Has anyone had any experience with horse “hiccuping”? I looked up info online and uunlike humans where it’s a breathing issue, it seems in horses it’s related to an electrolyte imbalance from heavy exertion, or possibly blister beetle toxicity. I have a 10-year old OTTB who has had 4-5 episodes of hiccups over the past 6 months or so. The thing is, he wasn’t being worked, so “heavy exertion” can’t be the cause. He wasn’t sweating a lot, even though it was hot this summer, and he always has access to salt, a mineral block and water and he drinks adequately. The alfalfa hay I get is from New Mexico, so supposedly no blister beetle problem. I have a call into my vet, but thought I’d see what others’ experiences might have been?
Back when I was young I used to do 50 mile endurance rides. On one ride an overweight underconditioned horse was pulled at the 25 mile mark because it had the thumps. I think the rider was adding calcium on the ride which it turns out is not a good thing to do. Since you are not covering 25 miles in two hours I doubt overexertion is the problem. I wonder if you are having an electrolyte imbalance problem because of supplementation that is not balanced to the horse’s other diet inputs. In this horse’s case he was receiving too much calcium in addition to overexertion.
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That very well might be. The only supplement he gets is Dumor hoof pellets. I had switched not too long ago from Farrier’s Formula because of the cost, and the Dumor has significantly more calcium than FF. But he had the thumps before I switched. His feed (ProForce Fuel) has only .75-1% calcium, and he’s been on that for 4 years without issue until a few months ago. It’s also lower in calcium than senior and higher carb feeds. He was on Platinum, but I took him off late in the summer because of cost, although he really did well on it. I wonder if the formula of that balanced whatever other calcium he’s getting—which could only be his alfalfa. Which hasn’t been a problem in the past either. I’m going to dig more!
Could be worth having bloodwork done and looking at both ionized and total calcium levels.
You might want to experiment by reducing the amount of alfalfa and therefore calcium in his diet.
It might sound paradoxical, but if there’s a high level of dietary calcium, the parathyroid gland gets “lazy” wrt being able to rapidly mobilize stored calcium when needed.
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I can definitely cut back his alfalfa to a half skinny flake. He’ll hate me 
I’ll be talking to my vet tomorrow so will see what he says as well. thank you!
No experience, read your post out of curiousity 
I hope your vet can get your guy some relief.
I don’t know where you live, but it’s Midwest Winter here & I’m overfeeding forage now.
About 50% more than in better weather.
My hay is 1st cut orchard grass w/some timothy.
I want to keep weight on my 3 - 24yo pony, 21yo horse & 10yo mini.
If your alfalfa hay is your only forage, could you bring in a lesser hay & replace part of the alfalfa instead of feeding less?
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Once - but it was at a horse trials in summer in Georgia, so the exertion part definitely applied. We ran IV fluids to address the immediate issue, and then I made sure he got electrolytes in his feed after that, and would supplement with paste electrolytes if we were doing really hard work in the summer heat.
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Just to update this, he had bloodwork Monday and his ionized and total calcium levels are perfect, so that doesn’t seem to be the issue. They kept back more blood to test magnesium level (a different test) and to send for analysis for parathyroid issues. That will take more time because it has to be sent out. Meanwhile the vet said to give him 1 Tbl epsom salts (magnesium sulfate)/day and see if the thumps recur. So far, he hasn’t had a recurrence in almost 2 weeks. So, we’ll see what the other bloodwork comes back saying.
Oh and meant to reply about hay. I’m in Texas. My horses get a flake of alfalfa/day, as much coastal as they want, and they are out 24x7 on 50+ acres of pasture with decent grass. Only 1 or 2 pounds of high-fat feed/day to keep weight on, depending which horse we are talking about. So they are not hurting for forage besides alfalfa. Nothing has changed with his hay/feed in 4 years.
I have a gelding who had thumps last summer during a humid time during monsoon. I feed Redmond crushed salt but evidently wasn’t feeding him enough. I went from feeding 2 scoops to 3 scoops whenever temps /humidity go up here in AZ
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I had a horse who got thumps every once in a blue moon but only when being girthed, and it usually happened in the winter. Vet said sometimes the nerve that runs along the diaphragm can get pinched when the horse expands its lungs to avoid a tight girth and this can trigger the spasms, but I’ve never read about that being possible anywhere else. Also don’t use that vet anymore so who knows. ANYWAY, it was pretty non-concerning, he wasn’t overworked and it happened so infrequently that I never changed anything about his maintenance.
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His magnesium test came back WAY low. Basement of the normal range, so now he’s on magnesium supplementation. That was last week, so it hasn’t been a long time but I haven’t seen any more thumps so far. And he’s a little less cranky about grooming. That’s a plus too.
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