Hello and ulcers

Doodle92

Doodle92

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Apr 6, 2021
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I’m hoping I’ll get this right this time.

Doodle is the nickname of my horse. It started as Dude and seems to have morphed.

Said horse has had a tricky few months. Was treated for ulcers and scoped clear early feb. However it is looking like they are back. We do all the “correct” management and put them down to pain from hocks. Also successfully treated.

Vet is due to come on ties and will ring mon (he was off this week) as I wonder if better to just book in for scope. But I have a query about his poll or top of neck.

Has anyone had ulcers come back so quickly and find the reason why?
 
I used to have a horse who I ended up keeping on a low maintenance dose of omeprazole as without it his always came back, Why they did I don't know, but he was a stressy horse anyway, the sort who if he was a person would worry that he had nothing to worry about!
 
Thanks I wonder if that is what it will come to. How big is your horse and how much did you give? Mine is big and I’m worried about the costs as his 28 day course of peptizole was £717.
 
He is generally quite calm but got himself so worked up yesterday with the gale force winds.
 
He was a big boy, muscled up his weighbridge weight was 690kg and the vet said that he was on the lean side when condition scored! So I was dosing for 700kg which at treatment dose made the costs very high indeed - a full syringe of Peptizole a day, but at the time of diagnosis there was only Gastrogard and a syringe of that only doses a 568kg horse so I was having to use more than one, plus as there was no alternative product the price was higher then!

It is a drug that can be well worth getting a prescription for and then looking online - places like Hyperdrug and Viovet are reliable and sometimes stock it cheaper even allowing for the prescription charge.
 
Thanks. Yes he was getting a full tube of peptizole every day. He is approx 650kg. He had it for 6 weeks which was fine as the insurance paid. How much did you give as a maintenance dose? Even a 1/4 does that is almost £200 a month. Good call about getting a prescription though. I used to do that for a different horses Danilon.
 
Maintenance I generally found a quarter dose was enough, but any sign of a problem and I'd increase it until he was settled again. It may be worth asking your vet about Antepsin (sucralfate) liquid as that can sometimes be helpful too and may reduce how much Peptizole you need or even do away with it completely as a preventative. It's still not cheap, but it's cheaper!
 
He had about a month of sucralfate also. Vet was confident no hind gut ulcers but he wasn’t improving and so we added it on advice of another vet (normal vet was on holiday). It was a powder tho.
 
I'm sure the form makes no difference as long as they eat a powder.

I do hope you can get on top of them, ulcers are a nightmare.
 
Thanks. He has now started eating less hay and he didn’t really want his feed this morning. If he gets worse I will get vet sooner but hopefully get some answers on tues.
 
If it helps I found a choice between hay and haylage, or different bales of hay, would sometimes tempt him to eat, as would some in a net and some on the floor. If you can put hay in the field he'd often eat some that was too, as though a nibble of grass got him eating and then he realised he wanted more fibre. Hard feed seemed to be more tempting soaked, and if he has a few different things then don't mix them but offer separately so that if he goes off one he may eat the rest. It's such "fun"!
 
I have been giving him a mix of soothe and gain and fast fiber. He did, but now dosnt, need the soothe and gain as he is tubby but he dosnt like the fast fiber as much. So this mix seems to suit. We only have hay (included in livery) but I would be quite happy to buy small bags of haylage if needed. He is still eating enough hay really just gone down in amount.
 
I used to soak high fibre nuts to a warm sloppy mash, he'd eat/drink that when turning his nose up at everything else. Keyflow Pink Mash was popular for a while, though he id go off it eventually. Fast Fibre was poisonous in his opinion! There are more specific ulcer feeds on the market now, but at the time if he needed more weight I'd swap some of the high fibre nut mash for Top Spec Cool Condition cubes turned to mash, and some micronised linseed added in. While popular because it's high protein low sugar I found alfalfa could upset his gut, and likewise sugar beet.
 
Thanks for all your help.

The soothe and gain is an ulcer feed. He went on to that as I could make it with warm water and it was irresistible with the abx he needed. He had been dropping weight and it is about 13.5 energy (from memory) so it worked well. Switched to the fast fiber as similar in make up but lower calorie. He previously to getting ill had been on spillers conditioning fiber but this seemed to upset him when I put him back on it.
 
I think I take bad because I have had him 5 years and he has always been hale and hearty and ate a small amount of chaff only!!
 
I rode tonight. After 6 months off it was the 4th ride (over 2 weeks I think) so just 5 mins down road and back. He was tricky to get on for him (moved away from block a couple of times) and spun away as I got on. So he is def not happy. He seemed ok to be ridden but that told me a lot about how he is and we will see what vet says on tues.
 
newrider.com
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