How to give horse 17 mashed up pills?

17 aspirin sized very, very, very bitter tablets per dose. Trazodone. See my other thread: Problem horse. Where have I failed him. – for why.; not going to discuss that here. :slight_smile:

Just spit balling for any novel ideas, best masking flavors etc It’s been a long time since I had to give a horse something by mouth that had an ultra horrible taste.

I have had very good luck putting the pills into the center of Fig Newtons. You can toss a bunch into a cookie. 17 will still take several cookies though. I toss in a few untainted Newtons from time to time.
I even used them for bute tabs.

Edit to add - I realize you asked for mashed. I use molasses for that.

Maybe mix it in with applesauce in a syringe and give like you would wormer? If you didn’t have to mash them up before giving them, I like the Fig Newton idea.

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Maybe Wedgewood could compound it for you with a flavor? I’d be interested to hear how the trazadone works for your guy. I’ve used it successfully in small animals, but haven’t seen it used in horses.

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We had a stallion who would KILL you for anything orange. And try to kill you even harder if you tried to give him anything BUT orange. :wink:

OK, the above is “hyperbole.” Except the part about him REALLY liking orange flavored stuff. Orange slices, orange sections, orange soda pop, etc. We we would dissolve any pills in orange soda or orange drink; put the mixture into a 25cc dosing syringe; and just let him get the smell of that orange. You could put the tip of that syringe into the corner of his mouth and he’s happily suck down whatever it was. Some medicine dissolved better in carbonated than non-carbonated fluids. Play that one by ear.

Experiment with flavors and see what works. Likely SOMETHING will. Good luck finding it!!! :slight_smile:

G.

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When I had to give my very suspicious-of-anything-except-regular-grain horse 25 big Metronidazole tablets 2x/day for 6 days, here’s what I did:
Soaked pills in 1/2 C warm water for an hour (they’re hard to melt). Add 1+ Tbsp molasses and stir into thick paste. Put in fat syringe with tip cut off and give like a paste dewormer. Horse didn’t love it, but didn’t fight me or get worse as the days went on.

Before that I tried crushing pills to mix with regular feed, alfalfa pellets, Fig Newtons, molasses cookies, applesauce, carrots, watermelon, Peppermint syrup for horses, gatorade/water, sweet feed, beet pulp…no bueno.

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A mixture of applesauce and molasses in a big syringe works pretty good for my guys. It seems to mask nasty flavored pills fairly well.

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I’ve only had to give massive quantities of SMZs that must not be too terrible tasting. I dissolve in a large syringe with warm water and then give like you do dewormer. Have added applesauce, but the horse actually liked that less and it was harder to squeeze out unless I added a bunch of water anyhow.

If you need to mask the taste, would warm Gatorade in his favorite flavor help to get them to go down? As mentioned above, different horses different preferences, but at least Gatorade offers numerous choices. Mine seem to like the blue and the red (cherry).

Also Uckele offers several flavorings for picky eaters. I was just talking to them the other day and get the impression that they are somewhat of a light syrup consistency. My horses LOVE their low NSC treat that come in the same flavors.

my go-to is coffee/latte syrup - the peppermint one. I discovered that when i had to give my EPM horse that liquid Rebalance stuff. A little went a long way at each dose.

Mine likes gingerbread flavoured syrup.

My horse was on trazadone! I gave them to him in Fig Newtons. Didnt mash them. I cut the cookies so they opened up like a sandwich hopefully with most filling on one side. Insert up to ten pills, Put other part of cookie back on and squeeze a bit. Give horse cookies. (Or leave in baggie for BM to feed with breakfast) I got quite talented at cutting the cookies just so… :lol:

If your horse is at home, I’d be inclined to try the fig newton or similar idea. If your horse is boarded, it may just be easier for staff to use a dosing syringe. But ask them… Since apple sauce is tricky, try apple juice added to syringe to improve the taste.

pancake syrup
and/or mixed with apple sauce (I might even be tempted to try the sweetened variety)

in a dosing syringe, I ETAed- unless he loooooves the syrup/apple mixture so much he gobbles it all up!

I’m giving 15 capsules twice a day. I empty out the capsules and add a little apple juice and apple sauce. Then I put it in a 30ml syringe, tilt her head up, and squirt it as far back as I can. The apple juice thins it so I can get it out of the syringe.

This works now…she may outsmart me tomorrow.

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In addition to the great advice above, are you sure your horse won’t just eat these mashed pills on top of grain? We had a horse at out barn named Sky who was on several meds and got many pills and capsules per day. When combined with her grain, she ate everything without mashing!!! Always. It may be a long shot, but this really worked for her.

My ultra picky OTTB is getting 18 twice a day. I dissolve them in a little bit of water, then mix with his Fibermax (1lb). He eats it with no issues.

I just had to grind up 10/day for a client’s horse. They are really pretty fragile pills and I think they would dissolve easily in a little water. It doesn’t create much powder at all. This horse eats them fine in his grain.

If these pills taste really bad, perhaps a balling gun. That’s what they’re called when I looked it up online, but I think they were called something else years back when I was in pony club. Maybe a bolus syringe or bolus gun? But if these meds taste gross, maybe your horse would prefer not to taste them.

Crush up pills, mix with applesauce, dosing syringe.

You can put Vaseline around the sides of the rubber stopper on the plunger to make it last longer, and don’t keep the plunger inside the syringe between uses because it can dry/crust/get stuck in there. I like the 60cc catheter tip dosing syringes from SmartPak. I also cut most of the tip off so meds don’t get stuck and wasted in there.

WOW! You guys are great – so many ideas. Thank you!