@vxf111 , interesting, I will have to check out my feed. He only gets a pound of TC Senior plus vitamins, and he is likely getting less alfalfa than he was at old barn, 2/3rds orchard. I read something recently about taking them off all legume hays that solved some other perplexing problem (IR? – I have to find it now!). I thought Timothy and Oats was a clean, old time, standby for a balanced diet…who knew…
Allergy testing (when I did it) was not expensive (around $80-100 at New Bolton) and I think is more effective at trying to guess what a horse might be allergic to. It doesn’t really matter how standard oats are, if your horse has a problem with them-- he has a problem. Bread is pretty darn standard in the American diet, but if you have celiac’s you can’t eat gluten. So I’m not sure “old standby-ness” really matters. What matters is what your horse can’t eat due to a sensitivity or allergy.
I just heard today that Platinum Performance now has a supplement for this. There are a few others out there as well.
Have you tried the equi-winner patches? I’ve tried them with success for a non-sweater but their literature claims they also work for head shaking. They aren’t terribly expensive and it’s only a 10 day course of daily patches with no side effects. There is nothing in them that would affect any horse show drug testing, though I doubt you’d want to show with a patch on your horse’s a-- during the 10 days.
It may be worth a try.
