IHDG Feed Advice from Jackie JA Taylor here!

[Moderators]

Jackie JA Taylor worked freelance in the horsefeed industry for many years
before taking several years out to research hormonal and metabolic
conditions in horses. She now specialises in helping people with the
management of horses with
laminitis, insulin resistance, Cushing's and their ilk, and has a broad base
of knowledge of the feed and supplements market - so can help people through
the minefield when it comes to making the right choices.

Jackie JA Taylor has kindly agreed to do the best she can to answer feed
related
questions on the IH DG for a limited amount of time. Jackie has also now
set up a
company to supply all the nutritional products that field research has shown
over recent
years to be beneficial to laminitic
horses - like pure Magnesium for metabolic function, Yea-Sacc for gut
stability, or specialist antioxidants and herbs for hoof circulation. She is
also putting together unique blends of herbs and nutritionals where there
are needs that are not being covered - like a joint supplement without
glucosamine - which can cause real problems for laminitics.

The Metabolic Horse study group site is:
groups.yahoo.com/group/TheMetabolicHorse

People can email Jackie on
[e-mail] about any of the nutritional products she
supplies.

[gem]

What a lovely offer

[jen1]

wow thats great just off to find my shopping list of problems,
id love to see an outline of the myths, as in you should/shouldnt feed salt in feeds, tha kind of thing,
and what stopps absorbtion of mag ox,
is alpha, a culpirt for this, ect,lol i willshut up now,

[Casper]

Thanks Jackie. I am one of absolutely loads of people to have benefitted from Jackie's help and advice. And her delivery service on Mag Ox and the like is mega quick!

[jennyf]

I didn't know that glucosamine could cause problems for laminitics? Perhaps someone could enlighten me please. My pony has been on a joint supplement and I'm wondering if this could be causing her 'footy' problems.

[JackieJATaylor]

Hi Jenny, I am afraid it could possibly be. Glucosamine has been shown, in research in both animals and humans, to cause and worsen insulin resistance and to adversely affect circulation. We have had anecdotal reports of laminitic horses either being caused problems by glucosamine, or failing to recover from an episode whilst on glucosamine, so we advise caution.

Jen, yes, I do believe it is advisable to feed some loose salt if a horse does not take a good amount free choice. It seems there are some horses, many maybe, who just do not take enough left to their own devices. Most nutritionists I know recommend a tablespoon a day for a working horse.

It is not that alfalfa stops the absorption of magnesium, more that alfalfa is high in calcium and the two minerals are somewhat competitive, so ought to be maintained within a healthy ratio to each other - and with phosphorus, potassium and sodium for that matter. Potassium is usually high in the diet of a leisure horse living on a forage-based diet, but we may often need to feed sodium, magnesium and sometimes phosphorus to balance the diet.

Jackie

[rummi]

silly question here , do you recommend having a salt and/or mineral lick available in the field for horses who live out 24/7 with restricted grazing and no hard feed (but with a vit and mineral supplement)?

Thanks

[jen1]

i jackie thanks for replying, how wonderful this is, may i ask at what ratio it shoud be fed,
lets take mine,lol barney 16,3 shire cross has in the last 12 mnths been treated as metabolic,
gets half a pound of alpha and oil, mag ox, 2 scoops in a 50 grm scoop , so about 30 grms if not a bit more, and 3 teaspoons of salt, he feeds mainly on hay all day long, cut from out(natural) meadows,and is now eating picking of grass in a small paddock for about an hour per day,(his choice) have barefoot tracks ect, so would the calcium in his diet be too much to
absorb the mag ox, sorry to be vauge on the mag ox, i know its been worked out to be correct for his size , on the advice of my trimmer, ive used it for hat long i cannot rmemeber the right size of scoop, he also get globl herbs restoe and the equimore ,which is, brewers yeast/yesacc, and fenugreek ect,and nothing else, no carrots or treats of any kind, bar cleavers,

[jennyf]

My pony is on Cortaflex, which I'm assured doesn't contain glucosamine, so hopefully that's OK.

[jennyf]

I've also heard that some wormers could upset the metabolism and now I'm worried about worming.

[JackieJATaylor]

Jen, you are always shooting in the dark somewhat without an analysis of your diet/grass/forage, but I would only recommend half the amount of MagOx on what you describe. I personally recommend a good broad spectrum supplement or balancer is used alongside as well.

I would also not feed any alfalfa manufactured with oil to a horse with Metabolic problems - in general apart from some linseed or cod liver oil for Omega 3's we try to avoid extra fats as they can exacerbate oxidative stress and insulin resistance.

Cortaflex is as far as we know safe for laminitics - whether or not it is effective seems to be a matter of opinion.........

Any worming can upset a sensitive laminitic so it is best to worm them when everything else is going well if you can, when there is no stress or change to routine on the cards (and that means grass stress too, like a frost forecast). Praziquantel (in Equimax and Equitape) does actually raise serum glucose in research, it is thought by affecting glucose uptake, so we tend to avoid using it with laminitics who may have metabolic issues.

Jackie

[JackieJATaylor]

Rummi, yes, I would always try to make sure they had free access to plain loose or rock salt, and maybe a free choice mineral lick if you are using a budget supplement. Rockies 5-star cube has reasonable trace mineral levels and D&H do a couple of not-too-high sugar mineral licks in a bucket which have quite good profiles.

Jackie

[moody-mare]

I'm glad cortaflex seems to be okay, I was a little worried there as I have been feeding it to my laminitic mare for over a year.

I hope you don't mind me asking for a little bit of advice My 18yr old tb x fell mare has suffered her second acute attack of laminitis this May. This is her second attack in a period of 3 years. There was no 'obvious' cause to this attack of lami- she was on restricted grazing and was fed hay and hi-fi lite plus supplements of magox, salt, formula4feet and cortaflex and she was not overweight. She wasn't being ridden at the time as we were transitioning to barefoot but she was being walked inhand for 20mins per day. I decided to try barefoot to see if I we could get any improvement in the quality of her feet, as for being over 2 years since her first lami attack, they were in very poor condition. I believe now that we were having issues with LGL all along, which was being 'masked' by having shoes on as they keep her comfortable.

I do also feel that the reason for all of this could be metabolic and though I have talked about insulin resistance with my vet and he said it is very common, he does not feel it is worth testing for at this point. I think the reasoning behind this is that IR can be managed by exercise and diet and that she will benefit from this regardless. To me she certainly does tick some of the boxes for it and she is a very good doer. Her immune system also seems to have been impaired a bit and last spring she started to suffer from sweet itch and this winter we had problems with rainscald for the first time.

Since being on boxrest this time round, we have been having issues with hay but this has been resolved by soaking it (she has never before had issues with hay). As far as her diet goes now, I've decided to cut out alfalfa just incase she does have any problems with this and instead I am feeding a handful of speedi-beet to feed her her supplements and she is being fed 8kg of soaked hay per day (she weighs approx 448kg). Is this enough hay do you think? Is there anything else she could benefit from in her diet, such as yea sacc?

I'm also worrying about introducing her back to grass. Just now we are walking her for 10mins twice per day and on the vet's advice I have to build this up to 30mins twice per day and then I can think about puting her back out to grass. I plan to do this slowly, however, I don't know what the best way to manage her will be when she is back out. She was on strip grazing when she came down with lami, and I don't want her to have to be stabled for huge periods of time as I don't think it's much of a life for them. I was just wondering if you had any advice as to what is the best way to manage her when she is back at grass (esp. considering she may be insulin resistant, which I imagine makes things even more difficult). Thank you.

[nich]

another question - could alfalfa be a cause of techyness/touchyness? I have a horse who is sensitive and irritated by being touched, especially flanks. I had picked up from somewhere that alfalfa is not good for kidneys, which are in the general region.

[JackieJATaylor]

Nich, If you were feeding 20lbs of alfalfa hay a day to an elderly horse with kidney trouble then maybe you might conceivably get tenderness over the loins where the kidneys are - but otherwise no, I do not believe you would see any tenderness for that reason. Allergies can have wide ranging symptoms though, and it is often particular proteins that cause allergic reactions.

Martini, if any 18yr old mare in my care had had 'unlikely' laminitis, particularly with signs of depressed immunity beginning, I would suspect Cushing's and want her blood tested to confirm exactly what was what before anything more serious happened. I would check insulin, glucose and cortisol, and preferably ACTH to assess the whole picture and make sure my management was working. We KNOW high insulin is associated with high laminitis risk so IMO we need to know that is being controlled - by diet if we are just dealing with EMS, or by treatment as well if Cushing's.

Also I believe early Cushing's is far better treated to prevent serious laminitis, preferably with Vitex in the early stages. The work I have done over the last few years shows it is possible to identify and successfully treat cases years before they develop classic signs of Cushing's, even before they have ever had laminitis.

Exercise is critically important to avoiding laminitis it seems, we hear of many cases who suddenly developed laminitis for the first time because of enforced rest.

As for grazing - how much each horse can take depends greatly on the individual and the pasture conditions. I would invest in a Best Friend grazing muzzle - nothing slows their grazing down as much, and this can keep them out for hours longer than they could otherwise tolerate. I believe in the case of an insulin resistant horse this may well be because their 'rate of injestion' is slowed enough so that their glucose and insulin remain fairly low, and so circulation is therefore not disrupted either.

Your diet should be fine, and 9kg a day would be her 2% maintenance level. She can have more when she is back in work as long as she does not gain weight. I feed all mine Yea-Sacc in addition to the yeast in their balancer, but my lad had an irritable gut for years and seems to need this increased dose. I believe F4F contains a yeast doesn't it?

Some extra antioxidants may help, Vitamin E and/or ALA, and if she has glucose problems possibly Chromium. If you email me on [e-mail] I can send you a diet sheet which lists my thoughts.

HTH

Jackie