My vet recommended this for my new guy who has colicked 3 times this year. 2 were impaction colicks and 1 was a “gee, look, the temperature changed” colic. He is just starting on SmartDigest Ultra and I am adding an evening mash of soaked beet pulp. Any one use the Assure line? Plain Assure is priced fine but the Gold, wow! There is also Guard and Plus.
What is it supposed to do?
Looks like it’s a mixture of probiotics and psyllium. One of the products has a proprietary buffering so probiotics reach the hind gut and the psyllium is said to add some hindgut protection as well.
Sand Clear is also a psyllium pellet and Dexter won’t touch psyllium. I would probably try Sand Clear to see if the horse will even eat it first. Mineral oil two to three times a week in feed works well too. I honestly can’t remember how many times Dex had bouts of colic since June but it’s more than 6.
I would maybe scope the horse and see if there is an ulcer problem before feeding daily laxatives long term.
I used Assure for a bit on the advice of my veterinarian after my horse’s…15th? gas colic over the span of a couple years. A few of them were bad enough for her to spend a few days in the clinic but most were resolved with banamine and hand walking. There was never anything consistent about them so we figured she was sensitive to weather changes (we lived in an area with sometimes crazy weather fluctuations) or diet after extensive testing and scoping.
She had been on smartdigest ultra, a daily dewormer, ranitdine, and Strategy (on top of her hay rations for the day). At one point I had enough and asked what else we could do to prevent all this. We pulled her off all of her feed and supplements and just did hay, a ration balancer, and Assure to see if there was something in her diet. Over the next 2-3 months, she was on that diet plan and was colic free. I will note that she had gone a couple months without colicing in the past, so it’s hard to say if it was a result of the diet or if it was just a coincidence.
Right after that we moved to SoCal, and have been here for a year with no issues. She gets no grain but has lots of hay and Platinum with her beet pulp/rice brain/hay pellet mash. So it’s really hard for me to say if it was the Assure, something in her diet, or the environment/climate change that helped resolve the issues.
ETA - I believe I used AssureGuard daily with AssurePlus once a month for a week as directed.
I will be just using plain psyllium if/when it snows for the duration of the snow, or 7 days/month, whichever is shorter. I also feed 1/4 cup linseed [flax] oil, which acts both as anti-inflammatory AND peristaltic to keep that intestine moving. That may be cheaper for you than Assure (which I don’t think we can buy in Canada?)
The other thing I did last winter after her last (4th) impaction was to buy snow pads for her shoes so she could KEEP MOVING, which keeps the gut moving. She seems to block up within hours if she doesn’t move, which will happen if we get more than a skiff of the dreaded white stuff. Her pads go back on tomorrow, actually, so hopefully that’s enough to prevent ANY snow this year! There’s a very long post to start a very good thread from last year you may want to look up if you have the time about how to prevent another impaction colic.
Oh, and just in case you haven’t yet done this, we also make sure her water is de-chilled to encourage drinking, and has been for 3 weeks now.
Was the beet pulp something you added when you moved? Also, she colicked while on the the Smart digest Ultra but once you went to Assure, she didn’t but you have since stopped the Assure and she is fine?
Yes and no. Strategy does contain beet pulp, and when we were at shows we’d give them wet beet pulp at lunch, so she definitely had it before. But since I moved, she gets no ‘grain’ and just gets a mash of beet pulp, rice bran, and hay pellets (along with a Platinum like supplement). It’s hard to say if she’s getting more than she used to.
Also, she colicked while on the the Smart digest Ultra but once you went to Assure, she didn’t but you have since stopped the Assure and she is fine?
Yes, she colicked while on SmartDigest Ultra (multiple times). She actually hasn’t colicked since we pulled her off of everything that she was on (which coincides with the use of Assure for a couple months and then the move). Over the course of a couple years of these colics, we tried a few different supplements and medications, none of which seemed to change anything.
Part of me thinks the frequent colics may have been food and environment related. Colorado weather was tricky and barometric pressure changes occurred regularly and quickly. She always hated cold weather too. SoCal is consistently warm and she doesn’t get the processed feed that she used to, so maybe she’s just less gassy and happier without the cold? Her physical living space was the same in both places.
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If your horse is colicking frequently, you all really should consider the probability ( yes, I said "probability) that you horse has ulcers. Im uploading a link to a study from 2015, which is a tad old but its a meta-analysis of data from 3,715 horses over 70+ years, so its very valid. Scroll down to the “prevalence” section and prepare to have your mind blown. I wish Id known this even five years ago. My horse has ulcer disease and its very painful, and all too common. If your horse is in steady work and having digestive problems, cinchy, irritable, hesitant to move out, sore to pressure on the sternum, you really should ask your vet. Just sayin.’ Equine Gastric Ulcer Consensus https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jvim.13578
Since this thread got resurrected I thought I would update it. I still have this goofball. I never did start the Assure. We started him on soaked beet pulp and alfalfa cubes every day and my guy hasn’t colicked since. He may have had ulcers from his previous living arrangement but regular turnout with a buddy and beet pulp mash, knock on wood, took care of it.
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Love your quote!
