How To Prevent and Manage Equine Disease With Nutrition.

How To Prevent and Manage Equine Disease With Nutrition. Feeding horses is for growth,wellness and disease prevention thus what you feed the horse impacts the whole system.This can then be used as a platform to manipulate dietary ingredients to reduce a horse's risk of developing particular medical conditions such as colic, gastric ulcer syndrome, and developmental orthopedic disease and to help manage some pre-existing conditions such as obesity and equine metabolic syndrome. These are ways nutrition can be managed to prevent the following conditions in horses ; 1) Sand Colic occurs when sand consumed alongside feed is large enough that it does not pass out with waste leading to impaction of intestine thus reducing gastrointestinal motility. The preventive measure will be to provide feed off the ground or add a bit of psyllium supplement to diet to get rid of sand in the intestine. Sand colic management 2) Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome.(EGUS) Horses of all ages, breeds, and walks of life can have ulcers ,but the incidence can be reduced by carefully planning what you feed and how often you feed. Horses with EGUS generally have these ulcers and erosion in the lower portion of the esophagus, the stomach, and the beginning of the small intestine. These ulcers normally form when there's an imbalance between the factors that buffer the ingested feed and protect the stomach which in horses is saliva, and the factors that incite erosion which is the stomach acid. The typical signs are poor body condition, colic and lethargy. The solution will be for the horse to have constant access to feed to promote saliva secretion to protect stomach from ulcers. 3) Obesity; this is the precursor of so many metabolic diseases and basically occurs when high carbohydrate diet is fed with limited exercise of the horse. There is an imbalance in the high energy feed consumed and utilization of same in terms of burning calories. The way forward is to reduce diet and encourage exercise. 4) Impaction colic; occurs when feed material obstructs the colon thus making elimination of waste difficult. The common cause is reduced intake of water,which can arise when horses dont drink enough water because of lack of access to water or because these horses dont like to drink water. The solution is to provide clean water always and also encourage drinking of water by the horses. Horses that dont like to drink can be made to drink required amount of water by using any of the following means; a) Give flavored water but the glucose level of such drinks should be regulated. b) Soaking hay before feeding will also count for increase in water consumption c) Adding salt to the water about 1-3 tablespoons once/twice a day will stimulate drinking.