Cushings

[morgansnmind]

I had my 13-14yr old 10.3hand pony tested to see what her ACTH levels were. I had noticed she was slightly ribby and thought to go ahead and just check since she is a pony. I also had a fecal done. Fecal came back as 0 and the ACTH came back in the 700’s . I picked up Prascend this morning. It says to give 1/2 a tab for 6 days and then 1 a day.

The vet said I was doing ok with her food so I didn’t need to change anything but just wanted to run it by y’all .

She is on hay 24/7 orchard or Timothy in a hay chix slow fed net. She usually has access to pasture but not the past month since I have been moving and I’ve been keep my two in a smaller dry lot because I can’t keep a close eye them in the big pasture and my bigger girl is known for leaning/ pushing in the fence. My dry lot is electric. When we move I have about 1.50 acres for them.

Is Prascend a drug that cannot have any missed doses? Sometimes we go out of town for a couple of days and I have a person check on them but doesn’t really go in there other than check water. I will have to make sure in the future it’s someone who knows how to give meds if that is the case.

Any tips for sneaking in Prascend?

[beowulf]

@morgansnmind

Is Prascend a drug that cannot have any missed doses? Sometimes we go out of town for a couple of days and I have a person check on them but doesn’t really go in there other than check water. I will have to make sure in the future it’s someone who knows how to give meds if that is the case.

Any tips for sneaking in Prascend?

It cannot - or really should not - have any missed doses and it should be fed within the same time window.

I have a horse on Prascend. A few things I wished I learned at the beginning:

• Prascend might cause appetite loss. If there is persistent appetite loss, it may be the dose is too high and it’s time to readjust.
• It tastes absolutely terrible to horses and you may have to play around and vary the treats to get it in them.
• You can orally dose it via oral syringe, dissolved in hot water, but my vet does not recommend it.
• Give lots of treats through out the day, with the Prascend treat being randomized. Do not just feed one treat a day - otherwise the horse will learn to associate the treat with the unpleasant taste and will stop readily accepting it.
• Buy ‘sticky’ type treats: Fig Newtons, Gumdrops (cut in half with pill shoved in sticky side), Stud Muffins, homemade oat cakes, and human-grade candies can be used to get the treat in. My horse told me apples and carrots didn’t have enough of a strong flavor profile to disguise the food.

Good luck. My former treat hound – who never turned any food offering up in the 20 years I owned him – turned into the most suspicious little pony once we started dosing Prascend. We mix it now - some days its offered in a “Figgy”, some days its offered in a gumdrop, some days its topdressed on his soaked senior feed – but we make sure to constantly vary the method of getting it into him, and to also offer many placebo treats so he does not learn to associate a treat with the medicine.

[morgansnmind]

Thank you. I am at the store right now so I will pick up some extra yummy treats.

[JB]

TBH I would wean more slowly onto the Prascend - 1/4 pill a day for a few days or week, then 1/4 twice a day, then half once a day, then even 1/2 and 1/4, and finally 1/2 and 1/2 or the whole thing at once. I have NO idea why vets are not getting on board with weaning slowly onto it, as that can really save the frustration of hitting the “pergolide veil”. It doesn’t mean it won’t happen still, it can, but it does seem to greatly reduce the chances.

I can’t truly answer the skipped doses question, but I would imagine missing 1 occasionally is ok, but I would not at all want to skip multiple doses on any regular basis. I mean, horses who end up with appetite issues come off it for a period of time. It just shouldn’t be a regular thing.

Some people get empty gelcaps and put the pill in there and put that in the food. German Muffin treats seem popular, as are Fig Newtons, anything soft and sweet seems to work well, and those would be very easy for anyone to stick a pill in and stick the treat under their nose. You’d want to trial that first, make sure it’s reliable for that horse.

[beowulf]

@JB

TBH I would wean more slowly onto the Prascend - 1/4 pill a day for a few days or week, then 1/4 twice a day, then half once a day, then even 1/2 and 1/4, and finally 1/2 and 1/2 or the whole thing at once. I have NO idea why vets are not getting on board with weaning slowly onto it, as that can really save the frustration of hitting the “pergolide veil”. It doesn’t mean it won’t happen still, it can, but it does seem to greatly reduce the chances.

I wondered that also - caveat being I am not a pharmaceutical expert, just someone who has a horse with Cushings… My vet had us very slowly up the dose. My guy is also only on 1/4 a tab daily and he is a 1200lb QH. I wonder if the compounding is different. He’s been on it for three years now, but I do remember at one point he was moved up to 1/2 a tab and that was when he went off his feed completely.

OP - make sure to also introduce the treats first, separate from the pill. I’d feed a few different treats concurrently and see which gets him most interested - and then start slowly sneaking a random pill in one of them.

[S1969]

@JB

TBH I would wean more slowly onto the Prascend - 1/4 pill a day for a few days or week, then 1/4 twice a day, then half once a day, then even 1/2 and 1/4, and finally 1/2 and 1/2 or the whole thing at once.

Agreed. While it’s great to get the dosage up as soon as possible to control the symptoms, the medication itself causes it’s own set of issues. Loss of appetite is the most obvious issue.

From my experience, even though my pony had “veil” symptoms including refusing to eat grain, he always ate his hay. So, keep an eye on them, but if they are still eating hay I would not panic about loss of appetite too early.

Be prepared that even “extra yummy treats” won’t be enough to mask the taste of the meds, and you may have to resort to syringing or sticking them into their mouth directly. Mine will absolutely not eat it from any source voluntarily.

[morgansnmind]

I will go with the lower dose to start off then . I got carrots, fruit roll ups. gummy orange slices, and oatmeal pies. Hopefully one of those will work.

Thank you all for your help.

[JB]

Good luck! Have you joined the https://www.facebook.com/ECIRGroup/ on FB, and/or their https://www.ecirhorse.org/ site? They are invaluable!

[morgansnmind]

JB no I haven’t but I will thank you .

[SusanO]

I don’t know why a vet would not want you to dissolve the pill and syringe it in the mouth. My pony will NOT eat the pill in any kind of treat. He is fine with being dosed with a syringe. I don’t use hot water ( maybe that is what the problem is) - I just use a few drops of warm water and it dissolves pretty quickly.

And yes he has had episodes of not wanting his grain ( RB) but it doesn’t affect his appetite for hay. I switched to Grow’n’Win and he likes that a lot so not as many problems with that. I would also agree with what others have said about gradually increasing the dose and not going cold turkey.

[Huntin_Pony]

A contrary experience -

I currently have three horses on Prascend and have had a couple of others in the recent past. I have never had a problem getting them to eat the tablets in their feed. I think it’s worth a try to bury it in their grain or other “concentrate” feed and see if they even notice.

I started one of mine on it this week (initial dose 1 tab) and she snarfed it down just like all the others have done.

Good luck!

[JB]

@SusanO

I don’t know why a vet would not want you to dissolve the pill and syringe it in the mouth.

If a horse eats it in their food, or a treat, that’s just so much easier. Some horses tolerate daily syringing, some become monsters.

A lot of people will put the pill in a small bit of food, watch to make sure it gets eaten, then feed the rest of the meal. Done well, that is just an extra 1 minute or so, no big deal if it’s your own horse (barn feeders may disagree LOL)

[SusanO]

Mine just stands there to be syringed. I could not get him to eat it at all. Not in feed, not in feed with molasses, not in treats. Once he had the pill in a treat ( or a meal or feed ) he would never eat that treat again, even if it had no pill in it. I don’t understand why he is so easily syringed when he won’t eat it in a treat. But he is a pony after all…

[beowulf]

You are for sure lucky.

Originally, we didn’t have an issue the first few weeks putting it on top of his grain, and this is what we did. Then he went off of his feed, and refused to touch any type of grain.

Because he was a senior with no teeth, and on a complete feed, this was a disaster.

Took us a few weeks of buying a lot of different grains and dengie, just to get him to even think about eating grain again. He lost a lot of weight and it was not an experience I ever want to go through again.

So we learned it’s better not to put the pill in his main source of food consistently - because if he doesn’t eat his main source of food, we have two problems:

• he didn’t get the pill
• he didn’t get his main source of food

So we now mix it. Some days it is in a figgy, some days it is in a gum drop, some days it is dropped right into his grain. But we never do the same thing two days in a row.

The added bonus of using a treat format for pill ingestion is you know it went right in the horse. For top dressed or mixed in grain, not so much.

[Lah0808]

I think this is probably just one of those ‘your mileage will vary situations’. I was prepared for my horse to not readily eat the prascend pill. We tried different treats, he quickly became suspicious and wouldn’t take the treat. Funnily enough, we did not just try tossing it into his feed to start off and it turned out that is how he preferred to eat it. Never gave any trouble at all on top of his feed. So you may just have to see what is going to work best and go from there.

Also it’s kind of interesting how different vets approach this, I was never told to wean onto Prascend, just give him one pill a day. I did that and it was fine. I understand it may not always be fine but sometimes things just aren’t going to be the big deal you think they may be, generally speaking.

[SusanO]

And to add insult to injury my pony would not only refuse his doctored feed but would dump his food bowl over and then his food and the expensive Prascend would be mixed in his shavings. This got old. I don’t even have to put a halter on him to dose him.

[Sdel]

@Huntin_Pony

I currently have three horses on Prascend and have had a couple of others in the recent past. I have never had a problem getting them to eat the tablets in their feed. I think it’s worth a try to bury it in their grain or other “concentrate” feed and see if they even notice.

I’ve never had a problem tossing it the grain for my two either. I made a mash with alfalfa pellets and tossed the pill on top while still slightly soupy. The pill would get mushy and I’d shake the bucket to break it up a bit and bury it slightly and feed. Always licked the pan clean.

[JB]

@Lah0808

Also it’s kind of interesting how different vets approach this, I was never told to wean onto Prascend, just give him one pill a day. I did that and it was fine. I understand it may not always be fine but sometimes things just aren’t going to be the big deal you think they may be, generally speaking.

I agree you never know. I think most would prefer to hedge their bets and stack the odds of not hitting that veil, which seems to happen with higher frequency if you just hit them with a full pill right from the start. But I too have known horses who were just slapped onto the 1 pill a day and never skipped a beat And, I’ve known horses who were weaned on, and 6 months later hit the veil, so you just never know. If I’m ever faced with this with a personal horse, I’ll for sure be weaning onto the full dose, just as a precaution

[Janet]

I clearly depends on the horse.
I have had two with Cushings (currently have 1), They both started off with the full dose, with no loss of appetite or other problems.

Music had the powdered pergolide, and I just put it on top of her (Senior) feed.

Belle gets the Prscend tablets. I put one in half a German Horse Muffin, and she eats it without complaining. Once or twice the Muffin has fallen apart, leaving the pill in my hand. Then she just takes the pill off my palm without complaining.

If you are lucky, yours will be like mine and easy to treat…

[S1969]

@SusanO

And to add insult to injury my pony would not only refuse his doctored feed but would dump his food bowl over and then his food and the expensive Prascend would be mixed in his shavings. This got old. I don’t even have to put a halter on him to dose him.

Yep. My pony will fling the entire feed pan. I switch up syringing and sticking into his mouth. He’s pretty good at spitting them both out; at least with a whole pill you can pick it up and try again. With dissolved pills you have to start over.