My horse has to have over 60 pills a day for awhile & can’t have grain so I have to syringe them. However, she really hates this since it tastes terrible & doesn’t want to be anywhere near a syringe-looking object. Any tricks or advice? The medications are very necessary so unfortunately she has to take them.
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Can she have apple sauce? I’ve found that mixing it with the meds helps a lot.
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Try syringing (syringeing?) plain applesauce a few times to make her less apprehensive?
Put meds in applesauce and try to fet her to eat them? Probably won’t work if they taste that bad.
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Can you make a mash of hay cubes?
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I’m not sure if she can have sugar, but when I had to do a ton of pills (63, twice a day), I melted them in molasses. Even with 3 1/2 weeks of this routine, my gelding rarely objected, and even then just a token no, I don’t wanna.
Good luck, it sucks.
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If they are not a problem for her diet, I have had very good luck getting meds in horses using fig newtons.
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we have a coffee grinder that is only used for the horses, currently using it to chop rolled oats for the over 40 pony’s grain mix that is soaked before offering it to him in is silver serving bowl
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I had to give 40 capsules a day, and managed with these:
https://www.doversaddlery.com/dimples-hrs-treats-w-pill-pckt/p/X1-220383/?gclid=CjwKCAjwieuGBhAsEiwA1Ly_nTS3eojHW4XPxQSsngKzw4u56lpo_IQIDr8wSf_zwYAYyyRnia3a_BoCBjwQAvD_BwE
With a bit of smooshing and squishing, I got seven or eight per pill pocket.
Of course, loaded with sugar, so if sugar is a no-go, these will not work.
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Applesauce and a small amount of molasses ( maybe about a teaspoon, I just pour in a glug on top of the ground pills and applesauce before I mix it) in the syringe works for me.
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A dosing syringe is going to be a whole lot easier than a 60 cc catheter tip syringe–something like this.
My trick is using those soft melt peppermints with icky tasting stuff–the peppermint flavor covers a whole lot of awful, and they usually melt immediately when you get them wet. If sugar is an issue, it doesn’t take many (I usually use two) or I think you might be able to find them sugar free?
Since she hates you already, dosing her with tasty stuff will hopefully make friends again.
Good luck!
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I’m going to live up to my Evil Chem Prof reputation and note that the process of adding a solid to a liquid and having it produce a homogeneous liquid mixture is dissolving, not melting.
Melting is when a substance goes from the solid phase to a liquid without the addition of anything else, except possibly heat.
Table salt (NaCl) dissolves in water at room temperature, though it will be faster and and more will dissolve if you heat it up a bit. The melting point of NaCl is 800 C, or 1474 F. Both are physical processes, but different ones.
I further maintain that the wicked witch did neither.
Carry on.
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Is the required medication not available in different format? Have you asked your vet about it? Seems like an awful lot of pills to stuff down a horse.
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I use sugar free pancake syrup or the squirt water flavoring for my fatty that shouldn’t have a bunch of sugar. He really likes the orange crush flavor.
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I feel for you- I had to give 40cc of thick sticky bitter antibiotic suspension twice daily for 2 months to a mare that HATES meds! She has told me often that she Doesn’t Do Drugs.
By the end my technique was pretty good- stand on right side of head facing front, left hand slips into mouth with fingers on the bar and thumb under jaw. Right hand fetches syringe from hiding, slips into back of mouth and quickly deposits yucky med as far back as possible then raises head.
This works much better than trying to hold the head down with a hand over the nose or with the halter. It is really hard for horse to fling their head around when the jaw is held. The regular 60cc syringe is too long for my hand but I found some shorter, thicker ones that I could push the plunger even when full. I didn’t like the dosing syringe with the metal mouth piece, afraid of hitting the teeth.
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I am going to try this tomorrow morning it’s my syringe hating dollar wasting GastroGuard hating gelding!!
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I just finished 2 weeks of 16 pills a time for my gelding. I use a coffee grinder to get them crushed down…I tried applesauce, but that he was able to spit out. I ended up mixing the crushed pill with Karo syrup. I also use a smaller syringe (I was able to get the mix to about 20cc)…so I used a 35cc syringe. I also cut the tip off and made the hole a bit wider so it was easier to squirt out.
That combo worked pretty well and he wasn’t able to spit it out…with the karo syrup he started to tolerate the mix by the end.
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Unfortunately she can’t be on anything besides her hay right now, she is an extremely easy keeper so the vet is pretty strict on what she can eat
Yes I did buy applesauce but unfortunately the taste from pills is too strong to really be hidden
Unfortunately no, one of the medications is a powder but all others are pills. I feel bad but half of the pills are antibiotics which definitely need to be taken as I’d like for her to at least recover as pasture sound.
Ah okay thank you! I think it doesn’t help that my fingers are in no way long enough to push the plunger
