Trying to troubleshoot a horse’s gut, when it’s in disarray, can feel sometimes like assembling a puzzle acquired from Goodwill. With missing pieces and dog-eared corners, trying to figure out how to put it all together can be daunting.
Recently, seemingly out of nowhere, Brandy’s stool quality dissolved – literally. A bit of background: Brandy has been a mash-only horse since she first arrived at SAFE. The grinding surfaces of her teeth are practically nonexistent, leading her to quid out any hay or grass she has access to. While she was still allowed on pasture in the summer months (with a grazing muzzle), all of her calories come from pellet feed. So her manure has always been on the soft side, as is typical of a mash-only horse.
But one day, that softness turned to liquid. There were no variables that had changed in her life, nothing new about her feed or lifestyle. She was in good health too, without a fever or any other symptoms that might explain the loose stool. We ran bloodwork, which came up clean as a whistle. While we of course don’t want our horses plagued by medical issues, having a clear cause of a problem can be nice for troubleshooting purposes.
We tried many things to course-correct under the guidance of our vets. We added in additional probiotics, twice daily biosponge, sucralfate, and a month-long course of metronidazole. The metronaidazole was the only thing that made any positive difference, and even then it only lasted for a few days. Then we were back to square one, and feeling out of options.
Our savior came in the form of alfalfa leaves – a real MVP in the horse world. In an effort to give Brandy some roughage in her gut, we introduced a few pounds of alfalfa chaff into her daily feed regime. Not only did she love it, it also came as the missing piece to our puzzle – almost immediately her piles regained shape and substance. If we quite didn’t jump for joy, we definitely bounced. After several days of sustained improvement, we began to walk back some of the other methodologies we had tried, hoping the change would hold. And to our delight, it did!
Since then, Brandy has been enjoying both her daily alfalfa leaves and the formed piles that have resulted from it. For now, the puzzle has been assembled.
