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Post by jill on Sept 18, 2014 13:54:27 GMT 1
If you are thinking of selenium, get a blood test done first to check his levels - overdosing is as bad as not enough
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Post by amandap on Sept 18, 2014 14:21:20 GMT 1
You also need to get grazing and forages tested. High selenium is quite dangerous and if very high can be very dangerous. This is if you are considering feeding selenium specifically as opposed to a balancer containing selenium.
ps. I see no reason to hold off feeding salt myself as most horses need supplementing, but it's up to you of course.
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Post by mrbsmum on Sept 25, 2014 20:49:31 GMT 1
Quick update. Owner has now returned, and agreed with me that his headshaking is worse than it had ever been and that he seemed panicky and pained. We tried a few things (free schooling etc) just to see if tack/rider affected it at all, and had no real result. We both agreed that he seemed very unhappy, so we decided to get the vet out again and start right back at the beginning. This time the vet thought that he was experiencing pain in his lower neck somewhere. This would certainly explain his panicky reaction to being ridden - although right now we don't know if this is causing the headshaking (ie something that was missed last time), or if he has given himself a bad neck through doing it. At the moment though we at least have something to work on. He's responding well to the painkillers and seems much happier in himself, although he is currently off work so we don't know if he is better ridden. We're waiting on xrays (if the machine can cope with his neck!) and we should have a chiropractor coming out to him soon, so we will see where we go from here. With any luck we will at least be able to get him back to his nice sensible self, even if we still have to tackle the headshaking afterwards.
If this doesn't help we will then be looking at dietary adjustments - and yes, we will get both selenium and magnesium levels tested, and monitored if we go down that route. The plan was to start with salt because that is fairly harmless, and then built up to the other stuff if that doesn't help. Keeping fingers crossed that x-ray, chiro and painkillers might be able to get this thing under control...
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Post by jen1 on Sept 28, 2014 13:15:43 GMT 1
Not sure where you are in your journey , just to say nose nets, are pretty antiquated masking a problem isnt ever going to solve it, id recommend getting some litmus papers , and testing the ph then you can relay this to jenny patterson. Salt features heavily in her recomendations along with potassium fighting ingredients, im about to but some papers too, check all of ours ,
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Post by jen1 on Sept 28, 2014 13:18:51 GMT 1
Mta I dont think you can just single 1 mineral out as there will be many to work out , is he on grass? Is it clover? Id get him off both soaked hay see how it goes, are his jowls swollen or hard, aka gutteral pouches near the hyiod area?
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Post by mrbsmum on Sept 30, 2014 23:46:12 GMT 1
Cheers Jen. At the moment things are still the same as in my post above. He is out of work on painkillers as the vet thinks he may have a neck unjury. We're still waiting on xrays and the chiropractor, so we're not going to fiddle with his diet until we've explored all possible physical causes for it. He seems happier since he's been on the painkillers, although the shaking is still there at the moment (but not the panicked behaviour). We will pursue this avenue a bit further before we start looking at other options. Nose and face nets made no difference for him anyway. We were hoping they would at least allow us to pinpoint what it might be that was troubling him (photic, pollen reaction, wind etc), but nothing really seemed to make a difference. He is on grass, no clover though - we don't really have pasture up here, it's more rough moor type grazing. We don't have stabling for him, so taking him off grass will not be easy. If we have to we have to, but will will cross that bridge when we come to it. No swelling or anything unusual about his jowls though... We don't really want to change to many things at once, otherwise it makes it difficult to tell what is getting the results (if it does). We will explore diet if nothing comes up with his neck, or it looks like the neck injury could have been caused by headshaking, rather than being the cause of it. We've got a few more answers we can get more tests done and go from there. The good news is that he is not bad in the field, so he seems pretty happy as long as we're not riding him, so we have time to play about with stuff without being worried that he suffering.
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