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Avoiding
Digestive Problems
Daily
Care
For a daily care of the horse’s gut it is a good idea to add half
a cup of cider vinegar to the horse’s feed once a day. Make your own
herbal vinegar, if you are growing your own herbs, this is a good way to
use the surplus, or buy them dry so they are always handy. The idea is
to put the herbs in an empty bottle and when it is full of herbs, fill
it again with the vinegar. The best herbs for the digestive system are:
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Thyme
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Wormwood (*)
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Rosemary
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Fennel
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Chamomile
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St Mary’s Thistle
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Dandelion Leaf
-
Sage (**)
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Cinnamon
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Peppermint
You
don’t need to put all of them in the bottle a combination of three
will be fine.
CAUTION:
* Wormwood is excellent for both digestion and to keep worms at bay, but
don’t put more than 20gms of Wormwood to 2 litres of vinegar.
**If you have a breeding mare, go easy on the Sage because of its
oestrogenic qualities.
By
the wayWhile you are mixing the cider vinegar potion, add a
bulb or two of GARLIC,
roughly crushed, or a cup of garlic granules. It is a wonderful
antibacterial and keeps worms at bay and worms damage the gut.
Depending
on the amount of feed and the condition of your horse, give him/her a
quarter of a cup of OIL (sunflower, maize or olive –depending on the
state of your bank account) with the feed once a day. This stimulates
bile release and therefore improves digestion.
Don’t
use bran!
Bran is a calcium antagonist and the gut needs proper calcium intake to
function properly. So, if your horse has a sensitive gut, don’t give
him/her bran.
Don’t
use molasses!
Molasses increase the sugar content in the gut, causing fermentation and
therefore colic. It does not matter that molasses is rich in vitamin B,
a sensitive gut should never have molasses.
Improve
the gastrointestinal flora
Once or twice a year, your horse should get a course (1 kilo) of
probiotics (such as Protexin) to make sure his gut
has a good population of the good flora. Give quarter of a cup
with each feed until you’ve completed the course.
The
travelling blues
I don’t know about your horse, but my Andalusian gelding, Don
Diego, is a really, really cool horse, not much fazes him (after all he
is a horse). However, even this phlegmatic creature used to get a
serious case of the runs whenever we went to a clinic. So I devised this
little protocol:
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The
day before the trip, feed the horse no grain but stew about one kilo
of apples in a little
water and add about five Cinnamon quills. Cool
down, remove Cinnamon and
add to chaff.
-
During
the clinic, keep using the cinnamon, by simply making a tea with
five quills in a mug of boiling water. If there are facilities to
cook apples, use them and give him half a kilo of stewed
(not raw) apples per day.
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Boiled
Barley, because of its high mucilage content is very soothing to the
gut. Use steam flaked barley (the one without molasses), and soak it
in hot water overnight, to release the mucilage. This is a better
grain to take to a clinic and it will keep your horse relaxed too.
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Keep
up the stewed apples/cinnamon/barley regime for a day or two when
you are back home.
My
beautiful Diego has never soiled his beautiful Andalusian tail since!
Crisis
treatment
What if it is too late for prevention? Your horse is lying down,
with laboured breathing, and no sound emerges from its belly. While you
are waiting for the vet, you know to walk your horse, but what you can
also do is present her/him with “a cup of tea”. There are three
herbs that will stimulate digestion in this case: chamomile, peppermint
and fennel. My favourite is chamomile because it relaxes the gut and
stimulates digestion.
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Boil
one litre of water and pour it over two handfuls of chamomile or
peppermint or fennel.
-
Let
this brew for 15mns.
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Strain,
add two tablespoons of honey, add another three litres of room
temperature water and offer to the horse.
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Keep
walking.
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DON’T
give the horse oil, usually it only compounds the blockage.
If
you have access to an equine acupuncturist, call them, in my experience
colic, in its early stages, is really helped by acupuncture.
The
gut and laminitis
There are many causes of laminitis, but we all know that a greedy
pony will founder. The reason is that excessive sugars in the gut cause
a build up of toxins which in turn disturb the circulation causing
peripheral inflammation, ie: laminitis. To keep your horse safe from
nutritionally induced laminitis, it is important to keep his gut working
well and free from inflammation; therefore all of the above information
on the gut should be observed for laminitis prevention.
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