Digestion

Making sure your horse has a natural feeding regime will go a long way towards ensuring a healthy gut (which we recommend Advance Concentrate Complete for). However, there are always occasions when a little help is needed. For horses that suffer regularly with intestinal blockages, we have the ideal solution in Colease. This is a liquid anti- flatulent formulation that will quickly disperse the build-up of gas and will help maintain a normal acid level in the digestive system. It also greatly assists the passage of food through the gut. Colease lasts a long time once opened, making it an easy and essential item to keep in the first aid cupboard. A 20ml dose either by oral syringe or added to a small amount of chaff given per day will help horses already suffering and also act as a preventative measure for horses that are prone to getting this condition. If you are in a sandy area and your horse ingests sand then Sand-Ex pellets is the product for you. This is pelleted Psyllium that turns to jelly in the gut and picks up the sand and takes it out with it. The advantage of a pelleted product is that the product is swallowed and turns to jelly actually in the gut. Ordinary Psyllium very quickly turns to jelly in the horse's mouth which they don't like and spit out. Now let us try and deal with other problems of digestion. A horse is a very simple single stomached fibre-eating animal. We actually should let them have access to as much fibre as they want to eat, as the gut needs it to work properly. It is usually when we add too much hard feed that the problems start. This is because a lot of hard feeds are starch based and it would not naturally be found in their diet. We have learned over the years that horses will benefit greatly from some help in digesting a lot of fibre and adding something we call Fibre Digester daily to the feed does this. It is a particular strain of saccharomyces cerivisae yeast that greatly helps the digestion of fibre, particularly in the hindgut. Inner Balance Probiotics will help digestion too, and the prebiotics in it will help to colonise the gut wall and make it difficult for pathogenic infection to take hold. Probiotics contain two important strains of friendly flora that will help support the immune system. It is particularly useful at times of stress, post antibiotic treatments or when a quick "pick me up" is required.