My horse had Lyme about 10 years ago. BO, who has a very good eye, noticed very subtle signs of lameness that moved randomly from leg to leg. The vet was at the barn. They skipped the SNAP test and drew blood which came back positive. He was on doxy for 6 weeks and it was cured. Lyme is endemic in this area, so we assume most of the horses would test positive even if they are not symptomatic.
One of the problems with Lyme is it can become chronic. The Cornell test can distinguish acute from chronic. BO’s son had Lyme a few years ago. The MD specialist asked if she knew anything about it. She answered sure, I take care of horses. She didn’t know as much as she thought she did. In people, for example, the spirochetes that are not killed by antibiotics - the strongest - will burrow into tissue then reemerge and re-infect. I have no idea if that happens with horses. In any case, I would not be comfortable waiting 90 days to retest my horse and decide on treatment. My horse was on doxy for 45 days and was cured. I’ve always felt that a lot of horse owners don’t treat their horses long enough.
You have so many different products in her diet. You keep adding something to her diet hoping she will gain weight. I have a feeling she is looking at the feed tub, says oh-yuk, and leaves most of it untouched.
Which ingredients in which products are doing what? How much of each nutrient is she getting? What is the daily requirement? How many sources of fat are there? The more different products you are mixing together the more likely you are to throw the nutritional balance out of whack. She is getting not quite 4 cups - a quart - of oil per day plus whatever she gets from other products. That’s a lot. Commercial bagged feeds have to tell you what the ingredients are. They also tell you how much of each nutrient they provide. There is no way this diet is better than bagged feeds unless you are testing each batch for nutritional balance.
There are so many choices from so many grain manufacturers these days that it’s much easier to find something that has what you are looking for. I’d put everything on the shelf and start over with hay, then add the grain. Give it a chance to work.
My horse is 26, was pasture boarded but needed extra calories. Now he has a nice stall open to an oversize run that is never closed except for extreme bad weather. Blue Seal has 5 formulas in their Sentinel line that are nuggets. He doesn’t get Senior, he gets Performance LS because it meets his nutritional needs better. Higher in fat, high fiber, low carbs. I had to move to a new barn in November because of poor care, especially not having access to enough hay. He is not a hard keeper. He can hold his body weight at “normal” but he doesn’t get fat. Now he has an endless supply of hay which is what he needed. The primary change the new BO made was to soak the grain. The sloppier it is the more he likes it. He’s getting a few cups more but it’s split into 2 meals and a late night snack.
Have you had blood work done? My horse tested at the top of the selenium scale. It is “low” in the soil here so it’s easy to assume you can’t give them too much. It is an ingredient in his grain and I was giving him natural vitamin E with selenium. I switched to plain vitamin E because the grain has enough selenium. His supplements are Vit E, biotin, and a joint formula for his arthritis. It took a couple of months to gain 100 lbs. He looks terrific. He still gets endless hay and sloppy grain and is the happiest horse in the world.
