Jul 18, 2012

Fixing Horses.com


It took a long time to bring Bryan around. Longer than any other horse I had had till that time. But bring him around we did.

As with any horse that comes in to the program, we looked at everything. Diet, feet, tack, teeth. In SoCal boarding situations we don’t always have a lot of hay options. The barn I boarded at fed bermuda hay and/or alfalfa. You could special order timothy but it was pretty expensive. They did feed hay three times a day so he had food in front of him 24/7. I like grass hays but think it’s important for horses to have a variety of grasses so I supplement their regular hay ration with straight grass hay pellets, like oat or bermuda or timothy or orchard hay pellets, depending on price, availability, and the horse’s weight and work load. He was thinnish so the first thing we did was put him on lots of timothy pellets and Purina Ultium. I love to study NRC info and product details of various feeds. I have gone back and forth between the various senior feeds and Purina Ultium. Now I am able to access a local CA made pelleted feed that I am really happy with (King feed 11% pelleted enriched feed) but at the time I was using Ultium. I think Ultium is great and have always been happy with it. It is expensive though, and it is molasses based, which now I like to avoid, though its not as high sugar as some.

I also put him on Ranitidine. Ranitidine is an antacid and until Omeprazole became available it was all vets had really to treat equine gastric ulcers. I purchase it in bulk at Costco or Walmart; generic, it is way cheap. The drawback is that it doesn’t heal ulcers, and it needs to be fed at least twice and preferably three times a day. But it is therapeutic, and soothing, and any new horse I got at the time went right on it.