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Repetitive Displacement Colic - Unknown Cause

Horse Care
#21

That doesn’t make beet pulp a problem.

A lot of people feed a lot of things “wrong”. Don’t blame a product for its mis-use.

What? No.

When I fed it, it “soaked” for the time it took for me to fix 3 meals. Hot water in Winter, cold (or warm from the outside water tub) in the Summer. It was plenty plumped.

It WILL NOT cause an impaction Food hits the stomach acid and starts breaking down even more than the chewing and mixing with saliva already started.

Your horse can get an impaction from hay if it’s not drinking enough. That’s not a hay problem.

In the dead of Winter in NC it’s 100% absolutely fine to soak night beet pulp in the morning, and vice versa. No weird fermenting.

There are a lot of things other than beet pulp that don’t get done well at some boarding barns, including any soaking of regular feed - should we not feed regular feed either?

What context? Protein is similar to average grass hay Calcium is a bit lower than alfalfa. Calories are similar to alfalfa as well. Those are GREAT things for the right diet. They aren’t good things for the “wrong” diet. The same can be said for a lot of other things we feed.

Again, what context? It’s a GREAT high volume low calorie carrier for supplements. It’s a great prebiotic that can really help the hind gut.

So don’t soak it all day. It doesn’t need to be anyway, at least not the shreds.

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#22

I told you all. I told you I was starting a fight :joy:

In some circles beet pulp is some magical fix to all the worlds issues. I just don’t stand by that. It can be a difficult feed to work with because it really does need to soak for a while before it’s fed.
Unlike some foods like hay pellets that can soak for 5 minutes and be ready, beet pulp usually needs at least 30 minutes. You can speed it up with hot water but that’s an extra step. If you leave it to soak for too long it likes to ferment.

I was told growing up (and I know vets who still stand by this) that beet pulp that’s not properly soaked can cause impaction in horses who are colic prone. To me it’s a better safe than sorry. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but when your vet tells you how many impaction colic cases he’s seen where the owners were feeding beet pulp… yeah.

Yeah, when it’s cold you can soak anything without a worry. But at least around here, if you leave that beet pulp soaking for longer than an hour from about April to October, you are gonna end up with the beginnings of alcohol.

Regular feed doesn’t need to be soaked. It’s ready to go out of the bag. Not so for beet pulp.

It’s a poor choice for low calorie meal replacer because it’s lacking many of the vitamins/minerals/etc that you need to give your horse to complete his diet if he’s not on fresh pasture. If you feed just beet pulp, no grain, your horse is lacking in nutrients. If you feed grain with the beet pulp, then you have defeated the purpose of the beet pulp.
It’s a poor choice for weight gain because weight gain is about calories, not what the item is. They have done so, so many studies on this in all sorts of mammals. It doesn’t matter if you eat 3000 calories in grapes or 3000 calories in chocolate cake, you will gain weight because you are eating too many calories. Same idea with horse feed. It makes zero sense to feed a low calorie feed if you want to put weight on your horse. Give them ultium, oil, fat, etc. something high in calories.

I know I’ve angered half of COTH with my beet pulp hate.

#23

You are correct, it does not need to be soaked all day. That doesn’t prevent many barns from doing it. Also, while it does not cause impaction, it can cause choke. So can a lot of other things, I know. Every few years, though, there seems to be a rash of beet pulp related chokes.

Appropriate amounts of hay, grass, ration balancers, actual quality grain. All better choices than beet pulp in most cases. I’ve never been a fan of feeding a massive volume of feed twice a day when you can keep quality hay in front of the horse all day to get the same fiber content. As I know you are aware, that’s not really how horse stomachs are designed.

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#24

Lots of regular feeds have beet pulp.

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#25

I had a horse with this problem, it developed seemingly out of the blue and lasted about 5 years. Had great vets, including trips to 2 well know equine universities for diagnostics and treatment. A small army of caretakers to check on him periodically 24 hours a day, doing everything right to manage (feed, turnout, water drinking, exercise, ulcer treatment, eliminating stress) and it still happened regularly with no rhyme or reason. The vets said repeatedly he was the gassiest horse they had ever seen. Even when not actively colicing he had gas. He had a colopexy. I had to put him down eventually. But fantastic care bought him 5 years, though it was really stressful and hard on me and others, and I don’t know if I could do it again, honestly.

#26

There are plenty of studies about housing playing a role in gastric ulcers. The Horse has several that are not behind paywalls, as does Researchgate. Extrapolating each, it seems a big part of ulcer reoccurence is management and one of the suggested management protocols is turnout with a copacetic friend. Not a shared fence line.

True. Fence walking is a stereotypy and is typically a sign a certain need is not met. Fix the need, not the behavior itself. The behavior, like ulcers, is a symptom of a problem and not the actual problem.

Yes. Or bring it in to grain it and then put it back out. Or just grain it outside. So many people get trained to bring the horse in because the horse runs and paces the fence because they are anticipating being grained indoors.

A nitpick as someone who handles plenty of TB hooves: TBs grow fantastic hoof quality. It’s how they are shod (on the track) that is not great. If they had awful feet they wouldn’t be able to race soundly. Many people just don’t have good farriers, and many farriers don’t fix the underlying issue which is a track trim that promotes thin soles and long toe for breakover. Fix the trim style and you’ll find the TB hoof is very good at growing out robust and correctly. I’ve never had a TB that had structurally poor hoof quality - and many of mine have been barefoot up until Training/Prelim.

No fight from me. I understand your aversion and agree with you about it being the Goldilocks of foodstuff prepwise. But I also agree with JB it is a barn-help issue and there’s a lot of positives to feeding it in the right program. A lot of commercial feeds have Beep in them. Most grains of choice in performance horses have it to some extent.

When I fed Beep, it was an extra step and I could totally see barn help cutting corners. On more than one 90F summer day I did really question if it had already spoiled yet, when it had only been soaking for 30-45m.

I like Speedibeet. It is pricier than regular Beep, but soaks much quicker. It’s a great alternative for barns that want to feed Beep but don’t have the work force/time for traditional beep.

3 Likes
#27

LOL, that’s why it helps to just talk about the facts, and then decided if a given thing fits your parameters

Same can be said about rice bran, or {insert any brand of feed}, or Vitamin E, or Protandim, or pretty much anything

But it doesn’t. Not only does it not HAVE to be soaked, that is very situationally-dependent, it doesn’t have to soak for hours. Those are just facts. Ok, the pellets do usually need to be soaked because they’re usually so hard, and need to soak for a few hours where shreds soak up much more quickly than that.

Again, no, at least not without context

I got a bag of Dumor alf pellets and they are large, and somehow the processing makes the outer area very dense and shiny, and as a result, they take a good hour to soak down. But the Mid-West Agri pellets I get are smaller, softer, and take literally minutes.

I have pictures somewhere of beet pulp shreds I soaked in the middle of Winter. Tap-hot water, and in 3 minutes they were plenty plumped to be “slippery” and not at all dry or a choke hazard to any normal horse.

It can’t. I already described why. If a horse is impaction-prone because he’s not drinking enough water, that’s not a beet pulp problem. He’ll impact if he doesn’t get more water into him, period. Fully hydrated beep can help with that, but most people aren’t feeding any significant amount of beet pulp for it to really make a difference. And extra quart of water when a 1000lb horse should be drinking 40 quarts (10 gallons, 1g/100lb) is nothing

I would bet 100% of those horses were also eating hay and/or grass :wink:

What about all the textured feeds that use beet pulp shreds as part of the texture? Don’t need to soak those? Doesn’t regular feed need to be soaked for horses who are choke-prone?

Who says it’s a meal replacer? It is in no way comparable to a fortified feed of any sort. It isn’t a meal replacer, any more than a protein shake is.

And 100% of the time when I see that kind of diet, that is exactly what I will tell the person. That’s their fault, not the fault of beet pulp. Again you’re blaming poor practices on the product.

again, no. There are LOTS of commercial, fortified feeds that use beet pulp as part of their formula, for very good nutritional and digestive reasons It provides calcium and protein, it acts like a long-stem fiber, and it’s a prebiotic with its highly fermentable pectin

It is 100% ok to feed some beet pulp with a ration balancer. Or with a Sr feed. Or with a Performance feed. The devil is in the details: How much are you feeding, and what’s the purpose.

Of course, and that’s exactly what I tell people. It’s calorie:volume ratio is just too low for horses who need to eat as many calories as they can, or at least a lot more than they currently are. That said, because of its pectin (see above), it CAN help create a healthier hind gut, which allows more to be gotten out of the food that comes in, which can lead to weight gain. None of this is as simple as total calories in

You’re using all sorts of mis-uses of a feed ingredient to justify why that ingredient isn’t a good product

you can replace beet pulp with rice bran and you can find the exact same things - people add it to forage-only when they want a horse to gain weight. I see that ALL THE TIME, going straight to fat supplements for horses who aren’t even getting any, or enough, of a commercial feed. That doesn’t make rice bran bad.

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#28

Every year I see a “rash” of “My horse has never choked and now he’s choking on Strategy”, and “I always soak feed for my choke-prone horse and I switched to Strategy and he still choked”. I’ve seen it with TC Sr as well.

100% agree that too many people do think that beep will solve all the problems, before they’ve even produced an appropriate base diet. That’s their issue, not the beep

Anyone who choses 20lb of feed over more hay and less grain is doing harm.

But there are plenty of situations where there simply has to be more feed, less forage, due to dental issues, colitis issues, and sadly, in a lot of places this year, drought. Beet pulp is very valuable as long-stem fiber and a short(ish)-term replacement for 40-50% of the forage requirements.

#29

For me personally, I just find there’s better choices out there than beet pulp because it’s the feed that ‘kind of’ fits everything you want it to do, but is actually kind of useless… there’s better choices for weight gain, weight control, toothless wonders… I’m just not really sure I can come up with a scenario where beet pulp is the superior choice.

But I’ll agree, a lot of the issues are with prep. And it’s not the pulps problem that most people don’t have the time to prepare it properly or let it soak for too long. But I just think overall, there’s much better choices out there than beet pulp.

#30

It’s NOT useless. You keep saying that, but then use examples where it IS for sure not the best choice at all.

It can be GREAT for the easy keepers. Plop 3c shreds with 6c of water, mix, add supplements, and you have a high volume, 350-ish calorie meal that takes him more than 7.25 seconds to eat, and hides all kinds of things he wouldn’t otherwise eat.

You want to use hay pellets instead? 3c would be around 800-1000lb (grass vs alf), and lower volume. That can absolutely work too. Need fewer calories? 1c with some water isn’t enough volume to hide some supplements, and can be eaten before you can turn your back.

Choose what fits your needs.

Something doesn’t have to be a superior choice in general, for it to be the best choice for a given situation. You must not be seeing any of these drought stories where people are STRUGGLING to find even half their hay needs for the Winter (or even right now for those who don’t have pasture). They can’t afford to have hay shipped in at $600-700/ton, they can’t afford (if they can even find) many of the commercial chopped forage products, or if they can, they know that they will get eaten quickly, and there’s a real need to stretch the chew time as much as possible.

Enter 6-10lb of beet pulp which is often lots cheaper than bagged hay (chopped, compressed, whatever) and is 100% an AAEP-approved forage alternative in the right context.

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#31

I can’t figure out how to quote. :slightly_frowning_face: Maybe it would be more obvious is I wasn’t replying on my phone?

I’m response to your first point about horses choking on certain grains: I have also seen a rash of horses choking on Triple Crown Senior. Including horses choking a few times on the same feed. I’ve seen it fixed by switching the horse to a beet pulp free grain. I’ve seen this with other grains containing beet pulp shreds, too. Sometimes it can be fixed by soaking the grain, some horses just don’t do well on those grains.

Is Strategy those giant pellets? I also avoid Purina, although I have feed it in the past. I seem to remember huge pellets. Could be wrong about that.

I’ll admit, I’m generalizing a bit. If you have a 25 year old horse who can’t chew hay, you do what you need to do to keep the horse healthy. Beet pulp by the bag, whatever the horse can eat.

All things considered, in an other wise healthy, normal situation, to put weight on or help a horse keep condition, I do think there are several things to tweak in the diet before arriving at beet pulp.

#32

It seems to me that you are oversimplifying the stall vs. turnout thing. Especially for people who are in boarding situations, there is often only so many things you can change.

I am aware of the studies demonstrating that turnout is better for ulcers. I asked specifically if there were any studies that included horses pacing the fence in turnout vs. horses eating hay in their stalls, quietly. All goes back to my above comment about there only being so many things you can change in boarding situations.

As someone who works in the TB industry, I can assure you the hoof problems start for a large number of these horses as foals and yearlings and it effects the hoof quality for years. I’m not saying it’s not fixable in a lot of cases, but not all.

Edited to add: Some of the thin sole stuff is genetic and there is only some much you are going to do about that.

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#33

Pellets really aren’t any bigger than the average pelleted feed

Many horses choke on straight pelleted feed. Some of those don’t choke on textured feeds, including those like TC Sr that have beet pulp shreds as part of the texture.

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#34

I had a 2011 OTTB who developed similar issues over time. He had had ulcers on the track, but not since I had him and he became a fairly easy keeper. Did not crib, was turned out almost 24/7, and fed correctly. He started with mild colics infrequently. Over a couple of years, they progressed to more frequent-like every 3 or 4months or so, and also became more severe. Did everything that was related to gut health. Last year (2020), he colicked severely— in December after 2 or 3 lesser episodes in the weeks preceding. My vet was able to resolve the impaction, but it was happening too often to keep doing that. Took him to TX A&M and they scoped him, ran loads of tests, found the colon displaced but it then corrected itself when the impaction was resolved. After a week, the best treatment option was to treat for sand in the gut, even though he only had a low-to-moderate amount that they found and I’m on rock in the Hill Country, so sand colics are NOT common here. Took him home, he seemed better. In Feb, colicked again severely. Took him back to A&M for exploratory surgery with all options on the table, including euthanasia. They’d by now scoped him from both ends and the suspicion was an enterolith that was moving. The surgeon called me from the OR and his gut was completely clean—no ulcers, no enteroliths. However, he had a massively enlarged spleen. So they took colon and spleen biopsies and closed him up. He came out of surgery well, and the biopsies came back with no sign of cancer. There is nothing that could be done for his condition—it was really a rare thing and they don’t know what causes it. They consulted with other vets across the country, including in FL with vets who had seen something similar but only once or twice between all of them over multiple decades of experience. There is a drug that can reduce the size of the spleen but not permanently and no vet had ever seen it used with good outcomes. I had him put him down the next day after we got all the data back. SO…that was my experience and it might be another—although unusual—avenue to explore. Best wishes.

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