For those that want to toss the Prascend into their grain - which is what I do - is I break the pill in half and make sure the two halves are not likely to be in the same mouthful. That seems to help them not get one big bite of yuck.
I’m less concerned about the prascend right now. He gets 1/2 tab and I think I can disguise it easily enough with a rotation of tiny pieces of treat.
Everyone has great ideas and I’m being awful and turning them all down. He goes out with a muzzle and I finally have him happy with his muzzle. We did try a feed bag once and spent the next week wrestling him to put his muzzle on. It’s one thing to do this in his stall, it’s another to do that outside.
I think I’m just going to have to do one of the following:
-
redo my feeding plan. Take him off the Mad Barn so I can give him a ration balancer so I have something I can toss him to feed him in the evening. If I can find a low starch/low sugar/soy free option (with my gelding highly allergic to soy, I refuse to have soy based feed around – he colics from it and I’m afraid someone will accidentally feed him the wrong feed-- it has happened when we’re not paying attention), I’ll consider it. He’s just doing SO WELL on the mad barn.
-
Skip evening zyrtec and just let give it in the morning and hope for the best.
-
keep them inside until he eats mash inside (they both are bad about eating when it’s time to go out. This might be 1-3 hours for a few weeks which I don’t like doing but maybe they’ll eventually adjust… they like going out when it’s time to go out).
-
Just see if I can stuff 10 pills into a half a fig newton. I can make them fit into a 3/4 of one, but if I stack them, maybe a half would work.
-
I could try a handful of outlast? The only other thing I have is Wholesome Blends Senior. Both I could try and feed by hand.
A handful of anything he finds tasty will do it. A handful of the soaked feed he eats with his friend in the evening will be fine? Then you’re not changing anything about his diet.
1 Like
Change is frustrating, we get it. Totally get it.
Like the post above says, you are over thinking this.
You do not have to feed him his whole mash inside at night and it take hours. You just need to take a small amount and give him his pills in it.
With the muzzle situation it might involve bringing him in for a short time, giving him the pills in a small bit of mash, putting his muzzle back on and putting him back out with his normal mash serving that he shares with his friend.
Yes, different, yes a little more time than you are spending now, but not a huge change that should cause an issue.
I really do sound like an idiot here. I kind of regret posting because I sound like a fool. I’m sorry for bothering everyone with my drama. I’ll skip my next post: How to deal with herd bound horses. Lol
I’ll get him medicated, I guess I was just hoping someone had a novel, easy solution. Looks like there isn’t one. I’ll just find the easiest, low stress one that works for us that doesn’t remind me of “Sit at the kitchen table until you eat your vegetables.”
(my senior dogs are both actively trying to die on me so this is a battle I feel like I can fight and overreact about)
You do not in anyway sound like an idiot or a fool.
I think everyone finds themselves in this type of situation from time to time and the input from others is so helpful to make us see the light at the end of the tunnel that seems to have no good answer for us.
It is great that you asked. So much good information here.
Laugh, is anything easy with horses? Nope. They like to make our lives difficult.
I am so sorry about your dogs!
3 Likes
I have 1 horse with Cushings and 1 with Insulin Resistance.
Neither of those should affect the choice of “pill carrier”. The amount is so small that even straight sugar wouldn’t have a serious impact.
My IR horse is currently getting both banmine and (loose powder) doxy. I told the vet I was feeding the banamine by splitting a German Horse Muffin and putting the banamine in the middle (like an Oreo) and the vet was fine with it. She also suggested mixing the doxy powder with applesauce (and then mixing with feed).
My Cushings horse gets her Prascend (twice a day) in half a German Horse Muffin. But she also happily eats it in a handful of ration balancer pellets. I think that the response to TASTE of Prascend depends on the horse. Mine doesn’t seem to mind it at all. Even if I just put it loose in her feed it gets eaten. But by feeding it in the German Horse Muffin I KNOW it has been eaten.
2 Likes
My donkey gets her Pracend delivered in a baby carrot where I nick out a space on one end to insert the pill, then feed her the carrot.
She loathes her Thyro-L which is sprinkled over a half cup of Enrich in the evening. At some point overnight she eats it. She is confined to a stall & pen, separate from my other horses.
I use a small syringe. It dissolves quickly in water. I gave up on all of the above suggestions. For some reason, he doesn’t care one bit about the syringe. I used to crawl around on the floor looking for the ones he spit out. Now…I don’t have a problem.
Actually, this helps A LOT. The sugar was what I was most concerned about. While he may be insulin resistant, my vet isn’t sure if he actually is (we’ll re-test in a month after he’s been on the prascend and see what his insulin levels actually look like. His blood test in general was a mess, but there is very little I can do in terms of diet or management. Physically, he’s never been fat, he is on a dry lot this year, and I’m trying to soak his hay – he’s not into this idea. I will test my hay as I do get all my hay from the same farmer and he tries to keep my hay from the same field throughout the year). Despite getting a mash, he isn’t fond of it and picks at it all morning before eventually finishing it. It’s more exciting outside because he gets to “compete” with my thoroughbred for the mash (in reality, the stand next to each other and snack on their cubes and occasionally he backs off for a few minutes if he gets ears pinned at him).
1 Like
I exclusively use fig newtons for pills, and also give them as treats. I’m not sure if giving them without pills as a reward makes him less suspicious and keeps it enticing (he also is extremely food motivated).
They do make sugar-free fig newtons as well if the sugar content is a concern.
3 Likes
Thankfully sugar content isn’t too much of a concern yet 
1 Like
I think we all have our things where we get wrapped around the axle about something!
The easiest solution here is to dose zyrtec once daily. Why don’t you start there and see if you get enough of a response? I very, very rarely find dosing twice a day to be much better than dosing it once.
FWIW, my mare doesn’t react to her prascend in a way that looks like it tastes bad to her. But her willingness to eat it in a treat was also very short lived. I was able to tuck the pill into her cheek for another couple weeks before she started getting on to that, and spit it out. But it’s SUPER easy to dose orally for this–I drop the pill into a 3 cc syringe, suck up about 1 cc of water, and in a minute it’s totally dissolved. She stands without any complaint while I squirt it into her mouth, and doesn’t make any faces or try to spit it out or flehmen or her favorite refusal of oral meds: drool copiously and refuse to swallow. It’s totally a non event, every day. She is not a horse that generally accepts oral meds–I’ve had to switch to injectible options, even, for other stuff–so I think she would tell me if it was really offensive to her.
2 Likes
Mine, too. I was stunned by how easy it was to syringe in as opposed to trying to get him to eat it. 
1 Like
I’ll aim for this. He had a heaves flare caused by allergies. He’s a mess, so Zyrtec plus an inhaler for now. Once it’s under control, I’ll drop back.
1 Like
Now, my horse ate a bird’s nest once, eggs included. He’s not particularly selective.
He’s been eating his pills out of Fig Newtons for about 4 years. He will occasionally inform the barn staff that he no longer wishes to consume Fig Pilltons and he is wise to their tricks and they put it in an apple piece. If I give it to him it goes right down the hatch. Usually this lasts for about a week and he eats it again.
Of course you got worried about it, your horse has a new diagnosis and you’re relearning how to manage his wellbeing.
You may be comforted by something my vet told me when we were discussing my horse’s diet at a time that his ACTH levels were out of whack. We were trying to figure out what aspects of his life we could change to improve his levels and I mentioned treats. “Renn,” she said, “if you give him a cookie and he drops dead, it wasn’t because of the cookie.” So he continues to eat the cookies.
1 Like
My horse has been on Prascend since March, and so far he eats the pills in Fig Newtons with gusto. I make up a mix of balancing ration, a very small (about 1 cup) scoop of oats, a handful of peanuts in the shell, a handful of pretzels, and a peppermint. The Fig Newton is just one more goodie in the mix.
4 Likes
Someone I know puts the Prascend inside an empty gel capsule & feeds with grain. I guess it hides the taste. Maybe it slides down before he gets to chew it. She says it works.
2 Likes
the minies we have that are on Prascend are fed very limited grain, each morning they get less than a hand full with their half tablet included, never refused
1 Like
Well, he picked out 9/10 Zyrtec from the handful of feed yesterday afternoon but ate them in 7/8 of a a fig newton (the other 1/8 was used for his prascend which he happily ate). Little brat. Lol
3 Likes
