Sugar beet given my pony the runs

seoirse

seoirse

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My elderly pony always gets a bit of an upset tummy when I put her onto sugar beet each autumn. It's usually just sloppy droppings for a couple of days and then she is fine. She is 25 now and this year I decided to try and introduce it as gradually as possible to try and prevent this reaction. I literally gave her a cup of soaked beet in her feed and the next day she had the runs good and proper. I persisted for a few days but after 5 days there was no improvement whatsoever. I have now stopped the sugar beet on Friday but she's still got the runs. She seems fine in herself. I'm going to give her another 48hrs and then if no improvement I'll call the vet. Does anyone on here have any ideas what might have caused this and why?
 
seoirse said:
My elderly pony always gets a bit of an upset tummy when I put her onto sugar beet each autumn. It's usually just sloppy droppings for a couple of days and then she is fine. She is 25 now and this year I decided to try and introduce it as gradually as possible to try and prevent this reaction. I literally gave her a cup of soaked beet in her feed and the next day she had the runs good and proper. I persisted for a few days but after 5 days there was no improvement whatsoever. I have now stopped the sugar beet on Friday but she's still got the runs. She seems fine in herself. I'm going to give her another 48hrs and then if no improvement I'll call the vet. Does anyone on here have any ideas what might have caused this and why?
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Is this molassed or unmolassed sugar beet?
 
seoirse said:
Sorry, I should have said, it's unmolassed. It's speedibeet.
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It still may be too high in sugar (I believe it's somewhere around 5%). You could try the Dodson & Horrall Completely unmolassed sugar beet pulp - it's white and lower in sugar than speedibeet. D&H don't advertise it for sale, or even mention it on their website but if you ask your feed merchant they should be able to order it from D&H. It comes in 15kg bags and works out very cost effective.
 
She has mollichaff anyway so I'm not sure if it is the sugar, though it could be. I only gave her the tiniest amount and she still reacted really badly. I may try the white stuff but not sure if I can bring myself to incase she reacts like this again as she's still in a state today and the last time she had beet was Friday. I've had to wash her tail and legs every day for the last week. Poor girl.
She's generally quite a toughie and can eat anything, though as I said beet has always upset her a bit but not to this extent.
 
If the sugar beet always upsets her tummy perhaps something else might work better. Try Charnwood Milling Micronised Linseed. Very effective and usually tummy friendly. Also extremely low sugar.
 
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