So - vet's 75-80% sure it's . . .

Wagtail said:
Whilst my mare had a laminitic attack, I fed her only soaked late cut hay. But I maintained her thereafter on haylage that was high in fibre and low protein. My own haylage supplier does large bales of this, but now that she is the only one being restricted, I feed her Marksway high fibre and she is fine on it. But never, ever will I allow her to eat normal haylage.
Click to expand...
I think this is good advice if you have to feed haylage. Haylage depends (like hay) so much on the field it comes from and how well (or not) it is made. Not worth the risk in laminitis imo.

Hope she recovers soon. x
 
touchstone said:
Just a mention about dandelions as it seems a few have suggested feeding them, they are actually very high in sugar and contain the same fructan used to induce laminitis, I would stay well clear of them. There is a link here for further info:- http://www.safergrass.org/pdf/ESSdeadgrass.pdf
Click to expand...

Touchstone - this is actually extremely interesting . . . I've been pondering why Kali should have lami now when he's not had it in the two and a half years I've owned him (despite being on knee high grass at times) and didn't have it with his previous owner . . . and this article hit on something. The grazing land at our yard is managed by our YO who takes advice from people who manage grazing for cattle and sheep!!! He uses the weedkillers and fertilizers leftover from the neighbouring farm (owned by his father-in-law). This could be a coincidence . . . or it could be a contributing factor.

I knew this - but didn't really take in how very different the grazing needs to be for horses (than for sheep and cows).

I guess the next question is how do I manage this going forward? Move yards? Are there supplements/medications he can take to support his metabolism/mitigate the effects of the pasture?

Gosh, this is much, much bigger than I thought . . .

P
 
Look for a chaff that is UNMOLASSED - preferably coated in soya oil - TopSpec Lite is one. When you speak to the Laminitis helpline they will help you on diet - you must WEIGH everything - hay chaff etc - but they will give you the proportions needed and how often etc over 24 hours.

My 15h cob had 1kg of chaff with 2 pints of soaked speedibeet twicer a day and a max of 12lbs of hay over 24 hours - so I split it in to 3 or 4 haynets for her (i live at the yard so it was easy to pop out and hang a new one) Then they recommended that hay was soaked for a MIN of 30 mins and a MAX of an hour.
 
Slinkyunicorn said:
Look for a chaff that is UNMOLASSED - preferably coated in soya oil - TopSpec Lite is one. When you speak to the Laminitis helpline they will help you on diet - you must WEIGH everything - hay chaff etc - but they will give you the proportions needed and how often etc over 24 hours.

My 15h cob had 1kg of chaff with 2 pints of soaked speedibeet twicer a day and a max of 12lbs of hay over 24 hours - so I split it in to 3 or 4 haynets for her (i live at the yard so it was easy to pop out and hang a new one) Then they recommended that hay was soaked for a MIN of 30 mins and a MAX of an hour.
Click to expand...

Oh my goodness, now I'm confused. Vet said soak hay for 12-16 hours . . . so is it that or an hour? An hour is certainly easier for me as I can soak it while I'm at the yard in the morning, rinse it, hang it up to dry and it'll be fine for me to give him later in the evening. Speedibeet is like candy for Kal . . . surely I'm trying to get some condition OFF him? With you on the chaff . . . although his Alfa A Molasses Free ought to be suitable - but I'll check with the lami helpline.

Dear Lord, what are we in for? Please can someone supply me with a magic wand?

P
 
I had a mare who came down with lami one year after just being in a small paddock. We caught it really early and stabled her 24/7 on deep straw and gave her bute and sedalin. She had frog supports fitted and was not allowed out at all. She developed insulin resistance and her pedal bones dropped through the bottom of her feet. She was shot on Xmas eve 2007. My horse is now on extremely restricted grazing at the first sign of a flush. She has never had lami in the 5 yrs I have had her, but she is on a strip of bare grass with access to a tiny few inches of fresh grass once every two days. She is still overweight and I worry constantly about lami. We seem to think that horses require excellent grazing, when in the wild they forage on crappy ground. I don't think lami is something to be relieved about, its something that can and should be prevented by horse owners.
 
sleepykitten said:
I had a mare who came down with lami one year after just being in a small paddock. We caught it really early and stabled her 24/7 on deep straw and gave her bute and sedalin. She had frog supports fitted and was not allowed out at all. She developed insulin resistance and her pedal bones dropped through the bottom of her feet. She was shot on Xmas eve 2007. My horse is now on extremely restricted grazing at the first sign of a flush. She has never had lami in the 5 yrs I have had her, but she is on a strip of bare grass with access to a tiny few inches of fresh grass once every two days. She is still overweight and I worry constantly about lami. We seem to think that horses require excellent grazing, when in the wild they forage on crappy ground. I don't think lami is something to be relieved about, its something that can and should be prevented by horse owners.
Click to expand...

I am very sorry to hear about your mare. However, I'm not sure how to respond to the rest of your post. So I won't.

P
 
PolarSkye said:
Oh my goodness, now I'm confused. Vet said soak hay for 12-16 hours . . . so is it that or an hour? An hour is certainly easier for me as I can soak it while I'm at the yard in the morning, rinse it, hang it up to dry and it'll be fine for me to give him later in the evening. Speedibeet is like candy for Kal . . . surely I'm trying to get some condition OFF him? With you on the chaff . . . although his Alfa A Molasses Free ought to be suitable - but I'll check with the lami helpline.

Dear Lord, what are we in for? Please can someone supply me with a magic wand?

P
Click to expand...

Ok 2 pints of SOAKED speedibeet is not a lot - have look on a measuring jug in the kitchen - the reason it is important is that is moves through the gut slowly so keeps the gut moving and functioning - when you weigh out what my cob was eating it is in fact a small amount and they need to have something keeping their gut moving which where the speedibeet comes in. My cob dropped a LOT if weight over her box rest - it really does work BUT be guided by the TLC and the amounts required for your horse - they may well have tweaked it/changed it a bit as it was 5 years ago I used it. But I stick to that diet regime for her as part of her management - it gets upped slightly if she starts to look too thin - she now has visible ribs, no cresty neck or apple bum which was the hardest to shift - she has hay year round on her scrubby paddock to keep her gut moving:)
 
Slinkyunicorn said:
Ok 2 pints of SOAKED speedibeet is not a lot - have look on a measuring jug in the kitchen - the reason it is important is that is moves through the gut slowly so keeps the gut moving and functioning - when you weigh out what my cob was eating it is in fact a small amount and they need to have something keeping their gut moving which where the speedibeet comes in. My cob dropped a LOT if weight over her box rest - it really does work BUT be guided by the TLC and the amounts required for your horse - they may well have tweaked it/changed it a bit as it was 5 years ago I used it. But I stick to that diet regime for her as part of her management - it gets upped slightly if she starts to look too thin - she now has visible ribs, no cresty neck or apple bum which was the hardest to shift - she has hay year round on her scrubby paddock to keep her gut moving:)
Click to expand...

OK . . . now that makes sense - thank you for explaining. Will check with TLC on amounts, etc., but now the Speedibeet makes sense to me (and I have some!).

I'm still baffled as to how he got this though . . . he isn't that fat . . . no crest, no gutter and I can feel his ribs. He does look "well" . . . and he did come out of winter rather too well due to having had a holiday, but I worked hard to get weight off him once I moved him to this yard and I wouldn't say we were flush with grass (although there is obviously enough and what there is is rich). There was so little that we had to hay in the winter to keep them from being bored lunatics. He's always been what I would call a pretty poor doer in the past and has been on much, much better grass than this with no ill effects. He isn't out for that long - goes out about 9 a.m. and comes back in by about 2.30'ish. He gets minimal amounts of hard feed even when he's working and for the past two weeks he hasn't been getting any (b/c he was lame and wasn't working so I felt he didn't need it). I guess I want to get to the bottom of the cause so that I know how to manage it going forward - if that makes sense.

I'm certainly getting a first class crash course in laminitis thanks to all your helpful comments - sincere thanks for sharing your hard-won knowledge.

P
 
I feel your pain, lami is a real sudden shock and then all you get is conflicting advice from every source!
My mare got acute laminitis last June, she wasn't really overweight just a tiny bit bigger than she should have been and it literally came on overnight! Vet reccomended that I change her onto shavings thick and right to the door, so I did. Told me to soak hay for at least 12 hours, so I did. Gave me bute and sedalin and told me to put it in just a handful of Hifi light, so I did. And told me not to move her from the stable for 2 weeks until she came out to see how she was doing, so I didn't.
I followed everything my vet said, even though advice online was the total opposite in some cases!

Result - pony sound within a month (except for a slipping stifle due to not much movement) able to go out for an hour a day and then up to 4 hours over the winter and now back to roughly 2 hours a day. I don't think she will ever be able to go out for a full day again but it's just something we have to work around, and I'd rather have a healthy happy pony who can go out for that hour and bomb around the field like a loon and have a munch than a pony who can live out 24/7 and be very uncomfortable and one blade of grass could tip her over the edge.

It's a very difficult condition where you are constantly weighing up if you are doing too much or too little and there's never a right answer so don't beat yourself up too much :)
 
Why do certain horse get certain things and others do not.

I have a little New forest mare who lives out 24/7 all year round and has no restrictions on the amount of grass she has. Sh had never had laminitis

Out of interest Polarskye. Which yard are you at in Eversley. My yard is in Hartley Wintney.
 
montyforever said:
I feel your pain, lami is a real sudden shock and then all you get is conflicting advice from every source!
My mare got acute laminitis last June, she wasn't really overweight just a tiny bit bigger than she should have been and it literally came on overnight! Vet reccomended that I change her onto shavings thick and right to the door, so I did. Told me to soak hay for at least 12 hours, so I did. Gave me bute and sedalin and told me to put it in just a handful of Hifi light, so I did. And told me not to move her from the stable for 2 weeks until she came out to see how she was doing, so I didn't.
I followed everything my vet said, even though advice online was the total opposite in some cases!

Result - pony sound within a month (except for a slipping stifle due to not much movement) able to go out for an hour a day and then up to 4 hours over the winter and now back to roughly 2 hours a day. I don't think she will ever be able to go out for a full day again but it's just something we have to work around, and I'd rather have a healthy happy pony who can go out for that hour and bomb around the field like a loon and have a munch than a pony who can live out 24/7 and be very uncomfortable and one blade of grass could tip her over the edge.

It's a very difficult condition where you are constantly weighing up if you are doing too much or too little and there's never a right answer so don't beat yourself up too much :)
Click to expand...

Thank you Montyforever . . . it's a weird thing - I had worked myself up so much over things like kissing spine, suspensory ligament, navicular . . . that when I heard mild laminitis I kinda went "oh, is that all?" . . . how naive was I?

But. We caught it early, we have a treatment protocol, I trust my vet. Fingers crossed that that's enough to get it under control and that we can manage it going forward.

The alternative, though, is that the vet is wrong and that his x-ray shows it isn't lami but something else happening within the foot. At the moment I'm not sure how I feel about that.

But thank you for your kind words.

P x
 
paulineh said:
Why do certain horse get certain things and others do not.

I have a little New forest mare who lives out 24/7 all year round and has no restrictions on the amount of grass she has. Sh had never had laminitis

Out of interest Polarskye. Which yard are you at in Eversley. My yard is in Hartley Wintney.
Click to expand...

Paulineh - we're at Longreach. Where are you?

P
 
PolarSkye said:
Oh my goodness, now I'm confused. Vet said soak hay for 12-16 hours . . . so is it that or an hour? An hour is certainly easier for me as I can soak it while I'm at the yard in the morning, rinse it, hang it up to dry and it'll be fine for me to give him later in the evening. Speedibeet is like candy for Kal . . . surely I'm trying to get some condition OFF him? With you on the chaff . . . although his Alfa A Molasses Free ought to be suitable - but I'll check with the lami helpline.

Dear Lord, what are we in for? Please can someone supply me with a magic wand?

P
Click to expand...
For some reason, some horses need the hay soaked for 12 hours. I don't know why but some do. In theory 1 hour and rinsed should be enough. However I have had hay induce footyness in my lami pony with a 12 hour soak. Soaking it twice in a change of water for approx 2 hours each soak did the trick until I could source some different hay for her. It really is difficult unless you can have your hay tested for sugar and starch levels. Total of sugar and starch combined needs to be below 10%. If you are stuck with varying batches of hay it's a case of watching for symptoms like a hawk and being flexible and acting quickly. :(

Please can I share your magic wand? :cool:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top