The only thing that is good from this drought is that there is a lot of horses and ponies that are not suffering from laminitis this season. Laminitis is a very serious health condition that your horse can get from eating too much, and unfortunately I see it far too often. There is nothing worse than seeing a pony that is suffering from laminitis and the owners are completely oblivious to the subtle signs that they are giving you. So what is laminitis? A quick overview of It is begins as the endotoxins cause chronic inflammation of the hoof which initiates a more rapid growth of the hoof wall than would otherwise occur so that the toe of the hoof extends and curls up. Endotoxins continue to cause problems by restricting blood flow to different areas of the hoof and eventually the lack of nutrition and blood supply to the laminae of the hoof causes a degeneration of the bond between the hoof wall and the pedal bone. This then causes the pedal bone to drop/rotate. If the rotation is too extreme then the horse may need to be humanly euthanized. Ok so how does this have anything to do with too much feed? Well it isn’t just feed related, there are many different causes of laminitis however over feeding is the number one cause of it hence why I want to focus on this for our Friday feeding tips. So with the consumption of excessive quantitites of starch and fructans it leads to an incomplete digestion in the stomach. As these starches and fructans pass in to the large intestine it causes a rapid fermentation and changes the pH level, this then eventually leads to an increase in concentrations of bacterial endotoxins. The endo toxins manage to travel their way down to the hoof where they start to wreck havoc on our poor horses hooves. It really doesn’t take much at all to put some ponies over the limit of starch or fructans especially if they are prone to it. As the saying goes You must be cruel to be kind when it comes to restricting the feed of laminitis prone ponies otherwise you will literally kill them with kindness. If you have any questions then please don’t hesitate to contact me for any feed advice.
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