the moment he is stabled during the day, during which time he has ad-lib hay (soaked as he is a good doer) and the company of other horses. He is turned out at night in a paddock with adequate grass. He is feed x2 daily: a big handful of lite chaff, a weight appropriate amount of Top Spec Senior Lite and about 30ml of corn oil. I have recently been adding 300g of competition mix to try to give him some energy but will be cutting that out incrementally until I see how he is after the ulcer treatment.
The only change the vet could suggest to the above is to give him a couple of handfuls of chaff immediately before we work, so that I will do.
He's on omeprazole now and will be scoped again in 4 weeks time. I want to make sure that he never gets ulcers again but I can't find any information about what else I can do.
I do know that there have been a couple of periods in his life when his feed regime was not ideal, but the most recent period is over 2 years ago. Could the ulcers have started then (or earlier) and not healed?
Thanks for any ideas / information.
He currently works for about an hour 6 days out of 7. It's mostly light schooling with the odd intensive session (i.e. when we have our weekly lesson!), one session per week on a water treadmill which is relatively intensive but which he seems to enjoy, and the occasional hack. He travels twice a week, to the lesson and to the treadmill. He loads easily, travels quietly, eats his hay and doesn't sweat up - in other words he doesn't appear to find traveling stressful.
At the moment he is stabled during the day, during which time he has ad-lib hay (soaked as he is a good doer) and the company of other horses. He is turned out at night in a paddock with adequate grass. He is feed x2 daily: a big handful of lite chaff, a weight appropriate amount of Top Spec Senior Lite and about 30ml of corn oil. I have recently been adding 300g of competition mix to try to give him some energy but will be cutting that out incrementally until I see how he is after the ulcer treatment.
The only change the vet could suggest to the above is to give him a couple of handfuls of chaff immediately before we work, so that I will do.
He's on omeprazole now and will be scoped again in 4 weeks time. I want to make sure that he never gets ulcers again but I can't find any information about what else I can do.
I do know that there have been a couple of periods in his life when his feed regime was not ideal, but the most recent period is over 2 years ago. Could the ulcers have started then (or earlier) and not healed?
Thanks for any ideas / information.
. When I went through my mare's day to day management with the vet he said it was pretty perfect - some horses are just more prone to ulcers than others. They apparently did a big study on a herd of broodmares who lived in idyllic conditions (or at least our idea of idyllic - no-one asked the horses 
) out in huge fields with adequate shelter etc and when scoped over half of them had ulcers. They were treated and scoped clear and 6 months later they scoped again and the same horses had ulcers! So in case you were - don't beat yourself up about it!
