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Posted by linda cowles
on 6/11/2008, 10:22 am, in reply to "Teff hay"
67.164.16.242
Teff hay is good, as is a low carb grass hay. I suggest that clients avoid grain hays (wheat, oat).
I suggest that clients treat these horses as if they are insulin resistant. There is a great Yahoo group called Equine Cushings that has a Files area that talks a lot about IR dietary needs.... lots of super info.
Other symptoms that can be rectified by an IR type diet are persistent thrush, poor fly and pest resistance, leaky gut syndrome (hind-fut sensitivity particularly on the right flank). All of these problems are related to poor dermal quality. Its something to look for with "witchy" mares, horses that are girthy or flank sensitive, moody bad tempered horses.
Sometimes Flax seed will cause these same symptoms to appear; flax seed is a common additive to pellets and supplements (like Platinum Performance).
Many of these symptoms are resolved when horses are pulled off high-carb hays and pellets, and their pasture access is monitored so that they don't get rich grass in the early spring.
This has been a bad year for super sweet pasture because of the warm temps in the day and very cool temps(sub 50 degrees) at night, so the grass in most areas is still much sweeter than it normally would be. Quite a few of my clients had to pull their horses completely off pasture or start using muzzles.
Other symptoms that your horse is getting too rich a diet are more obvious in barefoot horses. These symptoms are wall separation, white line separation, chipping, sole tenderness, wall flaring, decreased concavity. This is because a diet that's too rich in carbs makes horses more susceptible to sub-clinical laminitis. Its usually very mild, and these horses are usually sound on soft footing but tender on most other footing. The symptoms go away fairly quickly when the diet is controlled.
I've had a more founders and real laminitis this spring.
We all love to give our horses rich food, food they "clean up to the last stem", and its like giving kids Twinkies... one every now and then is okay, but its not lunch!
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