Feeding horse with gastric ulcers?

[mindutopia]

I have a new thoroughbred who is a retired racehorse rescue. I knew he was coming to me in quite poor shape as not well cared for by his previous owner once he could no longer race. He’s been home with me about 2 weeks. I am pretty sure he has gastric ulcers after watching him. He’s not my first/only horse but I’ve never had one that did this before.

He has 3-4 small bucket feeds a day of chaff/balancer/linseed/sometimes a beet pulp mash. But I’ve been watching him eating the past few days, and he eats, then stops, looks a bit panicked and then chokes/vomits, really tenses his mouth, but eventually spits out a mucousy/yellow liquid with bits of food in it. He looks really tense when this is happening.

I’m booking him in with the vet tomorrow but with Christmas coming up, I’m not sure they’ll be able to get us in for a scope until the new year. How do you manage your horses with gastric ulcers? I want to do the best for him while we’re waiting for an appointment. Bless him, he’s such a lovely boy and has had quite a stressful life.

Ad-lib hay. Not “2 nets a day”, but unlimited 24/7 hay (Timothy if you can get it).

hard feed not great - keep it simple with straights (oats), sugar beet and chaff - and def not 4/day.

hay, hay and more hay. The digestive system needs simple and busy.

We use gastroguard at work. Also Relyne GI. Ask your vet about it for you.

He desperately sounds like he wants his teeth doing

Avoid anything with too much sugar or starch (most hard feeds)

ad Lib hay, literally never without some available

a huge one is daily turnout too

Omeprazole will help.

Right so a few things:
1- Get teeth checked ASAP by Equine dentist
2- You are doing completely the right thing in getting the vet and booking a scope as only this will tell you for sure. If you have to have gastrogard then make sure the vet also gave you sulfacrate to support hind gut for the duration of the course of GG.
3- If horse does have ulcers then the correct ongoing management is key. For this you need as much turnout with other horses as possible, all year round. 24/7 is ideal. When stabled horse needs ad lib forage which means constant access to hay not restricted to 1 or 2 nets over night.
4- For hard feed you need to look for feeds which are fibre based and under 10% NSC. Speedibeet is an excellent base as only 5% starch and 0% sugar and is high fibre. Then add a very simple chaff such as Thunderbrooks which again is under 10%. Then a balancer.
5- Always feed a Stubbs scoop of chaff 20 mins prior to riding to act as a raft on the stomach and prevent acid splash
6- Ulcers are caused through stress eg to environment/pain etc so you need to identify the stressor in your horse and be really strict about the management. Obviously in this case what the poor horse has gone through will most probably be the cause do hopefully this will correct itself
7- Good on you for taking the horse on and hopefully this horse goes on to have a wonderful life with you.

I've already replied but re-reading your post this really sounds like choke, are you dampening down the chaff prior to feeding it? I would never feed chaff without giving it a good damp down. This is why adding speedibeet to chaff is good as it dampens it and prevents any risk of choke.

I should add he already has 24/7 turnout with a field shelter and also ad lib hay.

For those who mentioned choke, tell me a bit more about this. What comes up definitely comes out of his mouth, not his nose. I should add he also isn’t currently ridden, due to just coming to me and being in poor condition, I have no plans to ride him until the spring as he just needs some time to come back into condition. I hadn’t even thought of the dentist, as my other one at the moment is a yearling, but I’ll give her a ring tomorrow too. That’s a good shout.

It sounds like you're already doing a lot of the right things so apologies for repeating but for mine there are several keys;

1. teeth done regularly - he sounds like he needs seeing ASAP
2. split his feeds into as many as you can. If there is someone up there all day (or you are) divide into 6-8 buckets - give him the same amount over the 24hr period but over 6-8 buckets means much smaller feeds.
3. ad-lib hay and haylage mix from the ground
4. low-heating feeds. Cool conditioning cubes, Coolstance Kopra, Baileys Outshine, pink mash and an oil chaff such as Alfa-A with oil. Add linseed and pink powder. Consider a balancer. It sounds like a lot but again spread out will only be small. Plenty of water in the feed.
5. make sure he has a friendly companion at all times
6. watch his behaviour - is there something causing him stress or pain? If so, deal with that

Horses can't be sick so if it coming out of his mouth then he isn't managing to swallow it to begin with. This would definitely point to a potential teeth issue. How is he managing hay?

Some of the feeds you mention are way too high starch/sugar for ulcer horses. You want max 10% NSC hence speedibeet + a very basic but good quality chaff would be better.

saracens re-leve is suitable for ulcers, either the or the mix.

Actually at 13.5% NSC I would day that it isn't ideal for an ulcer horse, including some of its ingredients. You need to read the actual ingredients and look at the nutritional information rather than the blurb on the front of the packet. The same as for eg Cushcare which is categorically NOT good for horses with PPID!

I feed pink mash to my ulcer prone horse. It is low in sugar and contains no grains that can cause issues. I feed it together with ad lib soaked hay and a balancer.

I also think this sounds like a dental issue. Again the pink mash would be much better than chaff which some horses find difficult.

Lots of good advice here particularly the dentist - get the best one that you can - not just someone who will rasp the teeth. If you are in the SW then the equine dental clinic are the absolute best.

My horse who was scoped and treated for grade 4 ulcers has Dengie healthy tummy, Equilibra balancer and occasional fast fibre. Ad lib hay and plenty of turnout. Exagus in every feed (vet supplement). He events up to Novice on this.

I think the thing to remember is a lot of ex-racers come out of training extremely fit, which does mean they should look an awful lot thinner than we are used to seeing our pet/leisure horses looking - having ribs visible for instance is not a sign of ill-health or being underfed per se if it's because the horse is naturally lean like a TB should be and racing fit (in fact racing yards tend to stuff as much high-protein feed as they can eat down them rather than underfeeding), despite the fact that your average livery yard owner would think a horse in that kind of condition was being starved/abused - but then again IMO we tend to keep our 'ordinary' horses in this country way too fat which is as much or more of a problem than being too skinny.

But basically what I am saying is don't be in a rush to feed him up really quickly even if he is light at the moment, filling him up with lots of hard feed when he isn't in any kind of work can cause all sorts of other problems, as others have said constant access to high quality forage is by far the best thing, ideally 24/7 turnout but if stabling is essential he must have lots and lots of good quality hay, and if he's interested, some enrichment toys as well like a lick, a mirror, toys to stop him getting stressed. Being well-rugged so he's warm enough will also help him keep condition on. If you do give some hard feed make sure it's got plenty of fibre and minimal sugar/starch, I use FastFibre for mine who admittedly don't need to put on weight. When spring comes and he can go out on the new grass he'll likely blossom so just be patient...

Also as others have said, the food coming back up won't be anything to do with ulcers (although not getting enough food down certainly won't be helping there), with choke it does normally come back up through the nose so sounds more like teeth to me (not all racing yards pay the attention to their teeth they should although some are excellent) - if the dentist doesn't sort it out I'd get the vets out. You could add an ulcer supplement to his feed like pink powder which won't do any hard, but if he has a bad case you'll need the vet to prescribe some gastroguard or other medication....

I had an ex racer that had difficulties with choking throughout her time with us (10-27 yo ) , she was scoped and he’d an oesophageal stricture that eventually worsened to the point that she could only eat mush and had to have 4 meals a day of mushy horse pellets and some sugar beet . Prior to moving onto that diet she always had to be watched whilst eating so you could stick your arm down her throat to get out anything that was stuck .