Has anyone used it? Comments after looking at web site?
And here is the back story–
Someone I know has suspected her horse of having ulcers. She had her vet & a rep from Succeed come to check the horse. They use some sort of device (looks like a Snap test for heartworms in dogs) to check for blood in the GI tract. She said her tests showed positive for blood. So they are going to treat for ulcers by feeding Succeed supplement for digestive health. They are going to give it six months & then re-check the horse.
I know what I am thinking about it but am wondering if I am off track. After all, I do not know everything (just wish that I did!). I do know that I would not be feeding this as the only thing to be doing.
OK, I’ll admit that I am flabbergasted, but maybe I’m wrong.
Thanks all for any comments.
The trouble with finding blood in the stool is that you don’t know where it came from–could be anywhere from the lips to the rectum.
If I suspected “ulcers” (hindgut? stomach?) I would treat with omeprazole.
IMO Succeed is one of the biggest scams going. A nice product if you want some yeast and vitamins and stuff, but at several dollars per day it is 99% hype and rabid testimonials and about 1% active ingredient. :lol:
I wouldn’t let a rep for any company selling products within 100 feet of my horses. That’s a sure-fire way to find something wrong with them . . . and chances are it would be something their product just so happens to “fix”! :lol:
[QUOTE=deltawave;6516151]
The trouble with finding blood in the stool is that you don’t know where it came from–could be anywhere from the lips to the rectum.
If I suspected “ulcers” (hindgut? stomach?) I would treat with omeprazole.
IMO Succeed is one of the biggest scams going. A nice product if you want some yeast and vitamins and stuff, but at several dollars per day it is 99% hype and rabid testimonials and about 1% active ingredient. :lol:
I wouldn’t let a rep for any company selling products within 100 feet of my horses. That’s a sure-fire way to find something wrong with them . . . and chances are it would be something their product just so happens to “fix”! :lol:[/QUOTE]
This. Period.
And, if I suspected my horse to have ulcers, I would scope.
Thank you both.
That was what I was thinking.
I feel sorry for the horse if she does indeed have ulcers because they are going to waste 6 months using useless junk. If she doesn’t have ulcers, only the owner’s money is wasted. This is a level headed person so I was surprised she was going this route.
Succeed lost me on their website when they said something to the effect that it is not the list of ingredients that makes their product work but the special-secret way it is combined. Really?! Really?!
Gullibility lives.
Succeed alone will not treat ulcers, the horse needs to be on some sort of specific ulcer medication for it.
That said, I love Succeed despite its price tag. It’s the only thing that has helped my guy with his colic problems (he’s ulcer free). Didn’t completely eliminate colic, but it’s once every 6 months or so now instead of a couple times a week.
IMO Succeed may have paid a good penny for their advertising, and the price of the product reflects it. I use Grand Digest, it has more over 5x the active ingredient PLUS other beneficial ingredients and is half the cost. It has helped a ton with horses whose stomachs were “gutted” from a lifetime on the track.
We bought a good supply of both the supplement and the paste .
1st prob was the horses hated the taste of the supplement and wouldn’t eat it. despite trying to introduce it slowly and mask it. This left us with the paste daily. Never saw any changes in the horses and we used it for 6 mos.
My horse is on Succeed because we (vet and I) think it MIGHT help with his chronic colic issue.
He gets UlcerGuard for ulcers.
I’ve never heard of Succeed for ulcers, but it sounds like BS to me.
I used Succeed for about a year in hope that it would prevent ulcers and stop my mare from colic, which seems to be implied from the company reps. If your horse gets ulcers or colics, they have a disclaimer in small print which says that they never guaranteed this. It “might” help with ulcers and the prevention of colic.
The Progressive nutrition guy told me the same thing about one of the Progressive products. When I called him, after my mare coliced, again, he said that they never guaranteed the product, because there is no way for them to monitor how much water the horse is drinking. Duh!
KER’s EquiShure has worked for me, because my mare’s issue is in the hind gut (which I found out by having her scoped at Rood and Riddle). I have her on omnepresole, too. The EquiShure is not cheap, but is less costly than Succeed. I use Canadian Omnepresole, when I run out of the “Blue Pop Rocks”. It runs about $8 tube, which costs much less than Ulcergard or Gastrogard.
I’ll tell you my experience with Succeed, which has been good so far.
I have to agree upfront that it sounds like a bunch of hooey, and I don’t really understand why it works, but it HAS worked for my guy.
I have a 5 year old that developed pretty severe ulcers this past winter due to travel stress when we went to FL. Of course, since it was my horse, it took me longer than it should have to put the symptoms together and come up with what was going on…he doesn’t seem like an ulcery horse, he’s not nervous, etc. However, he’s not a big hay eater, always took a LONG time to eat and would sometimes eat less when traveling. When we got to FL, he came off his feed a little for the first day or two which I expected, then he was fine for about a week, then just quit eating all together! Ultimately, he ate hardly anything (none-1/4 of each meal) for about 10 days, which of course gave me a lot of other secondary problems.
The lightbulb came on a few days into the not eating and I got him on the omeprazole. It helped a little right away and then after about 5 or 6 days in, he started really eating-YAY! I was actually giving him a double dose, full dose both AM and PM for the first couple weeks.
He started eating his food at a normal rate (30 minutes compared to 1 hour or more), actually eating hay, etc! Awesome!
OK, fast forward to the end of our trip, he’s now been on a normal treatment dose of Omeprazole for about 4 weeks, 6 weeks total. I originally planned to treat him for 8 weeks and then wean him off and see how we did, so we were good to go.
For the 2 day trip home, I doubled him up again as he knew he’d be stressed. We got home, kept him doubled up, and he quit eating! At this point I’m pulling my hair out and trying not to have a nervous breakdown…he only lost like 200 pounds over the winter with this and now we are home and he won’t eat?! ACK! So now I’m thinking…there’s no way it’s his stomach, he basically isn’t producing acid at this dose, there must be something going on in the hindgut.
Someone suggested to try the Succeed early on in the process for the hindgut but I dismissed it for the very reasons stated here, plus I hate to try multiple treatments at the same time because then I don’t know what is working.
At this point, I figured, what do I have to lose? I got the Succeed paste, the box said one tube AM and PM for the first 7 days, then once daily after that. At this point, he had barely been eating for about 3 days. Once I started the Succeed, he ate a little more at each meal until the 3rd tube (1.5 days in) at which point, he started eating normally! I kept him on it for 6 full weeks the first time and then weaned him off. I weaned him off the Omeprazole about 3 weeks after we got home, keeping him on the Succeed. He ate normally all summer.
When we travel, I give him both of them. The Succeed will actually make him eat within 10 minutes of dosing, even if he stopped halfway through his dinner…
He started not eating at home again last week, so I put him back on AM and PM Succeed, he was eating normally again within a day and a half.
So…I think it does work, I DON’T understand it, and I HATE how expensive it is and how unclear the information about it is. I dislike using products that expect me to take some leap of faith as an explanation. But again, it has worked for me several times with this horse, and it has worked EVERY time I’ve used it.
He also doesn’t like the taste, but doesn’t throw a fit when I give him the paste. If I put it on his food, he won’t eat it.
Sorry for the super long story, but I wanted to show my thought process and how I came to the conclusion I’ve come to. I am going to look into the product recommended above because what I have yet to find is an AFFORDABLE daily supplement to keep his hindgut happy.
Not true, the test tell you where the blood comes from.
Usually hind gut ulcers are not treated with omeprazole.
Tests for occult blood (they’ve been doing them for years before “The Succeed Test”) are pretty inconclusive for diagnosing hind gut ulcers. Lots of false positives and false negatives.
Traditional ulcer medications (omeprazole, ranitidine, etc.) aren’t effective for hind gut ulcers. I believe only sucralfate has demonstrated any effect.
(quick and dirty literature reference HERE)
Diets based on highly-soluble fibers have been shown to reduce and prevent hind gut ulcers. Succeed is oat flour with some bells and whistles in a fancy package. Of course it will help any horse with hind gut ulcers, although the folks on their marketing team sure are geniuses. There’s plenty of cheaper ways you can achieve the same result.
I’m currently, treating my horse with Ulcer Guard, can I feed, Succeed, while treating with UG? Also, what’s the best way to wean them off the UG?
