Horse Health

Horses for kids

October 26, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM 1 Comment

Do you have kids and are they interested in horses or you would like them to be? Well I have a website for you. The University of Guelph has redesigned their horse website. I heard about it and went to check it out at http://www.equineguelph.ca It is a nice website but what I found there was another link to another site and if you have kids you are going to want to go to http://www.equimania.ca This site will definitely teach them about horse health care and they will not even know the are learning; they are just having fun.

Equimania Stables is very well designed with a lot of cool computer tricks such as books you read online that you use your mouse to turn the page just as if it was a real book. The tack room which teaches your child about colors, leg markings, face markings and it looks like they will have in the future anatomy. I got a perfect 100 in Happy Appy’s stall (stall 3 – hint be sure to pick the stall too). Oh and try and beat my high score (low time) on putting items away in the grooming box. You will find this game in the wash stall. I was able to do it in 5.9 seconds after about a dozen times it is quite addicting (did I say this site was for kids?) I did notice that a couple of pages are not finished but overall a very creative site and educational on how to care for your horse definitely worth a visit. So be sure to check out http://www.equimania.ca and teach your children about horse health care in a fun way!

Filed Under: Horse Health Tagged With: equimania, Horse Health, horse health care, kids, Links, university of guelph

The 5 keys to improving your horse’s movement

October 4, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM 1 Comment

Here are the 5 keys to improving your horse’s movement. I will go into detail on each topic in the coming weeks and then I will also have it all prepared in an ebook soon to be published.

In order to improve your horses movement, besides the actual rider and trainer, and/or keep your horse moving correctly as well as its conformation will allow, you need to focus on these 5 key areas…

Nutrition

Dentistry

Farriery

Saddle & Tack Fit

Management

The details will be all available in a book called How to Avoid the Horse Chiropractor. Coming soon.

Filed Under: Horse Health Tagged With: Horse Health, horses, How to Avoid the Horse Chiropractor, movement

Webinar on West Nile Virus

September 28, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM Leave a Comment

One of my favorite magazines and the company that makes one of the vaccines that actually works against West Nile Virus are having a free webinar. On October 2nd at 2PM eastern time (that is 1PM for those of us in the central time zone), TheHorse.com is hosting this event with sponsor Intervet makers of Prevenile. I guarantee you that there will be some pushing of their vaccine however the webinar will have a lot of other great information with two top researchers in the field of Equine infectious diseases, Dr. Debra Sellon and Dr. Maureen Long.

Here is the link for more information and to sign up…

http://www.thehorse.com/ViewArticle.aspx?ID=10480

I will be unable to attend (I will be in a barn no where near a computer), so please someone sign up and let me know if it was worth the price of admission…LOL (Remember it is free)

Filed Under: Horse Health Tagged With: free webinar, Horse Health, intervet, west nile virus

Feeding Fat for horse health – a fad?

September 19, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM 2 Comments

Feeding Fat, is it a fad or is it truly something we should be doing for our horse’s health?

Well I will tell you I do not believe it is a fad. There are several reasons to balance your horses diet using fat as one of the energy sources. I talked about it in Horse Nutrition Essentials. Explaining it more in detail here – fat is very high in energy however it is digested and absorbed slowly in comparison to carbohydrates. This benefits the horse in a couple of ways. The first is that your horses glucose and insulin levels can be leveled out. Many times when feeding carbohydrates, especially corn, the carbs are digested quickly and absorbed quickly causing a spike in glucose. The body responds by producing more insulin in anticipation that a lot more glucose is coming. Unfortunately since it is a carbohydrate there will be no more coming, it was digested rapidly remember. So this causes an unusually high spike in insulin with no glucose around to be utilized. This is one of the factors insinuated in Pre-Cushings or Insulin Resistant horses. So feeding a fat supplement such as flax seed and/or rice bran can stabilize the glucose insulin levels in your horse thus improving health and possibly avoiding future health problems.

Another problem with carbohydrates in some horses is the effect they have on muscle tension. In some horses, especially draft horses and heavily muscled horses, a disease known as Equine Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy (EPSM) can have dramatic effects on muscle tension to the point of muscle damage. The theory is that carbohydrates are not available for a long enough time period to provide the muscles enough energy to function when working. The muscles then starving for energy begin to break down, causing a release of lactic acid and other enzymes. This causes very tight and sore muscles. Damaged muscles certainly can affect your horses health and performance. Feeding a high fat diet helps prevent this issue, by providing a longer lasting energy source.

So feeding fat to your horse through the sources of rice bran and/or flax seed can be of great benefit to your horses health and performance. I especially recommend the fat diet along with Vitamin E and Selenium (in deficient areas in the country) and Magnesium, to balance out the hormone levels, in any horse that I see with very tight and sore muscles with no known reason except for working.

To learn more about feeding fat to your horse or about EPSM I would recommend visiting Dr. Beth Valentines websites and forums -

http://www.ruralheritage.com

http://www.ruralheritage.com/messageboard/virtualvet/index1.htm

and for more information and discussion about Cushings and/or Insulin Resistance checkout this group -

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/EquineCushings/

In another post I will explain the benefits of using Magnesium in possible Pre-Cushings horses it goes hand in hand with feeding a higher fat diet.

Filed Under: Nutrition Tagged With: fat diet, Horse Health, horse nutrition, Nutrition

Fecal Egg Counts – parasite control for improved horse health

September 18, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM Leave a Comment

As many of you know I am a proponent of doing routine fecal egg counts as opposed to actually deworming your horse every month with an antiparasite medication. Which means sending in horse manure samples to a lab or your vet (who sends them to a lab) and determining how many parasite eggs are seen in the sample. If there are only a couple or none it can be reasonably accepted that your horse has a low count of parasites (a lot of factors do play into this, I am oversimplifying here). If there are more than a couple of eggs in the fecal sample then it gives you a reason to deworm your horse with an antiparasite medication, such as Ivermectin, Fenbendazole, etc.

Now granted if your horse lives in a small pasture that has multiple horses, more than 1 horse per acre, you may have no choice but to give your horse deworming medication on a monthly basis. A lot depends on the immune system and digestive system of the horse and the actual parasite load of the pasture itself as to if you will have to deworm monthly. Still I really promote using companies such as Horsemen’s Laboratory on a regular basis even if you are deworming regularly, as it will help determine if your deworming program is actually even working.

For the majority of performance horses that are stall kept and are either out on large pastures, turned out in dry lots, or have a single pasture to themselves, these horses would have no benefit of using deworming products on a regular basis, because they just do not have exposure to parasites, and in fact, you would, in most cases, be over treating which has been implicated in affecting the immune system against other parasites such as EPM (not proven just implicated) or in the face of a real parasite infestation your horse could become debilitated rather quickly. Fecal egg counts on a monthly or every other month basis would be sufficient to know whether or not you even need to treat your horse. The one thing that really needs to be focused on here is parasite control for the improvement of your horse’s health; not total annihilation of every parasite in your horse’s digestive system. Horses have maintained a balance with parasites for thousands of years; it is just recently that due to mans domestication and concentration of horses in one location that intestinal parasites have become a factor in horse health and well being. Fecal egg counts are a good means of determining how much control we have in parasite loads of our horses.

The Horse has a great article on fecal egg counts –>Fecal Egg Count Exams Offer Useful Information for Horse Health Management.
It explains in detail the limitations of using fecal egg counts but also relates the important message that fecal egg counts are the gold standard when testing for parasite infestation of your horse and most importantly -

Parasitologists generally agree that the proper objective of parasite control is to maintain the parasite burden at a low level, rather than to eliminate parasites entirely. This middle ground avoids over-treatment, limits the cost of parasite control, and helps horses maintain partial immunity to overwhelming infection. In other words, it’s a good idea to allow a very low level of parasite infection so that horses’ immune systems can learn to deal with these invaders if they occur in larger numbers.

Just for this quote alone the article is worth a read and a reread. And what I am completely impressed with is the veterinarian quoted in the article is from a pharmaceutical company, maybe they are not all out just for the company…LOL. So for improving your horses health look to do more fecal egg counts rather than just medicating your horse and even if you are medicating your horse do fecal egg counts to determine the effectiveness of your program.

Filed Under: Horse Health Tagged With: deworming, fecal egg counts, Horse Health, parasite control, parasites

Horse Nutrition Essentials

August 30, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM 9 Comments

I find many horse owners are unsure on the basic essentials for nutrition for their horse. There are thousands of supplements out there and many, many different types of complete feeds – which ones are the best, what should you be feeding your horse?

Well lets start out simple and easy and forget all the hype. I will not mention any products in this post. I will at a later time so that some specifics are filled in, but here I want to be general and simple so you get the basic concepts of what you should be feeding your horse.

Basics -

Water
Pasture/Hay
Salt
Minerals
Fat
Grain, only if needed

Water – 24 hour access to fresh clean water. An old farmer chore was to water the horses. They would bring the horses twice a day to the water trough to drink and that was all. Now we know better. We know now that to prevent impaction colic and improve horse health, it is much better to have fresh water available at all times for horses. An average horse will drink 10 gallons of water a day, some less and on hot days some more.

Pasture/Hay – This is otherwise know as forage and it should be the base of your horses diet. A horse is a grazer, built and designed by God, or nature if you wish, to eat grass roughage to sustain life. Grass hay or pasture should still be the foundation of a horses diet why go against the horses own blueprint, it is by far much more healthy for the horse. The best hay to provide is one that has a little alfalfa in it. And when I say a little I mean only a little somewhere between 10 and 20% and that is all. If you provide more than that the type of protein in the alfalfa produces much more ammonia in the urine which can lead to health problems and a very smelly barn. Also an important thing to note is that forage needs to be at least 2 inches in length or longer to provide adequate fiber to maintain the horses digestive tract health, so most hay cubes do not qualify as proper forage.

Salt – Salt is an important compoinent of the horses diet. It is ecessary to provide the electolytes that a horse uses for all of its body functions. Now the most common way to provide a horse with salt is to provide them a salt lick block. Now just because it is the most common does not mean that it is the best way to provide salt for your horse. The best way is to provide you horse with salt crumbles as a top dress to the food and you do not need very much.

Minerals – Minerals especially Calcium and Phosphorous are extremely important for a horse; on top of this there are many other macro minerals and micro nutrients very important for sustaining the horses’ health and body functions. And although I am OK with providing a horse a salt block to provide salt, I am not OK with providing a horse minerals through a mineral block. This is the worst way to provide such an extremely important element in the horses nutrition. It is vital that you provide a mineral supplement or top dress mineral crumbles, if you are feeding grain. If your grass hay has some alfalfa mixture in it like we do here in the midwest then you need to provide less calcium and phosphorous, so you may want to check with a nutritionist to balance your vitamin and mineral rations based on the hay you are providing.

Fat – Fat is not a fad for the horse’s diet. It is a very good source of energy and fatty acids. Many different diseases can be prevented or controlled by adding fat to the diet. Some people add corn oil or some other oil to the diet, unfortunately this is not the best way to provide this nutrient. The best way is to provide it using flax seed and/or rice bran. Now there are many different ways to provide flax seed and rice bran, however there is a lot of disagreement as well. The best way is to actually have it processed, which I know is not the typical thing for me to say as I usually dislike processed feed stuffs. However, for this type of supplement, it is much more convenient and you do not lose the important fatty acids in the stabilizing process. You can keep the flax and rice bran for longer periods of time without it becoming rancid and un-useable and you can feed it straight from the bag without having to grind it or soak it or prepare it before feeding.

Grain – Your horse only needs grain if it is pregnant, nursing, or working hard enough that it can not maintain its weight. Grain or Concentrates goes against the natural nutrition for the horse and over graining does contribute to many health disorders and diseases in the horse including behavior problems, urinary tract problems, and digestive disorders which the worst of which is colic. o if it is necessary to feed grain I would advise to stay away from corn and sweet feed, because these provide the horse with a rapid rise in glucose and subsequent crash from the rise in insulin levels. this can be a contributing factor in insulin resistance or pre cushings disease in horses. It is much better to provide straight oats or rolled oats to the horse. Now rlled oats will lose some of its nutritional value over time however since this is not the main base of the horses diet that is OK. You are using this more as an energy supplement and since the majority of your energy with vitamins and minerals is coming form your forage (pasture/hay) and fat (rice bran/flax seed) the samll amount of nutrient deterioration from rolled oats will be of very little importance.

These are the basics. It is simple and uncomplicated. You will find all these components in many complete feeds. You need to be careful because some of these companies do a least cost nutrient composition, which means they find the cheapest grains, forages, supplements that they can find just add them together in the amounts they need to meet the requirements they have set. So you are not purchasing a consistent product like they are promoting. With that said, you will find inconsistencies from year to year and cutting to cutting of hay and grain quality, so an important thing to consider is to have your feedstuffs tested by a nutritionist and a diet set up for the grain and hay by the nutritionist so you are providing the appropriate levels of nutrition for the health of your horse. Lastly when feeding your horse do not just eyeball or just scoop your horse its feed. I know this can be diffucult especially in large barns but it is important that you weight the feed that you feed your horse. Different cuttings or batches of hay weigh differently and provide different nutritional values depending on the weight of the feedstuff. The same with grain. So for your horse’s health actually weigh your horses feed, each time you feed your horse.

Filed Under: Nutrition Tagged With: feeding, Horse Health, Nutrition

How much weight should a horse carry?

August 23, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM 4 Comments

One question asked a lot is exactly how much weight should a horse carry? Now usually this is asked by someone watching a larger individual get on a small horse and ride the living daylights out of the poor little thing. Many people promote a rule of thumb of 10% of the horse’s bodyweight, but before I go and promote the same thing lets compare horses to humans for a minute.

How much weight can you comfortably carry for long extended periods of time 1/2 hour or more?

If you are a soldier in the army and you weigh 200 lbs then your 100 lbs rucksack is 50% of your body weight and you will be carrying that all day long!

If you are a 140 lbs Mom you can easily be carrying your 30 lbs 2 year old through a store for 15 to 20 minutes and that is just over 20% of your body weight and it depends on what shape you are in if you can carry that child comfortably or not.

SO what does this mean for a horse? If still means what kind of shape your horse is in, what type of structure your horse is, and if it has any other complicating factors such as arthritis as to how much weight they should be carrying. In my opinion the rule of thumb should be 10 to 30% of the horse’s body weight depending on condition of the horse and how long of a ride and what type of riding you will be doing. A nice easy trail ride on a good conditioned horse (meaning one that has been ridden for a couple months at least three times per week for a minimum of 20 minutes at a time) should be able to carry 25% of its body weight for an hour to two hour trail ride without a problem and with rest stops in between should be able to go all day long. That same horse should be able to carry 25% of its bodyweight in a competition setting say like jumping or dressage for 20 minutes without a concern.

So on average a horse weighs 1000 lbs (Arabs and ponies are smaller more like 700 lbs and Warmbloods and draft crosses are larger more like 1200 to 1500lbs) so that means if you and your tack weigh less than 250lbs and your horse is properly conditioned you should have no problem going for an hour long trail ride or an arena type event.

Now lets go bigger. Lets say you are a Cowboy of a larger stature and weigh 250 lbs yourself and your saddle and gear weigh 50 lbs that is a total weight of 300 lbs. Your horse either needs to be conditioned well and weigh 1200 lbs or needs to be in top condition and weigh at least 1000 lbs. These poor little Arabs that weigh only 700 lbs and have a 250 lbs lets say guy riding them on a 25 mile endurance ride are definitely more like the Army guy carrying the 100 lbs rucksack; oh it can be done but their body sure takes a beating from it.

So to be nice to your horse – if your horse is not conditioned stay at the 10% of the horses bodyweight, if it is conditioned well you can up that but stay below 30% to have a happy healthy horse!

Filed Under: Horse Health Tagged With: bodyweight, carrying weight, Horse Health, horse riding

Your horse can live longer

August 11, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM Leave a Comment

Horses today are living longer. An article from EquiSearch (www.equisearch.com) gives information in regards to five areas that you can help your horse live a long healthy life.

5 Ways to Help Your Horse Live Longer starts out by describing a study done by Tufts University which was a survey done of over 600 horses. What was discovered leads to these five areas that you need to manage in order to have a healthy long living horse.

Dental Care

Parasite Control

Nutrition

Turnout

Regular Vet Visits

Sounds familiar to what I have been saying for years, add a couple of other areas such as Tack Fit and Farriery and you have all the categories you need to improve movement in your horse as well.

Now I will have to say that this article is more inclined to the traditional veterinary medicine in the area of parasite control but other than that the article is a great review of what a whole health outlook can do for your horse.

Personally I would avoid deworming products unless necessary, however, you definitely need to check fecal samples many more times than 2 times a year. For the best care of your horse I would suggest monthly or every other month fecal checks. If your horse is positive for parasites then give a deworming product and recheck the fecal sample two weeks later. There are companies that specialize in fecal checks. You just send them the sample and they run the test at a very reasonable cost. Such as Horsemen’s Laboratory (http://horsemenslab.com)

Filed Under: Horse Health Tagged With: equisearch, fecal samples, health, health outlook, Horse Health, living longer

West Nile News Story makes no horse sense!

August 9, 2007 By Daniel Beatty DVM 4 Comments

OK I just read and watched a little news snippet from www.KGET.com a news station in California. Heres the story – http://www.kget.com/news/local/story.aspx?content_id=a83f3660-50e3-4ecd-8bfc-dcff4c9ade1c

My opinion – The state veterinarian and the news story use a scare tactic to have you vaccinate your horse for West Nile. Because there has been a marked increase in the number of horses contracting the disease during the late summer months, you should vaccinate and there has been 9 cases, 4 in the last day. THEN in the exact same story the state vet says…

“To be honest, what we’re seeing is from previous years, we’re seeing a reduction in the number of cases that we’re seeing in horses.”

SO why the knee jerk reaction and urging people to vaccinate their horses. It does not make sense – horse sense that is! Do you realize how many horses are in California? 9 is a pretty pathetic number to be starting to worry about an epidemic and to have the state vet warn people. Now I realize that a person that owns one of these 9 horses would think a little differently as they are emotionally attached to the infected horse but considering the numbers for the general population this is a little over reaction. They also do not state in the story as to the outcome of these infected horses – did they die or did they pull through? Considering many of the infected horses will pull through over 60 to 70% in most cases, now we are not even talking that life threatening of a disease.

Anyway, if you really want to inform people about vaccinating for West Nile be sure to include that they need to use a vaccine that actually works! If you want to protect your horse from West Nile using a vaccine, you need to use either the recombinant DNA called Recombitek by Merial (http://www.equinewnv.com/) or the Chimera type PreveNile by Intervet (http://www.prevenile.com/). These two vaccines are the only two I would recommend for protecting your horse. Why? Because they work and they are less reactive to the general immune system…meaning less chance of causing allergies to flare up after vaccination and possibly less likely to create an allergic horse. The unfortunate thing is that I do not know if good quality duration studies have been done… meaning does the protection last longer than one year (knowing how the drug industry works based on past history we will not know anytime soon).

Filed Under: Horse Health Tagged With: chimera, Horse Health, recombinant dna, west nile

Horses for kids

The 5 keys to improving your horse’s movement

Webinar on West Nile Virus

Feeding Fat for horse health – a fad?

Fecal Egg Counts – parasite control for improved horse health

Horse Nutrition Essentials

How much weight should a horse carry?

Your horse can live longer

West Nile News Story makes no horse sense!

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