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Gastric ulcers in horses
My best friend and life saver all of a sudden started acting badly. As a stallion this is bad news. He usually was such a sweet horse that I was just as comfortable putting my 3 year old neice on him as I would put her on a gelding. So over the course of a few months my sweet boy turned horrid.
We were riding almost every day, getting both of us in condition to start dressage and most of the riding was trail by the san pedro river. He has never really gone longer than 3 days with out riding or some kind of excerise involing me.
Any way, I start to notice that his back mucles just disappeard. I am thinking some kind of wasting disease. So I call my vet. She comes out and agrees with me that my boy is not well. After an exam he is given banamine and guess what else! TAGAMENT. Yes that is right, my boy has ulcers. I can not tell you how much of a difference there was the next day! I let him out with the mares and his colt and he was playing with the colt again and bugging the mares. What a releif. But wait there is more. Treating ulcers is expensive. And I am on disablity now. Treatment is between five to thousand dollars a month!
Was it stress that did this? The new conditioning? No mares to breed this year? Or how about the treatment for his eye that he banged and had to have steroides for? Or perhaps it is the hay or grain? All of this or none of it?
Right now it does not matter really. I have researched and found pronuntrin made in germany to have really good results. But can not get it here. So he is on tagament for 90 days at 10 pills 3 times a day. Tagament can also cause his sperm count to go way down and he is the first Azteca A stallion with the AAHIA.
NOW we belive all the horses have varying degrees of ulcer activity! I feed aflafa, burmuda grass with senior feed (it is easy to digest and I have pregnant mares and a working stallion and a rescued race horses.) Include minerals, pepermint horse treats, apples. I am in AZ no grazing here.
Any one have any good ideas on how to deal with the ulcer issue? It appears to be plaguing a lot of horses. Really if my boy went from "he is really a stallion?" sweet good boy to threating any one making him move around in his pen to clean up, ulcers are a nasty thing. I had assumed the race horse had them. But not my boy, the only stress he had was the move to this new place, then the gelding showing up and then his eye. I want a natural way to help them with out taking every dime I have to do it. This tagament treatment is doing that well enough. One bottle has 100 800mg pills and he gets 30 a day. Also had to buy a ton of pepermint treats to grind up with the pills to hide them in his feed just so he got the meds. One bottle is around 35 $. Said bottle lasts for 3 days.
Any ideas would be wonderful.
Feel free to ask questions and if you would like to see pics of the aztecas please feel free to email me, @ azaztecahorses@yahoo.com
Thankyou in advance
Maygan
Dueling Dragons Azeteca horses.
Baroque horses of this century
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by maygan birchall on
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I added attachments pictures of Primero Viento and my neice as well as me riding before he got nasty. My pic on here is of my Primero too. I am too ashamed to show the pictures from our first dressage test from last month, my broken ribs making me tense and obviously his ulcer making him grumpy and tense. I feel so guilty!
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Permalink Reply by A_Sassy_Temptation on
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Its probably stress related. After you get these ulcers done with, try to avoid pain killers and give him gastro gaurd. Some horses bute doesn't bother them, but as it says on packaging of bute, excessive use of it can cause gastro intestinal problems. Gastro Gaurd is a preventive step and is taking orally like dewormer. I will gastro gaurd my show horse even though he is laid back as I would rather be cautious and preventive, then getting an ulcer experience.
Probably talking to your vet about preventitive measures will help, she/he may not advise giving gastro gaurd but my vet did she said both incase of having to use bute on my horse, and the stress of travelling (he is in the trailer approx 2-3 hours each week on the off season) and showing it could be accross the province traveling.
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Permalink Reply by Jan Jollymour on
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Hi, Maygan:
Don't waste time and energy being ashamed of anything - it's totally counterproductive, and now you have more information, so you are acting accordingly.
Even horses on pasture can have ulcers. It all depends on how they handle stressors in their lives. My Dad's totally laid back Trakehner gelding was scoped last summer after 2.5 months on pasture and no competitions (and he'd been transported and competed on Gastroguard, which is omeprazole). He still had healing ulcers then.
The consulitng internist gave us the following advice: free feed alfalfa/grass mix hay or cubes (that means 24/7), use Gastroguard (a whole tube) prior to every transport, regardless of distance, use Gastroguard through every absence from home/pasture, remove all concentrated feeds, especially grains, from his diet (we can and do still use fat). Since we've adopted the new regime the horse has settled completely in his transport/competition schedule, and eats and drinks well away from home. We have also had a good response from him and one of our DWB mares to the addition of powdered magnesium to their daily ration. Make sure you get pharmacetical grade magnesium, as anything else will just go right through. Do not use use Bute unless there's just no way around it, and if you do, use Gastroguard with it.
Good luck!
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Thank you for the suggestion, what i did not add to the inquiry is that I am on disablity with a tumor in my spinal cord. So cash is limited. Gastro guard runs 30 dollars a tube and as a preventitive I could use it but to treat him 3 times a day for sixty day there is no way I could afford it. SO he is on tagament for ninty days three times a day. He seems to be getting better but tagament can affect his sperm count and cause other problems. We still can not go for a trail ride he is too excited to come home and he was never like that before. So we ride out nice and I walk him back in hand. We cant do just arena work. I do not think it is fair to him. Going to try taking him out with another horse and see how that goes. Just wish there was some natural way to help him.
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Permalink Reply by Debra McDaid on
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Hi
There is a product that can help. It is called Equine Choice Probiotics. This comes in a paste and in a powder form. It is more likely that your horse has suffered a lack of 'healthy bugs' in his gut, and is having difficulty in digesting his food. His ph will go up, and he will end up with ulcers, colic and other horrid complications if the problem is not resolved. I have just gone through this with my 3 year old colt. The Equine Choice people have provided an entire regimen, including a pelleted feed I (from a different co.), and they suggested we go to the richest hay we could find. We have done this as we had always believed in second cut hay, but had on bad advice gone away from this (on grassy hay Che got worse). The answer it seems is to go from high sugars to high protien diet, combined with adding high levels of good bacteria to the gut. Their idea is that the good bacteria treats the whole stomach, but mainly and most importantly it gets to the hind gut, where most of the problem occurs in horses. The program is not cheap, but cheaper than most, but it WORKS. For me here in Canada it is $85.00 a container, and this lasted one horse almost 3 months (one scoop each feed that is 4 times a day for us). The paste to start is about $23.00 and at two tubs with it lasting about two weeks, then on to the powdered form after that. For some after time, the horse then produces it's own bacteria and can go off the product (my horse will likely be on it the rest of his life).
To let you know the severety of the issue my horse almost died a few times last summer, we have had serious troubles with him. Now since being on this (since September 09) he has imporved to the point where he has had no further problems... his stomach is normal, attitude is remarkably improved (he had always been a difficult arrogant sod of a stud- now he acts closer to 'normal'), and he no longer cramps up or colics. I am not the type of person to believe in much of anything, but this method has made a believer out of me... I have even switched from Western Oats to pellets (Buckeye Trifecta feed)-- something I swore I would never do... I have used the other products mentioned here, but while they provided a help, they did not come near to curring the problem... Che was still failing rappidly. He came to us with an insane desire to eat dirt, but in all other respects looked healthy and amazingly fit as a yearling-- he comes from Winbak Farms in the US a huge and high class breeding farm... but he was mineral and bacterially deficient we now know... we always had trouble with him, but in the end of the day he ended up getting into sand and had developed sand colic. We then solved that problem (not easy) and then had this secondary problem with this stomach become a bigger issue than the sand colic... we were lucky enough to talk to the right people, and now he is fine. If you are interested than the president's email is: David Craig Animal-Pro Products Inc. . He has been very helpful... I am not sure if this product is available to you in your area or not, but the idea of probiotics is still sound and there are other companies that sell them.. the only suggestion I have is that you make sure you use a live bacteria form, as the other is innert and not as effective. He will likely send you info if you ask for it... I also have info, and if you cannot find the info on your own and are intersted I will send this to you photocopied via email. The key we have learned is low sugar, high protein and bacteria either naturally produced by the horse, or given as a suppliment.
take care and good luck, deb
Probiotics really did save my horses life, we almost lost him. They don't work overnight, and although they take time, the results are obvious as the are continously fed. You can still use other medicines such as Gastro Guard and so on, but over time we eliminated all of the medicines and now just give him this every day. They don't directly stop ulcers, they allow the horse to process it's feed properly and heal it's own ulcers naturally.
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Thank you I will try using that for him. I usually give probiotics to new borns and those with lose stool. Works well for that. I can give it to him easily Thank you.
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Permalink Reply by Cortni Volkman on
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My trainer's ex-event horse had ulcers from stress and she gave him a supplement called Slippery Elm. They won't technically say it cures ulcers but she hasn't had any problems with his since he has been on it. It's even been proven to cure Irritable Bowel Syndrome in this one girl. It's like the magic supplement of the world. I'm not going to say they cure them either just because you never know. But it's cheap, and it really works well.
Here's a link about natural steps to ulcers as well. I'm biased towards Slippery Elm only because I've seen it work first hand.
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