How many poops per day?

[babygoose]

Okay, strange question I know. But how many times in a 24 hour period would an average healthy mini pass manure? My palomino guy coliced the other day. He had to stay overnight at the vet, but by the next day had passed oil and was back to his old self. He has coliced a few times in the past. A couple resolved at home and he has had to go to the vet for a couple. He is probably in his mid teens and I got him from an auction a couple years ago, so I know nothing about his past. He has a salt block and fresh water all the time. But sometimes I notice his poops will get hard and dry looking. He lives in a big pen with access to a barn so I clean his pen about once a week. I have been closely monitoring his output the since the last colic and it seems like he is still not pooping much but I don't know what might be normal for him. The last couple of days he has gone about 5 times a day. All my horses live in big pens that get cleaned once a week, so my goal now is to monitor eveybody for a week so I know what their average output is. Only horse people would be this concerned about poop!

 

[chandab]

I'm sure it varies from horse to horse, so you will probably have to watch your horses to see what is normal for them. Most of my minis live in one big dry lot, but I do have a couple in their own pens, and to be honest, I haven't really paid attention to their output. Although, the ones that come into their stalls only to eat hard feed 2x daily, really seem to like to leave a deposit each and every time.

Anyway, I have one mare with issues taht I do keep a pretty close eye on, and her pen is cleaned 2x daily; she usually leaves 2-4 deposits for clean-up, so for her 4-8 piles per day. [5 or 6 seem to be the norm for her, if she's not very interested in her hay, then only 3-4, if she eats more then she leaves more.]

 

[Seashells]

I got this one....after 30 years of horses in my life...I've noticed 8 healthy poops a day.

 

[bevann]

Not sure about number of poops per day, but if you think your Mini is not drinking check the mouth.Run your finger under the top lip-if it is tacky- not enough water untake.very moist-good water intake.I have one who has had several bad colic episodes.Now she gets molasses soup several times per day and I monitor the poop.Should be moist and rather the size of a large egg.Small and hard means not enough water intake.Soaked beet pulp also helps. Good luck

 

[Margo_C-T]

I have found that it varies from horse to horse, as with many other things that are very 'individual'!

My horses(all minis) are all dry lotted, all fed separately but one pair who live together, but whose poops are so different that it is easy to tell 'whose is whose'!

'In general', I'd say that with my dry lotted minis, 6-7 piles in a 24 hour period is the 'average', though with mine, there is a 'usual' range of only 4 to about 8 among the different ones--depends on their individual diet, age, amount of exercise, etc., etc., etc.! If I've been able to let them out to graze any at all, though, that will (naturally!)increase.

I am a FIRM believer in doing whatever it takes to encourage maximum hydration; in my experience, dry-lotted minis often tend to have a dryer, firmer manure, so I give EVERYONE sloppy-wet soaked beet pulp every evening--even those who are easy keepers get it; theirs is just heavier on the water, so relatively less BP. If there are no contraindications, I'd suggest trying that for your little horse who seems to have a tendency toward colic. I also am quickly becoming a strong believer in 'slow feeding' of hay; just invested in three 'Busy Horse Snacker' slow feeding hay bags, and am so far VERY pleased...only issue is the not-so-great grass hay that is the majority of the hay I got last year; it is too over-mature,stiff and long-stemmed to work in the small-opening 'Snacker' bags. I have just a LITTLE decent orchard grass, which I need to 'make last' until this year's hay arrives, and it works very well---just can't use as much of it as I'd like, so it will last. I believe this will also be of help in keeping the horses 'gastrointestinally healthy'!!

Good luck!

Margo

 

[Julie/Azariah]

I agree that soaked beet pulp is a great thing to increase hydration.

Another thing I would do is take the salt lick out and ad electrolytes to the grain and or beetpulp (the amt on the container per weight... about 2/3 to half of what a large horse gets.

If you have a salt lick, sometimes they don't lick it but adding electrolytes makes sure they get the salt needed and increases the desire to drink.

I too am a very expert poop connoisseur ... have had several major colics... one surgery with good results another one we lost the horse.

Several treated easily, several needing to do IV therapy. So you better believe if I see dry poopies....I go into action and add soaked beet pulp and extra electrolytes immediately!!!!

All of my working horses get electrolytes during summer.

Keep up the good work... you know your horses well.

 

[krissy3]

Id say it has to depend on how much you feed. I have a friend that feeds very little , and they poop 1-3 times in a 24 hour period.He is always telling me I overfeed my horses , so I tried his conservative method at home for a week or so. They went down from about 6or 8 to 1 or 2 ... I went back to gining them more hay, I dont like skinny minis. good question though , i often wonder what is correct, or "healthy" , If their poop is dry looking , I give them soaked food, to help hydrate them. You can learn a lot from the poop.

 

[barnbum]

I'm a poop checker. My horses are stalled at night, so I've counted this enough times.

If I tucked them in at 7 and head back out to check them at 9--every horse will have something for me to clean. If they don't, I'll go back out in 45 min to double check there's not trouble coming. I have one that goes every hour--she's my high energy girl--must be she has a fast metabolism. The rest do not go less than every two hours.

I feed whole flax to try to keep things moving...just a few tsp twice a day with feed. Maybe that would help your guy?

If my horses pooped 1-3 times in a 24 hour period--they'd all be a 1-2 on the BI scale or dead.

 

[Marty]

I average about 8 poops a day too.

I second everything Margo says, and she hit the nail on the head with the soaked beet pulp. That will also help if the colic episodes are related to sand/dirt. If my horse was having colic episodes like that I'd need to change something, everything and do a process of elimanation until I had a handle on it. I'd start with cleaning his pen daily and upping my de-worming program and maybe consider adding a 5 day program of Safe Guard. I'd have him on a probios program as well. Frequent feedings of small amounts of super clean hay throughout the day would be involved with a salt block.

I'm with Barnbum, 1-3 poops a day, something is very wrong with that.

 

[SammyL]

Most horses poop every 2-3 hours.

 

[babygoose]

I average about 8 poops a day too. I second everything Margo says, and she hit the nail on the head with the soaked beet pulp. That will also help if the colic episodes are related to sand/dirt. If my horse was having colic episodes like that I'd need to change something, everything and do a process of elimanation until I had a handle on it. I'd start with cleaning his pen daily and upping my de-worming program and maybe consider adding a 5 day program of Safe Guard. I'd have him on a probios program as well. Frequent feedings of small amounts of super clean hay throughout the day would be involved with a salt block.

I'm with Barnbum, 1-3 poops a day, something is very wrong with that.

My guy has been averaging about 5 per day since the colic. I am going to take an average for everybody over the next week or so. I have made several changes through these colics. Teeth were done when I got them. I wormed them carefully when I first got them since I did not know their history. Then I worm quarterly with ivermectin and once a year with praziquantal (sp?, the tapeworm stuff) after the first couple of colics, I put him on a daily dewormer, still doing the quarterly ivermectin. He has free choice salt block. Now I am adding salt to his food. On the nights when it was going to get below freezing (thankfully I live in a fairly warm climate) I would add hot water to their buckets to make it warm. That would keep it ice free all night except on the coldest nights it might have a skim of ice. I work full time and am sometimes out of town during the day for my job so they get three feedings a day. It would be almost impossible for me to get them any more frequent meals although I could add one in the middle of the night. They have big pens and pasture turnout on weekends and now evenings that the days are getting longer. I put in a mat for him to eat off of. He gets alfalfa. I at one time was mixing bermuda and alfalfa, but soon after I started the bermuda, both of them coliced. I have heard that bermuda can cause colic in some horses so I went back to alfalfa only. It is fairly leafy and fine stemmed. So I just don't know. But, I also don't know the history of his life before I got him. He came from the auction with long feet, terrible hair, and thin. I don't know if he had ever been wormed before. There could possibly be something else going on with him from his past.

 

[Margo_C-T]

Can you get any other kind of grass hay, other than bermuda? I fed straight alfalfa for years, but have found that feeding some of each(grass hay and alfalfa)works best. That said, I don't like bermuda, either, and won't feed it...IMO, it is too fine for horses, and can 'set them up' for compaction colics. I'd still suggest adding some soaked beet pulp; if you use fairly hot water, pellets (only type I've found around here; some places also carry shreds, which 'soak up' faster)can be fully 'broken down' in just about an hour or so--you can then add water of suitable temp to make it sufficiently 'sloppy wet' for eating. Besides helping w/ hydration, beet pulp supplies a good source of suitable type of fiber for horsey digestion.

You might want to check out some of the 'slow feeder' sites...lots of info on different ones is at(will look up and add website address). Lots of suggestions on how to 'build your own', as well as commercially produced ones. If you could get some decent grass hay, setting up a slow feeder w/ grass could help keep the horse happy AND with something continuously 'traveling through' his system--as Nature intended. I have come to believe that the combo of ongoing suitable hydration AND ongoing 'trickle' eating of suitable fiber is MOST important to horsey digestive health.

You are a good horsey mom, to be both alert and proactive!

Margo

 

[Sterling]

6 to 8 over here in NJ.