The Horse:Your Guide To Equine Health Care provides monthly equine health care information to horse owners, breeders, veterinarians, barn/farm managers, trainer/riding instructors, and others involved in the hands-on care of the horse.
Issue link: https://thehorse.epubxp.com/i/936432
YOUR GUIDE TO THE 2017 AAEP CONVENTION SPONSORED BY A46 TheHorse.com/AAEP2017 AAEP Wrap-Up THE HORSE March 2018 starting horses with more severe lesions (Grade 3 and 4) on the same dose, plus sucralfate or misoprostol, and if there's no improvement after four to six weeks, change your treatment strategy. In closing, Banse acknowledged that EGGD is difficult to treat and can take upwards of six to eight weeks to resolve. Before discontinuing treatment have your veterinarian perform gastroscopy. And if the condition doesn't improve, change or add treatments. Feeding Frequency Affects Gastric Ulceration in Exercised Young Horses We know exercise intensity and dura- tion are key contributors to gastric ulcer risk. Long periods between meals also increase a horse's chance of develop- ing ulcers. So what happens when you switch to a much more frequent feeding schedule? Luke Bass, DVM, MS, Dipl. ABVP, and his team at CSU aimed to determine the effects of two feeding strategies on exercising horses' gastric ulceration, body weight, and body condition. Horses have a natural grazing pattern in which they eat for many hours a day. Their natural diet is made up predomi- nantly of highly fibrous forages. However, many performance horses are housed in stalls and consume high-starch concen- trate feeds to meet their increased caloric demands. These feeding and manage- ment practices are in part to blame for the increased incidence of gastric ulcers and colic seen in this population. The research team randomly assigned 31 2-year-old Quarter Horses to be fed their daily grain (4.6 pounds of Purina Ultium) twice a day—a feed schedule that replicates that of many U.S. performance horses—(15 horses) or in 20 equal feed- ings using an iFEED automated feeder (16 horses). They programmed the frac- tionated meals to be fed every hour for 20 hours, followed by a four-hour break. All horses also received 2% of their body weight per day as grass hay. The research- ers weighed and body-condition-scored COURTESY DR. LUKE BASS Horses fed grain 20 times a day using an automated feeder had lower ulcer scores than horses fed twice a day.