cronic diarrhea when given grain

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shelly

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anyone else have/had a mini that won't tolerate eating grain without getting diarrhea?
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Macroon Cookies are kept in the cupboard on such occasions -- before trying actual medication (kinda like a home-remedy).

Perhaps you may want to do a topic "search" on the "Best of the Forum".
 
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the horse may be allergic to molasses. a change to food without molasses could be helpful, if this is the case.

also, sand can cause this.

jennifer
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I have taken all molassas out of my horses diets except when I feed sweet feed to some for weight gain purposes. I found that some of mine would have runny poop until I took the molassas out. Now I have very little problem with that and I have 30 horses in the barn. If they are used to a molassas sweet feed, change them slowly and they will soon look for the non-molassas stuff as much as the sweet stuff.

Angie
 
Shelly, Another possibility is that your grain has corn in it. I've known some horses who can't tolerate that.
 
Shelly, what type of grain are you feeding?

Years ago had a big appy gelding in my 4H club. He cruised

along fine for years with the folks feeding him wet Cob....

Then the diarrhea began.

Vet had them take him off anything with corn and molasses in it.

That was the solution......he said it was a common reaction for

many horses once they developed that allergy.....

Being that is my experience that'd be what I'd check for.

Hope you find the solution.
 
I have a simular problem with an upcoming 2 yr old. I treated for sand, wormed and wormed again ( they are on a 60day rotation) She still has runny stools. They were on Equine Jr and are now on Strategy.

Flagyl will be the next thing I try once I figure out how to get it down her!
 
To shed some more light on this topic since I am the owner of this mare.........the vets can find nothing wrong with her! We have done everything under the sun to figure this out. Yogurt, Probiotics, everything, to make a long story short. We tried pulling her off grain and she is fine, we tried putting her a on special low carb grain, worked great for about 6 weeks, then the diarhea came back again. Had someone suggest it was not the carbs she was not tolerating but the starch/corn so we put her Vintage Performance LS, low starch, Again, worked for about 6 weeks and the diarhea is back. We have tried everything for over a year and a half! NOTHING works. And to top it off, her filly we have here hit 6 months old and guess what? SAME THING! She is now on the low starch grain and doing fine. But now the vet is even more stumped as it seems to be a metabolic disorder that now seems to be hereditary! So, I give up! We have yet again pulled her completely off grain and have put her up for sale!
 
Gosh Angel Creek,

sounds like you guys are on an Easter Egg hunt trying to find the cause.

Do you and your vet feel she and/or her baby are horses that require

grain in their diet? Can or do they maintain their condition without it?

Lots of horses receive no grains at all and thrive.
 
I don't think this problem is very uncommon. I think every now and then you get a horse or dog like this and just as in humans, they cannot tollerate certain things and have bad reactions per their sensitive stomach. Such as I can't tollerate italian food at all, neither can my son. If we even look at anything with spaghetti sauce.........its all over.

When I had a horse do that, I did a 5 day treatment of Safe Guard if you haven't already and removed the grains, changed all her food over to Purina Ration Balancer Born to Win, now called "Enrich 32" and hay. (and grass pasture). It never happened again.

You might want to consider also something for sand maybe. What kind of enviorment does she live in? Can she be eating dirt, or stall bedding maybe? Can the hay or grass be too rich? Do you think she is a nervous horse? Have you tried treating her for ulcers? Just throwing some stuff out there for process of elimination. Good luck and best wishes.
 
I agree with Marty. We have one that is a constant dirt eater. Xrays have shown that we get the sand cleared and it soon returns. My vet told me that some horses don't clear it as well as others so we have to make sure she is on a strict clearing program. We use pure psyllium pellets we bought from the vet. You may need to keep her on it longer than a week at a time. She is also very sensitive to any feed changes, no matter how small. One the other hand sometimes feed changes actually seemed to clear things up temporarerly. My vet also told me that some people will stall mat the whole area to prevent this. Well, that is not an option for me! We just do what we can to prevent her from eating on any dirty surface. Never put the hay on the ground.

Hope this helps.
 

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