I stand corrected. :winkgrin:
You’ve gotten a lot of good advice. One other thing that popped into my mind, is that it is not unheard of for a horse to either get a splinter or a spiny thing from a weed in hay stuck in its mouth. If there is mouth pain, that could affect appetite too. Please let us know what the Vet figures out, so we all can learn. Good luck and keep us posted!
Had something to do w/ certain amino acids generated by the hay digestion and these were necessary to be in the stomach to properly digest the grain.
Actually, the chewing of forage increases saliva production, and saliva contains bicarbonates, which help to neutralize stomach acid.
The chewing of grain does not increase saliva production (not much anyways, and certainly not as much as the chewing of forage). That is why forage is a better option than grain, and feeding hay first can be beneficial if you need to feed grain as well.
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Hi dragging up old post here. My 7 year old to has suddenly stopped eating all bucket feeds. Normally a very greedy horse now he’s completely off his feed and picking at grass, digging floor at times and lack lustre. He’s been treated with GG for suspected ulcers brought on by a traumatic vet hospital trip. He’s on day 6 now and had three days double dose as advised by vet and still no improvement. My question is how long did it take for those of you in same boat to see a improvement? He can’t be scoped at minute as vet feels too stressed and symptoms are so fitting that they want to try without scoping first. They have started ranitidine and sucraflate today also to see if that improves. It’s heartbreaking to watch and he just won’t look at a bucket feed at all x
My guess is the sucralfate and ranitidine will help him feel better right away. Ranitidine starts working immediately and sucralfate will stick to the ulcers while they heal from the inside. Omeprazole takes a few days to kick in. Someone will step here and explain the actual detail of this, but this simple explanation has worked for me.
In the meantime, find the softest hay possible, or maybe some soaked alfalfa cubes or pellets.
When you say he is on 3 days of “double dose” do you mean 2 full tubes of GG?
Why a double dose??? Why not a tube along with something like sulfracate or metronidazole or something else? A double dose seems excessive and this is from someone who had a horse getting scoped once a month for over a year for terrible ulcers and never was it suggested we double dose! Yes we did many other treatments alongside the GG and yes it does sometimes take much longer than the 28 days depending on the type/location(s) of the ulcers 
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While my horse was on GG and UG I also used http://www.succeedfbt.com/ the Succeed Equine Fecal Blood test to monitor his ulcers so I wouldn’t have to have him re-scoped and put him thru that again and again. It actually worked very accurately and gave me a good bench mark. I use it even to this day in the winter, and spring to monitor how he is doing. ( After spending thousands on treating his ulcers at a large animal hospital I felt the $33.00 is worth piece of mind. )
