Hey guys, it’s Krista with SaddleBox and in today’s video I’m going to be giving you some tips for helping to prevent colic.
So as most of you all know, colic is something that a lot of people take very seriously and it should be taken very seriously in horses. It can be very scary and it’s just not good. So we always want to keep our horses’ digestion in check and in the best shape possible.
So for my first tip, I would say to always keep your horse occupied with hay or forage. Naturally, horses’ stomachs are supposed to digest hay and grass throughout the day, so horses actually spend 12 to 14 hours eating, so their stomach is very accommodated to producing enough acid to digest that much food.
So if you leave your horse even just two-to-three hours without hay, it can really start to build up the acid in there and thus cause ulcers, thus causing colic, so very, very important to keep your horse occupied with plenty of forage.
Okay, so tip number two is to make sure your horse has access to clean drinking water at all times. Most people don’t really have to worry about this, but maybe if your horse lives in a stall and you have to fill their water buckets, it’s really, really important to make sure that they have clean water, especially if you’re feeding your horse a cube or a pelleted grain of any sort so they can dry up their gut, anything like that, you want to make sure they always, always have water.
And of course if you have a mineral block or just basically any food, they need water. I mean, it’s kind of a no-brainer that they need water, but especially if they are eating a lot of dry foods because the dry foods can kind of build-up and cause stomach upset and even a blockage in some cases. So super important to have clean drinking water at all times.
Okay, so my third tip is to ensure that your horse’s diet is mostly composed of hay and not so much grain. So the majority or the bulk of what they’re eating should be hay and then grain should only take up a little bit of that. So if you’re feeding you horse a majority grain or something pelleted instead of forage, then it needs to switch. So you need to be feeding mostly forage and just a little bit of grain.
Okay y’all, so my final tip is to use some sort of ulcer supplement. The things that I really like are the Daily Gold by Redmond Equine, Smart Pack makes a great one, there’s a product called Ulcer Aid, that’s another great one.
And you may, if you live in areas that are sandy or your horse eats off of the ground a lot, using a psyllium pellet can also really help because sometimes the sand can get built up in their gut, and that again can cause colic. And that is sometimes a much more serious form of colic.
So using a psyllium pellet a few times a year can really help with that. A lot of the time when your horse colics, your vet will recommend starting them on something called omeprazole or ulcer guard. Definitely always have that on hand.
Another thing to have on hand which is really nice is banamine because horses tend to like to colic in the middle of the night or not during business hours, so having a tube of banamine on hand can definitely be very, very helpful in those kinds of situations.
Okay y’all, that’s it for this one. I hope you enjoyed it and I’ll see you in the next video. Bye guys!