Buddy’s Case Study - Diarrhea
3/19/21
What should you do if your horse has chronic diarrhea?Before trying anything…
Step 1: Get your vet involved!
Important notes about trying options below:
This process takes time.
Give each option at least a few weeks before you determine if it’s ineffective or effective. The diet that worked for Buddy usually takes multiple weeks, sometimes over a month, to see significant progress. Buddy was a case that was abnormal in the sense that we achieved a great result quickly.
Try one thing at a time so you can be certain which thing did or didn’t work.
Expect setbacks.
With the grass coming in we saw a small flare up of loose manure. I worked with Buddy’s owner to resolve this by making use of a drylot and going extra slow in grass acclimation. This resolved the pasture-associated loose manure.
If inflammatory bowel disease, hindgut ulcers, leaky gut or colitis are the issue causing the diarrhea, I feel like we are often never fully out of the woods. While the inflammation may subside and we can get these horses back to a normal diet, some of these conditions flare up again in the future. It definitely varies on a case-by-case basis, but I always try to be realistic with clients by mentioning it can be a chronic condition even if we get rid of the diarrhea.
What was Tried:
Diagnostics with the vet.
Pathogens, parasites, and other health conditions were ruled out. On paper, Buddy was completely healthy.
Changing the hay / fiber source.
The owner swapped varieties (orchard, timothy, alfalfa, etc.) but found the diarrhea was equal opportunity and occurred with each type of hay. Sometimes the diarrhea would calm down briefly only to come back again.
The owner added beet pulp to the mix. Beet pulp is an excellent source of fermentable fiber, easy to soak, and can replace up to 55% of hay. This didn’t make a difference for Buddy.
Grain free diet
This diet consisted of loose mineral, forage pellets, hay, and flax. This did not resolve the inflammation in this case.
Supplements
Probiotics - direct fed microbials were fed to resolve a potential dysbiosis (imbalanced gut microflora). In theory, these add to the good “bug” populations in the hindgut, making the hindgut a healthier place. These did not work.
Psyllium - a super fiber that has a laxative effect and may support repair of colonocytes. No benefit to Buddy was seen.
What Worked for Buddy: Removal of long stem forage.
This is usually a last effort as it is labor intensive (the horse must get 4 small, pelleted meals throughout the day), costly, and quite unnatural when you think about the digestive physiology of the horse.
Removing the hay from the diet goes against everything we know to promote a healthy digestive tract for a horse - I get this! The ideal nutrition program for a horse usually involves fairly continuous fiber flow through the digestive tract. In these cases, however, reducing the mechanical load on the hindgut can give it time to heal and a chance for the inflammation to subside.
When we see this program resolve diarrhea, we can make the assumption that the condition of the previously mentioned hindgut inflammatory conditions, although it’s difficult to know exactly which one.
Why can this work with inflammatory conditions of the hindgut?
By replacing the hay with a complete feed and/or forage pellet, we are giving the tract a break. We are providing nutrients in a tiny particle size that are easy to digest and absorb.
How long does it take?
This varies on a case-by-case basis. Some horses need a month after forage removal to see significant progress. In the case of Buddy, we didn’t need to eliminate the hay 100%. We saw major progress with a 75% pelleted 25% hay diet within 10 days of starting the program. Thus, we didn’t keep eliminating the hay. I suggested we wait it out with the few pounds of hay along with the pelleted feed to see if the result stayed. The solid manure continued, and we gradually added more hay back to the diet. He is currently back up to 8lbs of hay per day in addition to a complete senior feed.
How long should they stay on this diet?
Every horse is different. Some need a few months of this and do fine thereafter, some need to be on and off it for the rest of their life. It depends a lot on what we see after trial and error.
After you have noticed consistent, solid manure for at least 2-3 weeks, I suggest slowly attempting to reintroduce hay. Start by adding 1.5-2lbs. Spread it out with each meal per day. Wait and see what happens… if the diarrhea comes right back, the horse wasn’t ready. If the manure remains solid, give it a few days and add another lb. Your horses manure will guide you!
Need help trying a program for your horse with diarrhea? Send me a message to set up a consultation and get a plan tailored to your horse.
Diarrhea and free fecal water... one of the #1 things I get called about. It can be very difficult, sometimes impossible, to solve this issue. It is a point of frustration for vets and nutritionists because the culprit often cannot be diagnosed. It often involves dysbiosis of a microbial community that lives deep in the digestive tract that we don't have access to, or inflammation somewhere along a 100 ft. intestinal tract - which is almost impossible to diagnose pre-mortem.
So is the outlook bleak if your horse has this?...
Not necessarily. There are things we can try.
To have the best chance of correcting it, you need ALL of the following: a sound plan in place, a good vet and nutritionist to help you, patience, willingness to go through trial and error, the ability to deal with inevitable setbacks, and the determination of an owner who is unwilling to give up.
With that... Meet Buddy! A beautiful 21 year old with chronic diarrhea and free fecal water. According to his owner - Buddy had been suffering from winter diarrhea for 4 years. It worsened a bit each year... starting earlier and lasting longer. She eventually found herself scrubbing diarrhea off of his back legs daily from October through April.
Because he wasn't necessarily thin, she was assured that he looked ok. Which in all fairness, he did look ok, especially for what a senior horse is "expected" to look like.
Buddy had a clean bill of health based on exhausting all diagnostics available, which is common in these scenarios. His owner tried psyllium, beet pulp, then no beet pulp, SmartDigest, Probios, Equishure, Coolstance, the no grain diet, switching to different varieties of hay... NOTHING worked!
So the situation usually is... for lack of more technical term, confusing and frustrating as hell.
But his owner knew her horse, and she wasn't ready to give up.
We started working together in mid January after she went through much trial and error. I learned Buddy was eating: free choice good quality hay, 1.5 lbs. of forage pellets, a high quality vitamin/mineral blend, a vitamin E supplement, daily salt, and flax.
By adhering to my protocol for clearing up diarrhea and fecal free water, we fixed a 4 year issue within about 3 weeks. While this turnaround was uncommonly quick, sometimes we get lucky and this happens. We also were able to see a major body condition transformation within 6 weeks. Check out his poop and body condition before and afters below!
Any guesses on how I did it? Hint: it wasn't just feeding more.
Please Note: If you want to try this program, make sure you have your vet and an equine nutritionist monitoring the process. This plan usually comes after everything else has been tried.
Most Read Blog Posts
