If you’ve ever gone through a laminitis episode with one of your horses, whether acute and later resolved, or chronic and ongoing, you know what a nightmare it presents—both for you, the owner, and, more painfully, for your poor horse.
More and more is being learned about laminitis in horses, and recently a possible connection with too much iron in the system has been suspected. I just came across this lay-person-friendly article on The Horse online magazine explaining that the correlation is really NOT yet known for sure, however, so thought I’d share it HERE.
I think my own experience with laminitis is probably fairly typical. And when I was going through it, there wasn’t nearly as much information or knowledge about laminitis in horses as there is now.
Many years ago, I rescued an American Saddlebred who had been so line bred (a polite way in the horse-breeding industry of saying “inbred”) for conformation and success in the show ring, that he was totally burned out from intense training and flipped out mentally by the age of 2-1/2. A show career for him had become a joke. His name was Zak, and, true to his breeding, he was a spectacularly beautiful, dark golden specimen—everything a Saddlebred fan could want.
But he had been ruined. And as the years progressed, part of this ruin showed up in his feet, as he became a chronic laminitis case. In fact x-rays revealed that he literally had holes in his coffin and cannon bones, often with pus in them, probably from too much physical stress being placed on them way too early in his training.
Being a high strung fellow with a hot metabolism, Zak could sometimes be hard to keep weight on, so finding just the right combination of feed, hay, and supplements was a challenge. Unfortunately, I did not know then what I know now, so I’m sure his food was too rich, too sweet, and way too full of starch.
I had Zak until well into his 20’s, the last 10 years or so being pretty miserable for him much of the time. We never tested him for insulin resistance then, but, as stated above, the connection between that condition, horse feed, and laminitis in horses was not as well known then as it is now.
I’ve learned a lot since then about this serious ailment, and about insulin resistance and Cushings, and it is not an uncommon subject amongst many of my horse friends. It seems the better we treat them (overfeed them, or feed them improperly), and the less work they are called upon to do, the higher the frequency and numbers of laminitis cases. I personally have stripped my horses’ diets of all but a very small amount of low-carb feed, just once a day so I have something to put supplements on (and not even that on weekends), and I rely on Simplexity’s APA Blend of natural, whole food micronutrients to make sure they are getting the basics they need. One of my horses is a Mustang and, as one friend says, “Mustangs can live on air,” so I am particularly careful with her. Bottom line, my girls are mostly on good grass hay.
“Good grass hay” is becoming somewhat of an oxymoron, however, as it is often so highly fertilized, it’s way too high in certain nutrients, too low in others, and the minerals are way out of balance. Or it’s grown in such poor soil that the protein content is below subsistence level. So hay testing has become de rigeur in my household!
If laminitis has become an issue in your life, at least you can take heart and plumb the amazing amount of valuable information available online these days. One such resource I would recommend is Dr. Madalyn Ward’s ebook on the subject, HERE (it’s the 4th book down in the list on this page). Dr. Ward is a holistic equine veterinarian so she relies primarily on whole foods and natural supplements to treat her cases, but she can advise on how to use medications and drugs when absolutely necessary.
If you have equines, learn as much as you can about laminitis in horses and:
- don’t feed sweet feed
- test your hay, and
- make sure your horses get adequate exercise.
Good luck!
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To learn more about APA Blend and why it’s so good for your horses, here’s another blog post you might be interested in.
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