Question
I own an eight-year-old, 16-hand Thoroughbred gelding. He raced as a younger horse but hasn’t been on the track in two years. As last autumn approached, he started to become quite aggressive towards me, so I had a vet examine him, including having him scoped for gastric ulcers. He had no active ulceration, but his stomach lining showed scarring from previous ones. As all of this was happening, I realized the feed he was being fed was quite high in starch, so I stopped that. The aggression went away for the most part. He still has irritable days and will kick out while grooming and riding, which I have read to be a possible symptom of hindgut ulcers. Is this correct? I read that bran mashes could aggravate hindgut ulcers, so I was going to cut those from his diet. I started giving him bran mashes for windsucking, but I don’t think they helped that problem and might have made the ulcer symptoms worse. A friend of mine suggested I try EquiShure and has given me some to try. He will be fed a chaff product with no molasses and micronized linseed in addition to the Equishure. Is there any other recommendation? When will I be likely to see results?
Answer
Hindgut ulcers could very well be responsible for the behavioral issues your horse is exhibiting or at least contributing to his discomfort. Bran mash may aggravate the problem because as it is pretty high in starch, which can have a negative influence on an acidic hindgut. The windsucking may have been the result of the gastric ulcers from his racing days (the ones that left the scar tissue) and has now become a well- established behavior that would probably not change with the addition of bran.
Your idea to strip down this horse’s diet down to the basics and try him on the EquiShure is logical. You do not mention if the horse has another source of forage other than the chaff, but he may benefit from having some long-stem hay available to him to promote a healthy balance of the microorganisms in the hindgut.
The micronized linseed is a good source of omega-3 fatty acids, but without the feed you may also need a source of vitamins and minerals to balance the nutrients that may be lacking in the forage in the diet. This could be either in the form of a vitamin and mineral supplement or ration balancer. If the horse starts to lose too much weight with this high-forage diet, then you might think about adding a low-starch, high-fat calorie source like a stabilized rice bran.
Some horses given EquiShure have been known to act differently in a matter of days, while others take longer to show positive effects of supplementation.
