Sand Clear year round?

Anyone feed Sand Clear year round in sandy pastures, even when there’s snow on the ground and they are eating off a round bale? In Michigan we have a lot of snow/melt cycles!

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Psyllium has shown to be fairly ineffective at moving sand out - hay is much better

After feeding for a few weeks, the horse starts digesting it rather than it passing through.

There’s no sand intake if there’s snow on the ground. And, your free choice hay is doing a much better job moving sand out than psyllium can

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Came to say this. The research was done by the Univ of Fl.

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That’s what I’ve heard and read, too. However, the SandClear, recommended by my vet…definitely seems to have made a difference with my mare.

The last barn I was at, the owners at that time required Sand Clear once a month (for 7 days). As soon as they sold and moved, I quit it with my mare. No problems at all even with continued turn out on sand based dry lots. Heck, she would go out and eat dirt/sand. She has always been a consumer of dirt :woozy_face:.

I recently moved barns and a boarder that was at the previous barn warned me I must put her back on it. Ummm…no. At this barn they are turned out on irrigated pasture and they eat out of feeders. Oh, but she might colic. I told her there were only 5001 other reasons they might colic and sand wasn’t the only one :roll_eyes:. My mare had been off of it for nearly a year and a half at the other place and nary a problem.

I read that psyllium is good for hind gut health but that it doesn’t move much sand.

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If you are concerned about sand, do a simple sand check. Put a few fresh manure “balls” in a baggie and fill with water. Kneed and hang for five minutes or so.
Sand would settle out.
More than a tablespoon could be signs of sand in the colon.

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I live in FL and have my whole life. I don’t feed any of that stuff and I don’t mash either.
What I do is deworm properly and feed enough hay all the time to keep their gut moving.
Been doing it that way over 40 years and only one gas c$&@;c in a pregnant mare caused by the foal turning. It resolved and every thing was fine

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this doesn’t tell you anything other than “the horse is passing sand”, which is a good thing. It has no correlation to how much sand is in the horse, or even how much was consumed