Hi All, I thought I finally had a great plan to get one of my very picky horses to eat his supplements. It worked until it didn’t. If you use senior feed to hide medication, how much are you comfortable feeding? Thank you for your help.
I haven’t found a horse yet who will eat unpleasant meds no matter the amount of feed (at least my horses haven’t!). I feed pills (Prascend and Equioxx) in a chunk of carrot-- making sure they munch it down. I’ve used beet pulp to create a moist “cling to it to eat it all up” for a powdered supplement (Heiro) that wasn’t one horse’s favorite thing. He got used to it. My IR horse eats beet pulp and LMF Low Carb-but only gets 2 cups once a day of each. Not sure that helped. Can you consult with your vet regarding the amount your guy can/should eat?
Thank you! I feel better😀. My great vet who is interested in these kinds of things is not available until the end of the month. The vet we use for drawing blood, vaccinations, etc isn’t interested in these kinds of things.
That looks like a very nice feed. Wish it were available on my side of the country.
My senior IR/Cushing’s pony gets 1 Prascend and 1000mg Metformin AM and 1 Equioxx and 1000mg Metformin PM. I wet 1/2 lb of Poulin Balancer with warm water and crush the met, adding the other pills just before feeding.
Every 4-6 months she goes on strike and I have to experiment with a handful of soaked cubes etc. worst case she will normally take a pill in a piece of a nutrigrain bar or fig Newton.
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Thank you! I’m surprised the balancer covers up the Metformin. We had to use it once for a PPID horse being treated for EMPS with dex as part of the medication. It was awful to get down him. Lucky you🤞!
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What meds and which Sr feed? There are Sr feeds that aren’t suitable at more than 1-2lb or so, and some that are safer at higher amounts than that. If the ESC + starch is at least no more than about 12%, I would feel ok with 1-2lb, no matter what kind of feed. Textured feeds tend to hide tastes more.
Have you tried beet pulp? 1/2lb of that, soaked, is a pretty good volume, and it’s taste and smell can also cover up a lot
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I feed 1lb/meal (2lbs/day) of Triple Crown Senior, soaked, to a 1200lb horse. This is not even the RDA for a 400lb pony 
so may well be suitable to increase if not enough to hide the meds. It is not always enough to make up for metformin, but is sufficiently tasty that he does finish it all and lick his dish most of the time.
My horse is not known for his pickiness but metformin is gross. Next time I’m going to see if I can get it compounded with a flavor.
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Hi there! It’s Purina Equine Senior. Yes…beet pulp w alfalfa pellets, and the two of them separately, as well. No luck. He will eat them but reluctantly, and will flip the bucket if he detects something suspicious. I will weigh it…I think it’s about a cup total volume. I give it to him by hand. The primary medication is Prascend. I was hoping you would weigh in (no pun intended😀). Thank you very much. It’s just so worrisome…
Oh…he loves Gro N Win but that covers up nothing for him.
Thank you.
At 19% NSC with 12% starch, that’s not one I’d feed more than maybe 1lb of.
For Prascend, I would just feed it separately, in as gooey/sticky a treat as possible. Many horses get turned off their feed as a whole if Prascend is added in. You can also try putting it in an empty capsule, which you can by cheaply by the bag, which hides the smell and potentially some or all of the taste depending on how well they chew.
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One of mine, normally a non-picky eater, has to consume a couple nasty powdered prescription medications. We resorted to hand feeding him, begging him to swallow the yucky feed by taking advantage of his sweet nature (he loves my husband), and he was trying his best to cooperate without that much success. He actually made faces between attempts.
Then we started him on Kentucky Equine Research’s fish-based Omega-3 fatty acid supplement; his vet thinks this type of supplement is a great idea for him:
This is a minty apple flavored liquid, and it’s been a game changer. We give it twice daily, in his 1.5# Nutrena Special Care breakfast and dinner meals which are the ones containing the Rx meds, stirred in well.
KER recommends starting a horse off with a little, increasing gradually over several days. I didn’t purchase this item for making the meds more palatable (minty apple fish oil sounds kinda odd to me, lol), but it’s sure working for my horse. I’ve already reordered a gallon (started with the quart).
Good Luck.
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He is getting about 10 ounces total of Equine Senior throughout the day. He is on 2 1/2 pills of Prascend. It makes me very, very nervous. I am hoping when my vet who is interested in these kinds of things is available, he may have an idea of how better to control his ACTH.
Thank you for this suggestion. This was on another thread, as well. Mine would not touch it. He dislikes peppermint. I did try to introduce it slowly and wound up syringing it down his throat. That was messy.
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One option could be to divide the dose in (roughly) 2, so 1 pill in the morning, 1.5 in the evening. That supplies a steadier level of the drug. I know a couple of people who have been able to lower the total dose a little by splitting it into 2.
There’s also injectable cabergoline, same class of drug, slightly different.
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Thank you! I do split it into two doses. And thank you, too, for the suggestion. Do you think I am endangering him with 10 ounces of Equine Senior? I used to give him UltraCruz Metabolic (chromium and magnesium); I don’t know how much it really helped but it made me feel better. His insulin has been well controlled but he will not touch it anymore. I got him Quiessence. He will eat a scoop of that w a slightly less amount of Equine Senior mixed in. My great vet was telling me about a new drug being used experimentally in Australia. I don’t remember the name but it would be 2k a month here. Yikes!
Have you tried Heiro? It contains fenugreek, which is one of a horse’s favorite flavors.
Thank you. This is a very interesting article. I’d not seen it before. I’ll give it a try. I have a horse in the barn who loves bananas. This one will eat Quiessence, which I think is banana flavored. I do have to mix a little ES w it…but not much.
@JB. Thanks for mentioning cabergoline. I’m not familiar at all w it. My local vet says 2 Prascend is all she ever recommends regardless of ACTH but I am aware they can have more.
I did weigh the Equine Senior I’m bribing him with. At tops, it’s three ounces throughout the day. The importance of weighing things …40 pounds of feathers is sure different than 40 pounds of rock salt.
Thank you, everyone, who shared ideas. Many of the things I’ve already tried or done were thanks to ideas on other threads!
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