Laminitis
Holistic Horse Care: Avoiding laminitis in horses
Laminitis in horses is a devastating condition once it takes hold. With a holistic horse care program you can significantly lower the risk of laminitis in horses but you still must stay alert for early signs of the condition. There is no vaccine against laminitis in horses, so diet and management are your best defenses. [...]
Holistic Horse Health: Why I feed probiotics
What is the first rule in feeding horses? Don’t make drastic feed changes. This is true because horses depend on a population of friendly bacteria to maintain healthy digestion. Drastic feed changes can alter the balance of healthy bacteria which can lead to colic or laminitis. Stress, drugs and weather changes can also alter the [...]
Laminitis in horses: York Part 3
York Part 1 York Part 2 York ended up losing 3/4 of his hoof wall on the LF. His hoof wall jammed up into his coronary band and had to be filed and cut away to allow for new hoof to grow. The large wedge of dead laminar tissue between the detached hoof wall and [...]
Laminitis in Horses: York – Part 2
Laminitis in horses is always bad but for poor York it was devastating as he was recovering from his bad trailer wreck. York’s system was already stressed and I worried about his overall nutritional status. His coat was dull and he was about 100 pounds underweight. My first goal was to get nutrient dense food [...]
Holistic Horse Health: Laminitis in horses
Laminitis in horses is always a serious holistic horse health emergency, but York’s case has been a real challenge. York, a 4 year old, Thoroughbred, race horse was thrown from his trailer when it was rolled in a major wreck. When the emergency workers arrived on the scene they found York standing in the median [...]
Laminitis horses: Chaffhaye is an option
The spring grass is coming up and it is so tempting to let your laminitis horses out on pasture but you must resist. Sugar is high and magnesium is low in spring grass and this combination is one of the main triggers for laminitis horses. The really sad thing is that spring grass is also [...]
Laminitis horses: Labwork not always dependable
Laminitis horses that have metabolic issues are such a challenge to diagnose and treat. It is tempting to focus on lab results but this can be a mistake unless you look at multiple tests. My basic tests for metabolic laminitis horses are glucose, insulin and ACTH. I run these tests regularly and look for patterns [...]
Feet First – Good book for getting your horse barefoot
Feet First – Barefoot Performance and Hoof Rehabilitation by Nic Barker and Sarah Braithwaite is one of the best books on Hoof care I have seen. Nic and Sarah started on their path of having barefoot horses when 3 out of 5 of their horses went lame while in shoes. When conventional veterinary care was [...]
Horse feeding – Is your horse cheating on his diet?
It is fall in Central Texas which means mesquite bean and acorn season. I got a call from my neighbor a few days ago and her donkey with insulin resistance was walking stiff. My friend was confused because even though we had had some rain, the grass had not had time to grow so she [...]
Cool New Research on Insulin Resistance
The American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association meeting was awesome. I went to the session on Insulin Resistance with Gabriele Sutton, ND and Dr. John Hanover. It is always so rewarding to hear scientific confirmation of what I see clinically. First of all they both emphasized the part that dysbiosis and leaky gut syndrome play in [...]
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