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Monitoring the health of horses means assessing what goes in and what comes out. Well-formed manure is one hallmark of health in horses, and unusual manure can be a sign of impending trouble. Horses with free fecal water syndrome (FFWS) usually have normal manure, but produce and expel liquid either during defecation or at other times. While FFWS isn’t life threatening like diarrhea could be, it is abnormal and may be related to feeding practices.

“Horse owners could easily confuse FFWS with diarrhea, making it imperative to understand the causes and management of this innocuous, yet equally messy, condition,” said Catherine Whitehouse, M.S., a Kentucky Equine Research nutritionist.

The exact causes of FFWS remain unclear. To learn more about this syndrome, researchers identified 50 horses diagnosed with FFWS on 50 privately owned farms in Sweden and Norway.* Fifty horses without FFWS on each farm were also included in the study to act as controls. The researchers collected demographic, management, and feeding data.

The data clearly demonstrated that ration composition, but not management practices, differed between horses with and without FFWS. For example, horses with FFWS were fed lower amounts of straw and alfalfa (lucerne) and about twice as much concentrate than control horses.

“If concentrates reach the hindgut without being processed in the small intestine, they undergo fermentation and produce lactate in the hindgut. An increase in lactate can have an osmotic effect because it draws water into the lumen of the colon,” explained Whitehouse.

Feeding concentrates, however, does not fully explain FFWS as not all affected horses included in the study were offered concentrates. Further, changing forages without altering the concentrates helped resolve FFWS in some cases.

Case and control horses were fed similar types of forages. Nonetheless, several cases of FFWS diminished or resolved after changing the forage.

“Plant maturity at harvest, cutting, and botanical composition may influence crude protein and the type of fiber content, potentially affecting digestibility,” said Whitehouse.

According to the study, fiber composition and degradability of the forage in the hindgut may influence the water-holding capacity of the ingesta. If the bulk of the fibers in the diet, and therefore the hindgut, have a low water-holding capacity, then free fecal liquid may become more evident.

“Though the differences in diets between horses with and without FFWS seem minor, the study suggests that even small adjustments to forage could help resolve the problem. Forage analysis may prove valuable in managing free fecal liquid in these horses,” Whitehouse recommended.

To address concerns surrounding hindgut lactate levels in horses with FFWS, a research-proven buffer may be appropriate to moderate the pH of the environment.

*Lindroth, K.M., J.-E. Lindberg, A. Johansen, and C.E. Müller. 2021. Feeding and management of horses with and without free faecal liquid: A case-control study. Animals (Basel) 11(9):2552.

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