Not eating, prascend, and tough decisions

[DoodlesMom]

I feel your pain. My gelding is on 2 mg Prascend daily, and he has had a definite decrease in his appetite. However, he is also extraordinarily picky, so even when he WILL eat, he only likes certain things. He’s 20-ish and on the skinnier side, so he NEEDS to eat.

A muzzle has helped tremendously. When he wears it (they tend to go “missing”), he has a better appetite. APF has also helped curb the side-effects from the Prascend. So does time.

What works best for him is changing his food often, but ever so slightly. He eats better when he has something different in his normal mix. He doesn’t eat a LOT (I’m lucky if I can get him to eat more than 1 lb per feeding), but he has been eating most, if not all of his food… including his pills! Since he decided he doesn’t like TC Senior right now, he’s getting Pennfield Fibergized and TC Light, in addition to Buckeye Grown N Win. And he gets an alfalfa mash for lunch.

None of the other supplements helped with any symptoms. He still needs to be clipped multiple times a year, though he eventually partially sheds out.

I think your plan is a good one. Take her off the Prascend if she isn’t responding well to it. Manage with low NSC feed, grass intake, and exercise. She may surprise you!

[newhorsemommy]

My picky old gelding can sniff out any pill or supplement in his feed and will just walk away, but I’ve had amazing success adding fenugreek powder to his food. Not all horses like it but plenty do He scarfs up ANYTHING I give him as long as I add the fenugreek. Nothing sweet (molasses, applesauce, etc.) worked at all. It might be a way to entice her into eating more.

[ShotenStar]

Another Keeper of an Older Horse … my mare is easy to dose with Prascend (I use an old UlcerGard tube … put the tablet in, add a little water, then dose after a few mins of letting the water soften the tablet.)

She also goes off her feed for no apparent reason. She has been on Prascend for years and cycles through periods of eating / not eating. When the ‘not eating’ goes for more than a day or two, I rotate her feed. Sometimes changing between TC Ration Balancer and TC Senior will cause her eating to perk up. If that fails, I offer her some peppermint antacid tablets as a treat. If that fails, we go to UlcerGard, usually half a tube a day for several days. I have learned that tummy unhappiness compounds the ‘pergolide veil’ issues and if I can make her tummy happy, I can usually get her eating again.

It is a challenge, no doubt about that.

Star

[Irish_Ei_s]

Mine had raging ulcers. We’d treat them and let him eat what he wanted.
Unless it was the prascend heating up the pre-existing ulcers mine just stayed picky.
Because he was borderline laminitic dropping the meds was not an option.

My beloved BO is Department Head of the Vet Tech Studies at a Community College, so I finally just told her…
Don’t let him suffer
And when the Vet quit scratching his head He just told us that at 35, he could go on the Anything he wants Diet.

[csaper58]

Has anyone ever tried acupuncture/acupressure for the Prascend induced anorexia? It works wonders for sea-sickness and chemo nausea.

[andhourspass]

^ I haven’t and never even thought to try that, csaper58. Maybe someone else has and can chime in?

[Kottbulle]

My boyfriend’s 25 your old Thoroughbred has been getting treated for bushings now for two years. Prior to adding the parsced she was always a picky eater. we have managed to get her to eat her pills twice a day by adding it to her soaked grain. She is a slow eater by nature, but recently i started adding Ulc R Aid… just one scoop am and pm and it has been a huge difference! I don’t know if she has ulcers, she has never had any symptoms, but she gobbles her feed down now. And I am grateful because it has allowed me to sneak in the a cup of a fat supplement in with her regular feed ( she is on Kalm-n EZ and then a cup of K Finish) She shed out almost normal this spring,but come the end of May her coat while not bushings long, seemed very dense and slightly longer than i would have liked… I did body clip her as she seemed to be too hot with the denser coat. But the other signs of cushing are all gone, Pot belly, muscle wasting.
I would say try the Ulc R Aid… I didn’t think she would like it at all, because she was so picky, but she is an eating machine now… I don’t know if it will last, but it has been going strong so far, and it is so affordable, almost all of my horses are on.
Best of luck to you as you head forward.

[vxf111]

For those looking to get the horse to eat the pill, I am currently using Pill Camo and it seems to be more successful than my other efforts (hollowed out carrot- he sometimes made the pill fall out of the hollow, apple/fig newton- he would eat around the pill). He seems to like the treat enough to not try to pick the pill out and just to chew up the whole thing. In my case, this is complicated by EOTRH, the horse is missing a bunch of front teeth. But so far so good with the Pill Camo.