Help Your Horse

Unfortunately for our horses, we’re only recently becoming aware of the prevalence of ulcers, so may have put weight-loss, poor attitude or performance problems down to a multitude of other reasons. We’d try more/different feed, re-worming, various supplements, bloods, physios, or worst case, the horse has ‘just always been grumpy” and do nothing about it, leaving our poor horse suffering.

No-one knows your horse better than you and as such he is totally reliant on you for his health, happiness and well-being through ongoing observation of his state of mind and physiology.

Ulcers are slow non-healing acid burns and now that we know of the pain and discomfort our horses suffer from we can take steps to heal and prevent further suffering.

Feeding

The longer the feed is in your horse’s mouth the better - chewing realises saliva, which contains high levels of bicarbonate and other alkaline buffers to neutralise the acid in the stomach. Horses that are fed high levels of concentrates and not enough fibre/roughage spend less time chewing and may eat too fast, which results in very little saliva production. Over time these high concentrate – fast food- diets with low fibre can lead to digestive dysfunction such as colic and stomach ulcers

Regime

Exercise

Observe observe observe - the longer your horse has ulcers the more he suffers, the harder it is to treat them and the longer it can take. Horse with ulcers are in pain. Horses can die from ulcers.