loose droppings

[ojoj1869]

my mare aged 21yo has had loose droppings for past few weeks...is never kidney shaped...usually "elephant sized piles"
droppings splatting when hitting ground not liquid diarrhoea....
is drinking alot more but have put this down to fact due to loose droppings losing fluid that way plus have chaanged her from haylage to hay to see if that helps, taken her off sugar beet, just having hifi and mix...
changed to hay 5 days ago stopped the sugarbeet 3 days ago...not much improvement...
advised to try natural live yoghurt to reintroduce good bacteria to gut which i started 36 hours ago...Rosie is not impressed though!!!! such a pig she eat anything!!!
any other suggestions / advice
just to say she is her normal perky self just the loose droppings...
any experience of dengie triple action xp or pink powders for this sort of problem
with natural yoghurt how quick should improvement be??

[Margaret D]

My daughter's TB has had this for the last six or so weeks. We've tried the usual, yakult with transient effect and then took him off the haylage, again with transient effect. The vet suggested pink powder for five days and then we weaned him of it and back to sloppy poop. The vet said back on to the pink powder and on to the nasty hay that the livery provide again with transient effect. So, the vet was out today and has taken several vials of blood from him, in all other respects he is well in himself, drinking lots of water so now we wait to see what the blood results show. My guess is nothing, just him drinking lots of water and his body dealing with it the best way it can.

Regards MD

[Margaret D]

Well no surprises there is nothing wrong wth the blood tests. Now we wait a bit longer for the results of the faecal sample the vet took. Again my guess is that there will be nothing wrong, just Snookums drinking too much water.

Regards MD.

[ojoj1869]

thats interesting.....i have today brought dengie triple action xp totry....out of interest what hard feed do you feed....
i am using different mix this winter and hifi instead of hifi lite i am loathe to switch feed during this phase as i think the gut upset will stay whatever now as it is already aggravated and it means shelling out more money just to see.....i may at the end of bags switch over to what i had her on last winter...
i did wonder if i should be feeding some vitamin supplement and /or some electrolytes but feel its just adding another thing into the diet..... with pinch test she doesnt appear dry so is obviously making up the loss with the extra water taken in
the yoghurt has had very little effect....and oh she hated it!!!!!
looking for other reasons could teeth be the cause as she is due a dental visit but cant quite see how that would give her loose droppings....
interestingly the dropping all vary in consistency from cowpat to very moist slightly kidney shaped lloking like hifi mixed with water and moulded slightly

[till]

With all the severe weather we have been having lately. Some horses can react to frosty grass which can give them loose droppings.

[Diane with Sam & Jubilee]

Pie has always had loose droppings. He seems to pass a lot of water whilst pooing although the actual faeces are relatively normal (occasionaly loose but on the whole normal). Over the past 2 years I've had blood tests, biopsies, faecal sample tests etc done and everything came back completely normal. The only thing the vet can come up with is a lazy hind gut (where the fluid )absorption mainly happens). This can be caused by worm damage as a youngster. Pink Powder made no difference, trying different feeds made no difference, Yeasacc made no difference - in fact nothing made a difference. He was on Codiene Phospate for ages without any change so we came to the conclusion that this is how he is and I just stock up on tail whitener!!!! He is perfectly healthy, doesn't lose weight and is not affected in the slightest by his 'runs'. I've since come across one other horse who is exactly the same and their vet didn't find any cause either. If you do come across a reason. please let us know in case it is something we haven't covered.

[BuckSkinBabe]

Do you give your horses a biotin supplement? For I have found that it often makes stools loose.

[KoLaTo]

My little lad has always had looser droppings in comparison to the others althou fed the same diet, however I ran out of garlic some time ago and didn't replace it and hey presto, little lad has normal droppings! With this in mind, i also changed my usual garlic molichaff over to Hi Fi Lite and no more problems plus less sugar for him which he didn't need.

[Diane with Sam & Jubilee]

The only supplements Pis is on is NAF 5 star superflex. He has Hifi lite and grass nuts and hay and that is it.

[Margaret D]

Noukari and Finnigan are on Top Spec and a handful of Alfa A, a carrot and an apple, a splash of raw linsed oil, once a day. That's what they've had since they came to our ownership. The only thing thats changed is the forage, which I have no control over as the liveries MUST buy off the yard. During the summer months they don't drink half as much water as they are doing at the moment.

We follow the yard's worming programme, again, no choice there, but they are worm free.
I have their teeth checked annually, minimum, all well there.
They have huge hay nets always more than they need, I am particular that way.

Will keep you all appraised of the results.

Regards MD.