What do you feed your laminitic/Cushings horses?

[gilly]

Ginger has decided it's time for a feed change again. Every year or two he starts leaving his feed, don't know if he gets bored of it or what?!

At the moment he's on Topspec AntiLam and speedibeet to hide his supplements (magnesium and a respiratory supplement).

He has Cushings and is extremely sensitive to grass. He is also on Prascend.

Would be interested to know what other people feed their Cushings horses/laminitics.

[jill]

Top Spec Cool Condition (has no cereal in it) Speedybeet, Fibre beet (Speedybeet with alfalfa) and grass nuts. But she is difficult because she can't swallow hay or haylage, so it is a total hay replacer diet. If she would eat forage all she would get would be a small amount of Speedybeet for her supplements. She does also have some grass, even at this time of year I save her some winter grass. I'm not sure whether she swallows that, I have found a few quidded twists.

[kafee]

I used to feed him pergolide, kwikbeet and cooked linseed, for Cushings, and naf biotin and mag ox for his feet and separation anxiety, plus salt and a mineral supplement. He went off this in the summer, so I switched to Omega rice, (Falcon feeds linseed based feed), instead of the cooked linseed, and have been gradually reintroducing the other supplements.

He lives out 24/7 on ad lib foggage, but I'm having to work at keeping weight on him.

[Bella]

Hi, my mare hasn't got cushings but she is prone to laminitis, she came down with laminitis 3 years ago - complete box rest for 8 long months. I used to feed her speedi-beet, sometimes she would eat it, sometimes she wouldn't. I changed to Fast Fibre and although it doesn't look very tempting to us, she seems to like it. I feed her 2 x cups of Fast Fibre with mag ox (heavy) and a scoop of Happy Hoof. This seems to suit her well and she's had this for the last 3 years and still looks forward to her tea.
Edited to say, I also feed her soaked hay

[mandal]

My mini Shetland prone to laminitis is now fed soaked hay, speedibeet to carry mineral balancer and (Kelly's favourite ) micronised linseed to replace omegas lacking in a hay only diet.

ps. I've given up on attempts to allow grass and her weight is spot on according to the vet.

[floydsmum (aka LesleyfromKent)]

Hi, Floyd being fussy at the moment too, he's on 1 Prascend tablet a day - he was on Fast Fibre and top spec chaff originally, then he went off that so I tried him on Speedibeet, that was ok for a while then he went off that!!

I now feed him a mix of Speedibeet & Alfalfa grass nuts and Hi-Fi mollasses free chaff. I think Alfa-Beet is better than the Alfalfa nuts but sharing grass nuts with a friend). 'Touch wood' he's eating it at the moment!!

He also has plenty of soaked hay. Tried him on straw but wouldn't touch it!! My friend feeds her Cushings pony straw and hers loves it!!

[nich]

Fast fibre and happy hoof - the latter was recommended by my vet who said her old pony and many Cushings clients used it. I wouldn't have chosen it myself, as it does have garlic in it, but Autumn who is on 1.5 tabs of Prascend, plus balanced minerals, turmeric, salt and a dash of linseed oil, eats this.

[calekio]

Currently.. what ever she decides to eat which is within the safe range!! Which is alfalfa pellets... and nothing else.. maybe a bit of a spillers lite balancer if she will have it! Fussy is being worse than i've ever known her!! Won't touch speedibeet, won't touch fast fibre.. won't have alfalfa pellets soaked either! so she also gets a syringe full of metformin, pergolide, synequin and a bit of salt in the evening.. and a syringe full of metformin and naf energy in the morning... as she won't eat them so mixed with water and down throat is currently only option... although depressing when pony is also underweight!!

[Vanessa Witchy Weild]

Well I have the strangest beasties you could meet one has cushing's and has had laminitis on many occasions. The other has had lamintis once :crossesfingerstightly: They both live out with a field shelter so the weather conditions can be very testing! They both have nuts, Fibrebeet, a small carrot between them, Feedmarks Barefoot formula, the contents of a Peppermint tea bag each and hay. I have tried A&P Fast Fibre and L mix and they both turned their noses up at them and believe me the one with Cushings is a pig LOL. The one with cushing's is on one Pracsend tablet a day but is due his blood test on Friday for doseage correction if any.

[floydsmum (aka LesleyfromKent)]

It's a nightmare when they won't eat isn't it. Problem is there's not a huge range of feeds that are available within the 'safe range' for IR / EC horses! One day perhaps someone will come up with a complete feed for them! Some manufactures claim to have low sugar / low starch feeds but when you look into the ingredients and ask the experts, turns out IR / EC horses can't have it!

[Catrin]

We seem to be keeping it under control by avoiding sugar and starch. This means ad lib haylage — we've tested the sugar content and it has mostly gone in the making; 1.5 kg Alpha A — Oil if they are underweight, read the labels as some "suitable for laminitic" food contains molasses; 1.5 kg Speedibeet; tbspn salt, and magnesium. Grass is okay in summer if we have normal growth! In winter, never when it is frosty.

To test for sugar in hay or haylage I use copper sulphate, from the farm shop, dilute a tablespoon to a pint of water. Cut up the hay very fine, put it in an empty spice jar, add two tablespoons of the copper sulphate solution and place in a pan of boiling water and leave boiling for ten minutes. When the liquid is cool, I tip a bit on a piece of kitchen towel and let it dry. If the liquid dries with a browny tinge, the browner it is, the more sugar was in your hay. Useful to test with soaked versus dry hay too. Here are some results I got earlier:

left is hay, right is haylage

[Deleted]

Catrin, have you ever calibrated this against a lab test? Presumably it's useful for a comparison of two forages but doesn't give you any idea of % sugar content?

Does the amount of brown colour not also depend on the amount of tannins? I believe in most hay soaking water the majority of the colour is tannins not sugar.

[gwenoakes]

Daisy the TB who has only had one episode of lammi, but was in all four, has a small handfull of Denjie Hifi light each day, hay and out 4 - 5 hours each day. She had soaked hay in the summer which will be resumed again soaking for 3 - 4 hours on vets instruction. She has lost a lot of weight and you can see her ribs, although not too thin which is the way we like it for her now.

Forgot to add she has linseed oil too.

[usst8s]

The Pure Feed Company's feeds are suitable for horses with laminitis, cushings, IR etc. Mine have been on it for over a year now and they are looking fantastic. If you order feed from the website it is delivered straight to your door usually within 48 hours.

[Catrin]

Jan 3, 2013 12:05:40 GMT 1 @michellep said:

Catrin, have you ever calibrated this against a lab test? Presumably it's useful for a comparison of two forages but doesn't give you any idea of % sugar content?

Does the amount of brown colour not also depend on the amount of tannins? I believe in most hay soaking water the majority of the colour is tannins not sugar.

When you soak nuts (as in hazel, walnut etc), sugar–beet or hay, the brown liquid is the tannins that have leached out. When you test for glucose, ideally you should use Benedict's solution, which you can approximate by mixing washing soda, vinegar and copper sulphate, but I didn't want to mess with the washing soda!

Had I had easy access to a year–seven child, that too would have been another possibility as they test foods for glucose in year seven Science. One of my grandchildren is too young and the others too old. Instead I sent my experiment proposal to my nearest RA, as she is Head of Science at a High School. She advised on method. Heating helps release the glucose.

We decided that the copper sulphate would do to compare two forages for glucose. If you put hay in water for ten minutes not much tannin will leach out, but the glucose releases the copper from copper sulphate and turns the liquid brown, so putting each forage in copper sulphate for the same time, will result in the one with the most glucose going darkest.

When the haylage was tested two years ago it was 8.5% sugar. I couldn't measure the amount of sugar, but used my test to compare dry hay, hay soaked for 40 minutes, hay soaked overnight and haylage. The haylage and hay soaked overnight were about the same, the hay and the hay soaked for 20 minutes were quite brown.