I will! This has been a hugely helpful thread and it would be great to finally find some good options!
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I have a FWS horse also. So exactly what is soft hay? I’m thinking a fine hay? maybe Bermuda grass or Prairie grass? Is timothy condsidered soft? I live in Tennessee and have never heard of Teff hay and neither has my hay supplier. I’m thinking it must be grown out west.
I getting the fecal transfer as soon as the vet can get here.
This thread has been great, with lots of great info. thank you everyone!
Thought I would follow up on my latest efforts.
The Full Bucket probiotics didn’t make a difference. I did two weeks at 2 scoops a day then bumped up to 4 scoops a day at Full Bucket’s recommendation. Gave it a good 4 weeks at 4 scoops to see if it helped … no change at all. To their credit, Full Bucket honored their satisfaction guarantee and refunded ALL of what I had spent, which was far more than just one bag.
My next attempt was to try Redmond’s Daily Gold. I had some on hand already as I give it to my other horse. I have been doing two scoops a day for about 3 weeks now. Manure has improved to a small degree, but she still has loose fecal water. And I also have her out on pasture 11 hours a day now so it’s hard to say if the improvement is from the Daily Gold or the softer forage. But regardless, it’s not enough to keep going with the Daily Gold.
My plan is to try Assure Guard Gold next.
I also have come across an article written by Dr. Kellon that suggests giving 1-2 cups per day of psyllium powder for FWS. At that volume, that is $$$$.
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I’m doing the 2 ounces a day that’s in this article. It works but only in combination with the 1/2 dose of biosponge.
We tried metronidazole and for a couple of days I was hopeful but then we had cowpile manure for the duration and a good while later.
I know this was a few months ago, but my vet does the fecal transfers on farm. I assume if you’re in reasonable proximity to Tufts, you would also be in her area. I can PM you her info if you’d like!
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I did it for my guy who was prone to right dorsal colitis and fecal water. We did it once and it worked great, then we switched to hay that didn’t agree with him. We did it a second time a few months later after we had some more workable hay. That was over a year ago and he has been doing so well since then. If you want any more specifics, let me know, I’m happy to share.
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I have a horse who used to have this issue, not all the time but on a regular basis. She was helped but not fixed by psyllium too. I also tried biosponge, several different probiotics, and switching hay.
What ended up fixing the issue for her (to this day) was chia, which eventually replaced the psyllium. She got a quarter cup daily (she isn’t a very big horse so YMMV) for maybe a year and now she doesn’t even need that much. I buy it in relative bulk online.
Ooh, yes, please!
@Pico_Banana I haven’t read the entire thread, so pardon me if it has already been mentioned, have you tried soaked hay pellets (orchard or timothy)? Start at one pound a day and move up to around 5 lbs or until you notice a change in stools. I found that long stem fiber created a bit of an IBS type issue for my guy. In the beginning, if he got 2-3 lbs of soaked hay pellets a day he would have normal stools and no “sharts”…farts you shouldn’t trust. Now that he is 38 years old is in on a diet that consists of 75-80% hay pellets. Beet pulp is irritating, hay cubes are irritating, chaff hay is irritating… For the other 20-25% of his diet I use a product available in my area called “Hay Mate Cube”. It has lots of the fiber basics that feed companies use (distillers grains, wheat middlings, etc). It is balanced for Ca:P, but isn’t fortified with vitamins and minerals. It saves me a bit of money because it is fairly calorie dense, which is great for the winter months.
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My pony did best on soaked hay cubes. Unfortunately, he will only eat them if laced heavily with Sr feed and since he’s prone to laminitis that’s not an option.
He does very well on Safe Starch or second cutting grass hay fed in a slow feed hay net.
He was also on Sucralfate every 8 hours (3x a day) for quite a while before tapering to 2x a day, then 1, and now he’s off of. He occasionally gets a bit of a trickle but it’s very, very minor and seems to be if the hay is a tad more coarse than he can tolerate.
I’m working on the same issue. I am starting my gelding on psyllium with pre- and probiotics. He has had fecal water before but it didn’t continue like this. I always attributed it to a new load of hay. In the course of googling for a solution - there isn’t one - I read an article that said starved horses often get it when they are recovering. My horse wasn’t starved, he was significantly malnourished for an extended period. We moved to a new barn in November. He has gained his weight back. but the free fecal water is hanging on.
What worked for my mare was Mare Magic. I had tried the Bio-sponge, seemed worse on grass. Don’t ask me how or why Mare Magic worked but I’m so glad it has. My mare has a FANTASTIC tail of which I had to cut out sections because of the mess she was making in it with her fecal water. I could not keep that tail clean (nor her white hind socks). Just throwing out what worked on my mare.
Good luck to everyone with their problem ‘children’. Messy hind ends are not fun at all.
@jawa thanks for the suggestion … but unfortunately my girl is an absolute hoover and on a diet, so I can’t give her that much in hay pellets without her ballooning. And then also have her going for hours without food as she will inhale pellets in about 5 minutes flat. It’s all a balancing act and I think the right move is prioritizing a healthy weight over no fecal water. I am toying with the idea of switching her from first cut to second cut and just soaking her hay to keep the sugar levels down to a reasonable amount for her but also giving her softer forage.
I have noticed that her manure is definitely improved when she first comes in off of pasture everyday, so I think you’re right that softer, more digestible fiber is the key.
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I agree with @jawa. I have a gelding who has had IBS like symptoms for years. Last winter I bit the bullet and hired an equine nutritionist to help him. The original plan was to take him off hay entirely, but when he reached about. 75% reduction in hay his symptoms resolved entirely. We replaced his hay with Timothy pellets and TC Senior feed. After about a month of this we gradually increased hay and decreased pellets, until he ended up on a pretty normal amount of hay and senior feed.
During the summer he is out on grass a good bit, so hay consumption is pretty low. As fall rolls around I will almost surely need to re-introduce the hay pellets and go back to Senior feed. (He has been on TC Balancer during the summer months.)
My horse just doesn’t process hay well any more. The addition of the Timothy pellets was a game changer for him. They seem to kind of cushion the long stem forage so it doesn’t irritate his hind gut. Less hay, more pellets is what worked for my guy. If you add 6 pounds of pellets to the diet you decrease the hay amount by 6 pounds. It has been like a miracle for my boy.
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thanks for sharing that, that is a fascinating “fix”! I’m definitely tucking that away to offer up to the next FWS situation I run across
@JB, I should probably add that the nutritionist said that my horse had the fastest and easiest response of any she has seen. Usually it is necessary to go all the way off of hay for a period of time. I had tried Timothy pellets in the past, but in much smaller quantities. At the point at which my horse was eating 25% hay he was getting 2 lbs of Senior and 2 lbs of Timothy pellets four times daily.
Feeding four times a day is painful, but I am hopeful that I don’t have to go that far again. However, my horse had gotten to the point that he had constant diarrhea and FFW and his hind end and tail were constantly covered in fecal matter. To go from that to great poops and a clear rear end was pretty close to a miracle. Once he got back to increased hay we were able to drop back to 2 feedings a day but kept him on 3 pounds of Senior and 2 pounds of Timothy pellets am/pm until the grass came in.
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This article came yesterday in a newsletter from TheHorse.com. It isn’t specifically about fecal water or leaky gut but it is an interesting summary about how to keep them healthy. He is getting three meals a day. It says it takes 21 days for the hindgut to adapt to diet changes so I am going to slow down the schedule.
Cleaning up daily is important because the fecal water runs down his butt crack and his hind legs to his hocks. It dries up into a hard crust. If I scrub too hard it irritates his skin more. I put some Show Sheen on to help the fecal water slide off.
When I spray up top around his anus he spreads his hind legs far enough to leave me room to clean up the cheeks on the inside of his thighs. He figured that out. I try not to spend more than about 15 seconds/day on training. Do something exactly the same way once everyday and they learn it on their own.
Latest update.
I scheduled a fecal transplant (thanks @Dutchmare433!), planning to use my other horse as the donor.
Naturally, after 4 days of Gastrogard and the vet showing up, she ended up with a fever the day of the transplant so we put off the procedure. We think she had something tick-borne (all tests came back negative so we don’t know for sure) so I treated her for 10 days with minocycline. I actually had not put her on a new probiotic yet since my Full Bucket experiment failed, so I added in two scoops of ProBios daily to her feed given the antibiotics. (I had the ProBios already for my dog so no particular thought went into which probiotic to use.)
At the same time, I got in a new delivery of hay and am transitioning her to the new hay, which includes moving from first cut to second cut.
Fingers crossed, she has had no fecal water for over a week now.
Her last dose of minocycline was yesterday morning.
I am still making the hay transition but, not surprisingly, she is now turning her nose up at the first cut and eating very little of that. Which actually means she’s getting less hay overall because I feed her a set amount by weight.
I am keeping her on the ProBios in case that is helping. I hadn’t previously tried that particular probiotic with her yet.
So it could be the antibiotic, the ProBios, or the hay that is helping. Will be keeping an eye out for any changes. Fingers crossed!
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My horse has now been on GutX for 28 days and his poops are nearly normal!!
He did not have FWS, but incredibly awful diarrhea x6 days with salmonella. The head vet said he may never have normal poops. But this past week things are looking good!!
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I have an older gelding who has had trouble with chronic diarrhea and FFW. The biggest factor in his gut problems is hay. He does best on leafy Timothy that is not too stalky. Which is, of course, exceedingly hard to find here in the southeast. During the winter I also add Timothy pellets to his diet which helps to keep his gut working well.
