This weather sucks. I know you’re shocked to get my honest opinion, but as a cat I feel I owe it to my adoring fans to be true to my nature, and my nature doesn’t like this weather. It’s true that I also don’t like rainy days, but I do like rain often enough that the grass doesn’t prick my paws as I walk around the Clinic property ensuring all is as it should be in my kingdom. The horses aren’t loving it either, but they have different reasons. 

Bits of grass, and lots of sand

Out in the pasture right now there are tiny bits of grass hanging on for dear life, just hoping for something resembling rain. The best we’ve gotten lately are some really foggy mornings. Those tiny bits of grass are looking really, really tasty to your horse. When your horse goes to grab that tiniest morsel of green goodness, they also pull up the roots. Those sad roots have nothing to hold onto right now, and give up the fight easily. With the roots comes sand, and you should know sand is less than ideal for the equine GI tract. If you don’t, you need to evaluate your reading habits because you aren’t reading my blog often enough. Right now horses are spending all their time looking hard for those tiny morsels, which means lots of sand is going in their GI tracts. It also means some green stuff (weeds) that isn’t grass looks better now than it normally would. 

A Rain Dance would be nice

Sure, a rain dance would be nice, but in the meantime what’s a horse owner to do to try to help their horses make good decisions? HaHa! Horses never make good decisions. Just kidding (sort of). Anyway, real help. Look at your pasture set up to see if you can rotate the heck out of your pastures. Using the plastic step-in T-posts and electric tape is an easy way to block off areas of pasture to let them recuperate. Give pastures at least 10 days, and 14 days if possible, before putting horses back on them. While you won’t grow amazing grass this way, you will keep things at a tolerable level. If you can’t block off pastures, consider putting hay out. Now we normally talk about this at the first freeze, but with no grass, now’s a good time to start with hay. To avoid unscheduled visits from one of my Docs, be sure to slowly increase the amount of hay you’re putting out over 7-10 days. Don’t put a roll of coastal out until they are walking away from flakes, and be sure to add ½-1 flake of alfalfa or peanut hay daily to their diets. If you really want to minimize the risk of colic from hay, go with alfalfa or orchard/alfalfa pasture bales. Lots of horses can’t eat these without packing on the pounds, and for those coastal hay is a great option. 

Other ways to avoid Unscheduled Visits

This drought has been very noticeable for one thing around the Clinic: more colics. Let me tell you what my Docs don’t want to see you for: A Colic. They don’t like them any more than you do!!! Here’s my step-by-step process to avoid unscheduled visits thanks to the dreaded C word:

1. Give your horse at least ½ flake peanut or alfalfa hay daily. One flake would be even better. These hays are high in natural salt content so they get your horse to head to the water trough, and they both have a natural laxative effect to help prevent impactions.
2. Add water to your horse’s grain. This is the easiest way to get horses to “drink” more water. The soupier the better! It’s all added hydration.
3. Be aware of how much sand they can consume. If you live on a sandy property, your horse is eating tons of it right now. If you don’t live on a sandy property, your horse is eating some right now. Feeding lots and lots of hay is the best way to move sand through the system! If in doubt, add in one of the sand clearing products for one week out of every month to really clean the pipes. My Docs can also x-ray or ultrasound for sand to help you have an idea how much sand is in there. 

We are all holding out hope for a lovely rainy week or two, but until that comes, I hope the cat wisdom helps you keep the colic away!

Now be a good human: 1. Scroll down a tiny bit farther 2. Subscribe to my blog 3. Never miss a bit of Tony wisdom.  It’s good stuff!

Until next week,

~Tony

Ahh, Florida. The rest of the world is sure it’s all sun, surf, and sand. They’ve got 2 out 3 right, and according to Meatloaf that ain’t bad. Where am I going with this? To the sand. For reasons I don’t understand, horses feel it’s appropriate to eat sand. This can, obviously, lead to problems. This week, we’re going to talk about those problems. More importantly, we’re going to talk about how to be smarter than your horse so that you can avoid these problems. I have faith you humans can do it. I’m not asking you to be smarter than a cat. That would be impossible.

How do I know they have sand?

Many of you have likely heard of the Ziploc bag test. I’m sure this is a use Ziploc did not envision for their handy plastic bags. This test involves grabbing a few fecal balls from a fresh, clean pile, adding water, sealing the bag (very, very important step), and shaking. Let the bag sit for a few minutes, and see if there’s sand in the bottom. There will be sand. After all, we do live in Florida. The question is how much sand is there? If there’s ¼ sand or less to ¾ poop in your sand-to-poop ratio, congratulations your horse is moving sand out of the gut. That word ‘moving’ is important. That’s the limitation of this test. It is moderately useful, but it only tells us that sand is moving out of the gut. You see, horses are sneaky. They also like to have a gut full of sand that’s just sitting there doing nothing! That sand won’t show up on the Ziploc test.

Behold! The awesomeness of x-rays and ultrasound! If my Docs have a sand suspicion, but no sand on the baggie test, they pull out the big guns. They will start with the ultrasound. My Docs will put an ultrasound probe right on the middle of the bottom of the abdomen. If there’s sand, they will see a colon with no ridges. Those ridges are what they call sacculations of the large colon. These sacculations are what allow the colon to expand with gas and food, then shrink down as it empties. Sand, however, fills all that up. Sometimes, it can be a little tough to decide on ultrasound thanks to gas. Ultrasound can’t see through gas, so if your horse has a lot of it, and horses often do have a lot of gas, the Docs will switch to x-ray. They shoot an x-ray through the bottom of the abdomen, and get an image that looks like this:

Getting Rid of Sand

Great, you’ve now identified that your horse has sand in the belly. How do you get rid of it? If there’s lots of it, my Docs will tube your horse with a combination of psyllium (basically Metamucil), Epsom salts, and mineral oil. The psyllium and Epsom salts work to grab the sand, pick it up, and move it out of the gi tract. The mineral oil works to protect the walls of the GI tract from all that abrasion as the sand moves. You can just imagine how abrasive that can be…..go ahead, imagine. Usually one treatment clears the sand, but sometimes it takes more than one. Rarely, my Docs have to bring one of these guys into the clinic for IV fluids along with the Epsom salts, and psyllium. I will say it is very impressive when they start passing sand. There’s nothing like sand, psyllium, Espom salt diarrhea to really make a mess out of stall!

Even better, keep sand out

“On ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure” was never more true than sand and horses. The number one key is hay. Yep, hay, and lots of it. As far as horses are concerned, this is the key to preventing lots of things. For sand, hay acts like a vacuum. As all that roughage travels through the GI tract, it sucks up the sand, and sends it out the back end safely. If you’ve paid any attention to my blogs, or the awesome seminars my minions have, you know that the minimum amount of hay a horse should eat is 1-2% of their body weight daily. That’s 12-24 pounds for the average horse every day. Live on a sand hill? Stay closer to that 24 pound number!

Minimizing the amount of sand that goes in will also help. Feeding hay from slow feed hay nets, or off clean rubber mats can help reduce sand consumption. Keeping your fields from being overgrazed can also help. When horses are seeking out the small amounts of grass in an otherwise sandy field, they will eat way, way more sand. Bringing horses into a stall for grain meals can also reduce the amount of time they spend snuffling through sand to get that very last pellet they dropped. (Total shameless plug for our ‘How To Handle Your S#!t Seminar’ this Thursday at the Clinic, to help you keep those fields in good shape.)

With a little strategy, you can avoid those pesky unscheduled calls with my Docs for a sand colic. And I know how much you humans enjoy a good unscheduled visit. Think your horse might have sand? Call the Clinic to schedule an x-ray or ultrasound to see what’s inside!

Now be a good human and subscribe to my blog. That way you can get all my awesomeness a day before everyone else.

Until next week,

~ Tony