I have been reading up on Founderguard (active ingredient Virginiamycin) that it acts on lactic acid in the hind gut to prevent founder. Founder is a metabolic disease and I am wondering if anyone has tried it for other metabolic diseases such as Cushings, PSSM, Shivers, or even ulcers? The product information states “FOUNDERGUARD controls the build-up of lactic acid from this fermentation process, preventing damage to the gut lining and therefore laminitis.”
Could this help all these other metabolic diseases and even hind gut ulcers?
I’m interested to hear if anyone has used Founderguard for anything other than founder prevention?
I don’t know how much this stuff costs, but you can probably more effectively help metabolic horses with the proper diet/exercise and learning how vitamin/mineral imbalances can affect them. Dr Kellon’s ECIR group is a good place to start. https://www.ecirhorse.org/
“TheHorse.com” has credible articles. KER has credible articles. Those of us who are living with founder, new or with the residual affects of serious rotation, can offer thoughts.
If you read their marketing comments, it clearly states this product is used to help guard against “feed induced” founder.
This is a 2012 article from The Horse, so things may have changed since then BUT it speaks to the UK banning this product and it states why.
I’m curious what makes you feel any antibiotic could help a muscle polysaccharide storage disease, or ulcers (which are not caused by bacteria in horses), or a malfunctioning pituitary?
I am no vet but was reading that inflammation of the intestines, hind gut issues, damage to the lining of the hind gut, etc. can lead to ulcers, colic and insulin resistance. If Founderguard controls the bacteria that causes the lactic acid build up which in turn damages the hind gut lining, I wonder if it can also be used to help/treat/prevent some of the others? I was just wondering if anyone had ever considered it or tried it to treat anything else. I don’t actually have a foundered horse, I was just interested in the relationship between a lot of equine metabolic disorders, insulin resistance and hind gut issues.
What makes you think Foundergard actually works as advertised?
i thinking your “reading” may be conflating cause and effect.
On the other hand, there is interesting research mostly in humans about the role of gut bacteria. But at this point in time, the best practices seem to be adding good bacteria with probiotics, not trying to kill off selected bacteria with an antibiotic. The idea is probiotics can help colonize the gut with the right bacteria and drive out the overgrowth of harmful bacteria.
”‹”‹”‹”‹”‹An example in human medicine is the probiotic Florastor which knocks out the e coli overgrowth that causes food poisoning symptoms and chronic diarrhea.
IR and PSSM aren’t about hind gut damage, they are about the inability to react to insulin which then leads to an increase in glucose in the blood stream (IR), and about the genetic inability to properly use glucose for muscle function (PSSM)
I’d be interested where you read that hind gut damage can lead to IR
There’s no doubt the gut microbiome plays a critical role in the entire body and its health
FWIW, Founderguard has been banned in quite a few countries because of developing resistance and how critical they feel that abx is for people
Re-post as I tried to edit the first one for spelling mistakes and it got sent to Unapproved hell :mad:
IR and PSSM aren’t about hind gut damage, they are about the inability to react to insulin which then leads to an increase in glucose in the blood stream (IR), and about the genetic inability to properly use glucose for muscle function (PSSM)
I’d be interested where you read that hind gut damage can lead to IR
There’s no doubt the gut microbiome plays a critical role in the entire body and its health
FWIW, Founderguard has been banned in quite a few countries because of developing resistance and how critical they feel that abx is for people
This is an interesting read and thought provoking. And as much as it is an oxy moron to give antibiotics, I know that Virginiamycin works on cattle with acidosis and can be life saving. So I am sure it would wipe out good bacteria as well, but sometimes you need ABs to get on top of the bad bacteria that has taken over. https://www.prydes.com.au/breeding/2…u-need-to-know
Well, if cattle weren’t fed so much corn, they wouldn’t have issues that needed to be treated with daily antibiotics
Same with horses. Nobody has said hind gut acidosis isn’t a thing. But don’t ignore what’s causing it and then throw daily abx at them as a bandaid. For most horses, the issue can be resolved with something like EquiShure (there are others) and a change in diet. More forage, less concnentrates, and when you really do need more concentrates, lower the NSC.
I watched a documentary and they (wish I could remember the name) showed that putting the cattle out on grass for just one week before processing greatly reduced the ecoli in their digestive system. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/199…coli-infection
Oh!! So the rise in e coli contamination in beef products is in part that the corn fed beef have e coli overgrowth, and that’s also why they need antibiotics? I realize e coli is in the gut but obviously in a big slaughter house some poop and some entrails are going to be splattered around, and the more e coli in the gut, the more chance of contamination.
Am I right in my surmise here?
I would also agree that a horse on an appropriate hay based diet with minimal or no grain (I mean no grains, not no hard feed which can be beet pulp or alfalfa meal etc) is unlikely to have hind gut imbalances. Feeding corn plus antibiotics to a horse is crazy unless you are trying to fatten them up for slaughter like a cow.
we sort of raised a beef this year… he kept jumping out of the fence and going to a neighboring farm so we just left him over there and paid the farmer to keep him. We just got him back from the processor and wow oh wow… you cannot compare the taste for about $3/lb… he was raised on pasture.
Virginiamycin does not “act on lactic acid”. It acts to kill the microbes which produce it.
Founder is a metabolic disease and I am wondering if anyone has tried it for other metabolic diseases such as Cushings, PSSM, Shivers, or even ulcers?
Cushings is caused by overproduction of hormones. Please provide a putative mechanism by which virginiamycin would decrease abnormal hormone production.
When you’ve done that, please repeat for PSSM and shivers.
That would be one of my cow neighbors whom I hear is one of the top beef growers in TN. Don’t know if that is true but his Angus are grass fed because I see them every day:). Once I had to cut a yearling’s head out of the woven wire (the fence not his head) when it tried to push thru to eat grass in the ditch —- several hundred acres and it thought the grass was greener in the ditch:lol:
