Shivers Symptoms

[RhondaVarner]

My horse was diagnosed with shivers…need a diet for him. Please help!

[QUOTE=Sarabeth;6321131]
First symptom my horse showed is that it was hard to pick his right rear foot. He’d lift the leg too high and then jerk it back and forth a few times. When we did something exciting like go for a trailer ride, both back legs would tremble quite a bit.

What you describe sure sounds like shivers, except the hind end lameness that doesn’t respond to hock and stifle injections might be SI trouble or back pain (my horse has both those problems, too, and was diagnosed by nuke scan and xray).

The good news about shivers is that by adding canola oil to his diet and watching carbs per my vets instructions, the shivers symptoms lessened, and the condition has not worsened for years. He’s older and retired now, but shivers never affected his performance undersaddle.[/QUOTE]

My horse was just diagnosed with shivers. I am in Canada. Could you please recommend exactly what I should be feeding him. And amounts. He is an 1100 pd. Paint. She mentioned no sugar and high fat…but nothing else. Any alpha omega products. Sick with the thoughts as he is a special boy…

[beowulf]

[QUOTE=RhondaVarner;9030835]
My horse was just diagnosed with shivers. I am in Canada. Could you please recommend exactly what I should be feeding him. And amounts. He is an 1100 pd. Paint. She mentioned no sugar and high fat…but nothing else. Any alpha omega products. Sick with the thoughts as he is a special boy…[/QUOTE]

Welcome to COTH. So sorry you had to join under such sorry circumstance. There are several threads on this subject - I suggest you start your own as some of them are updated and other people can chime in with their experience.

What are his symptoms/what degree? Has PSSM been ruled out first?

Shivers, like so many neurological diseases, comes in varying spectrums - some horses only have minor symptoms and do not see much progression of the disease their entire lives - others progress rapidly and quickly.

The best thing for a shivers horse is full 24/7 turnout, high fat, low starch diet, supplemented with vitamin E, consistent work, high forage amounts and lots of fat through either oil (canola, corn, cocosoya, rice, etc) or supplementation.

The horses I took care of with shivers were usually pulled off grain and given free choice hay (timothy/alfalfa), 2-5lb of alfalfa (pellets or cube), usually 2-4 cups of oil, 4000-8000IU Vitamin E, and a high-fat/low-starch grain as needed (I prefer Poulin FibreMax or Blue Seal Sentinel).

How much reading have you done on shivers? It’s best if you study up - it’s quite a fascinating disease as it is believed to originate in the cerebellum. I have only handled geldings with it - last study I read, it was acknowledged geldings were much more likely to develop the disease than mares – additionally, in my anecdotal experience, it has all been in horses that were morphologically extremely tall - AKA, exceeding their bauplan. This theory seems to have some back-up in the scientific studies, as it is noted it seems to be largely among tall horses.

All in all, proving a change in management and diet usually has a positive impact on the horses and their symptoms - those I cared for definitely did best on full T/O and you could tell if they were stalled or kept in. Farriery seems to be the biggest challenge with these horses - it’s good to keep some dorm/torb sedation around for them and find a farrier who is experienced with shoeing shivers horses.

[Foxtrot_s]

Shivers comes in several grades like 1-10. There is a ton of gloom and doom
on line and I just want to say that it is not always so – lots of horses can be managed very well with diet and management and live productive lives.
Candico has experience and can lend a positive spin.

There is more and more being learned all the time. Is your horse part draft?

With the farrier, he can try to lean him up against a wall and lift the leg only as much as absolutely necessary.

[Anouke]

I have a horse with shivers and have been doing a lot of reading about CBD oil in humans to prevent epileptic seizures. I can’t find any info about trying CBD oil in horses to decrease the effects of shivers, any ideas out there?