Please help - all those with laminitcs

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pottamus

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I am having a nightmare and do not know what to do for the best. My lad is on box rest for laminitis and has a small stable sized area outside his box to wander in during the day on vets advice. He is affected in one foot only and is sound but still early days.
Over the weeks of care and box rest he has stopped eating to the point where he is down to nibbling at his hay when he is normally greedy...basically he has shut down and is totally fed up to the back teeth.
My vet says he needs to be eating the equilvalent to 3 pads of hay per day to keep things functioning but he is barely eating 1 - 2 pads per day and night period.
My vet has said if all else fails to give him a bucket of hi fi lite twice per day...but is this really enough? He will eat this but I am terrified of him getting other problems through not eating enough.
Please, any advice really gratefully recived on what you fed your chaps on laminitis treatment...if I can get 2 buckets of dengie down him and perhaps a pad of hay...is this enough to keep him functioning?
 
Hm. What about putting little buckets of feed around his stable and pen, or small trails of whatever he is allowed to eat. I found when Dizz was on box rest, that I had to make things interesting for her
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Hugs hun.
 
I would definitely give him a bucket of hi fi morning and night, and a pad of hay as well. It might be a bit late in the year for them but I pick nettles and let them dry and feed them to my lami pony when she is on box rest. I lost a pony many years ago when she totally stopped eating whilst on box rest for laminitis, my vet said to virtually starve her and she gave up completely, in the end couldn't get anything down her and her organs failed. With hindsight I suspect she had hyperlipaemia (sp). Nowadays we are lucky there are things that laminitics can safely be fed. It might be worth you contacting the laminitis clinic for advice.
 
Have you tried giving him some high fibre horsehage? With vets advice of course, but it is designed for those prone to lami and, according to my girls, is much more appetising than hay. As i said I would ask the vet's advice on this. If he is happy to eat the hi-fi then up this to the equivalent of the hay as it is basically a hay replacement.

Good luck and let us know how he goes on.
 
Is your hay decent quality? Seems like a daft question but a bored, sore horse isn't going to have much interest in a really scrappy old leaf of hay being offered
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...also, has your horse got company?
 
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Is your hay decent quality? Seems like a daft question but a bored, sore horse isn't going to have much interest in a really scrappy old leaf of hay being offered
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...also, has your horse got company?

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Good point about the hay quality.

It might sound a bit daft but do you have the facilites to try steaming your hay? It smells much nicer and seems more appetising to my mare. I don't know why, it's daft, but it's fact! She picks at normal hay, but wolfs down the steamed stuff!
 
Well 2 buckets of Hi Fi Lite are 2 buckets more than he is managing now so I would say that can only be a good thing.
Could you perhaps try a different type of hay from a different supplier?
 
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P.s mine loved the laminitic Horsehage - a bit pricey, but they'll eat it.....every last drop!!

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agree.
I know its not generally good to feed haylage to laminitics but the Horsehage High Fibre one is excellent. My shettie didn't gain any weight while on this
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when merlin stopped eating his hay, I fed him the marksway haylage for lami's (blue one) as its fibre and he certainly enjoyed eating it yes its expensive way of doing it but of he eats it then great!
Small and often feed of HH just so it brakes the day up for him, jolley ball with high fibre cubes in, not too many though, and either place in stable or in his little walk around bit so he's got something interesting going on....perhaps space the hay around and I would suggest highly of soaking it for at least a couple of hours if not 12, also to try and encourage him to eat it if it's spaced around stable and walk area....

I hope he feels better soon too, please keep us posted on him.
 
Does he have any horsey companions during the day?

In the wild if a horse in the herd gets sick then the rest of the herd will ostrasize it and leave it behind when they travel to new grazing. The sick horse is easy prey and is a risk to the herd as a whole. So when horses are left on their own their evolutionary instinct tells them they're most likely to die.

Same can apply to domesticated horses who are box rested away from their 'herd'. The isolation can lead them to give up - stop eating, lose the will to live.

If your horse has a pair bond then it would help your horse a lot to have him alongside him 24/7.
 
They do get fed up with hay, bless them, but you do have to stick to lower quality hay in my honest opinion, not worth taking the risk.
I know steaming/soaking takes out alot, but i still do not feed nice hay, my laminitic gets coarse hay.
She also gets happy hoof,high fibre nuts, speedi beet soon too, plus all the supplements including magnesium which is key in laminitics, mentioned on their website.
I used to feed laminaze 5*, for over two years it made no difference, and i thought to myself is this expensive powder going to save her from lammi. Anyway i tried magnesium and her feet are better than ever, even with the underlying rotation her hoof quality is fantastic and she has almost grown out the deformed foot she has developed from the lammi. My farrier noticed the difference with the magnesium and said whatever i was doing carry on doing it.

Well i have rambled on quite enough here, but in answer really to your original question i do believe that alot of these chaff based feeds can be used as a hay replacers.
Good luck with your cob
 
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It might sound a bit daft but do you have the facilites to try steaming your hay? It smells much nicer and seems more appetising to my mare. I don't know why, it's daft, but it's fact! She picks at normal hay, but wolfs down the steamed stuff!

Not daft at all my boy is the same!

My boy got copd after being on box rest with lammi, i tried soaking his hay which apart from being bloody hard work he wasnt too keen on. I now use a wheelie bin and a wallpaper steamer and steam his hay whilst i do my jobs and he loves it. Everyone on the yard comments on how nice it smells, it doesnt lose the goodness and kills the dust and spores. It really is worth a try and cheap and easy to do if you use a wallpaper steamer. He used to come in from his 2 hours out and just stand waiting for his tea. Now he's straight to his net and hardly comes up for air!! My boy is munching to his hearts content!
 
Unfortunately the soaking and steaming is a no go for my lad as he does not like it at all...even when not on box rest he won't touch it!
I may try to source some different hay although he was wolfing it down like no tomorrow prior to his box rest...he was alright for a week or so but then he just got fed up to the back teeth and even though he is now allowed to potter outside of his stable in a small area it is not helping...he wants to be out grazing grass I guess!
I will up his hi fi to one bucket twice a day and speak to the vet again...it is such a worry though when they wont eat enough as it is so unlike him and we have three more weeks of this before his next vet check up...never mind anything else!
He is down to half a bute twice a day mid-week this week (on vets instructions) so it will be interesting to see how he goes then.
 
Lol, you have the same steaming arrangement as me!

Only difference is I got a cheapy electrical timer and I set it up so it's just ready to tie up when I get there in the afternoon!
 
Both mine have had Laminitis and I feed them 1 slice of well soaked old hay every 4 hours (day and night) (soaked in new water each time) . (research has shown that it old hay is the best as one can remove a higher concentration of the nutritional value out of it).

You can also give a very small feed of Hi Fi Lite and Low Cal.

The most important thing is to make sure that your horses feet have foot supports fitted and that they are on pain relief.
 
Hi there, no worries, i bought it from feed merchants to start with, bought the equine america stuff, it came with a small scoop.
I now buy refill packs off ebay and use the same small scoop, it seems to have done the trick, my girls foot structure was appalling, but externally it is very good indeed now, and hopefully that will keep that pedal bone from moving any more, as long as we keep acute attacks at bay
 
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Just a note..Steaming Hay removes none of the nutrients.

Wouldn't want anyone to get caught out thinking it did.

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Interesting, i assumed it did, i have never steamed hay, only soaked it, but that does make perfect sense that it does not deplete nutrition. I am simply referring to keeping it low nutrition for a laminitic to truly be safe
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Yes absolutely. You can't be too careful. Apparently all it does (if you get it hot enough) is heat the spores to a temperature where they do not cause a problem.

It's not even that wet when it comes out. Just sort of cooked!

Personally I steam mine full throttle lol for an hour. It has stopped all the coughing and snot she had, so I guess I'm doing it right.

She literally runs around her stable now, grabbing bites of hay and bites of dinner. I've never known her so keen for her hay.

My little laminitic mare was fussy with her hay, so couldn't soak it but she had COPD. I just had to use the Blue? Horsehage. She couldn't manage anything else, poor little girl
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re foot supports, supportive bedding is important ie shavings, however, frog supports can actually make things worse depending on the angle of the pedal bone (ie the pressure on the back of the hoof can actully tip the bone further forward.

OP ANY of the laminitis trust approved feeds are able to be used as hay replacers, eg speedibeet, hi=fi lite, high fibre cubes etc.Speedibeet especially may help, hi-fi lite was of no interest to my horse. interestingly enough mine will eat anything with the NAF respirator boost in it, mint and fenugreek were well and truly dismissed but a bit of the NAF stuff gets them eating (particularly when there is drugs in the feed!)

would avoid haylage if at all possible, the "sugar" level of the actual grass may be low but the fermentation process is the main issue surround feeding it tolaminitics.

rather than the laminitis trust Phone line at £1 a minute - you will find all the info you need on their website (they don't tell you anything different (I was really disappointed with the call i made with regards to oe of my horses)

Circulation to the feet is vtally important so the turnout pen is a good idea - does he eat when he is in there as if so may be worth sticking him out 24 hours, anything is worth a shot!!
 
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