Wow! Bio-Sponge!

[RhythmNCruise]

This stuff works so well all I had to do was ORDER it and my horse’s diarrhea stopped!

shakes head

Seriously though, he’s had an ongoing diarrhea issue that I’ve posted about for several years. Usually it’s only been in the winter once the grass goes away and stops as soon as the grass starts to show up again. This year was the same, though he got to looking rough this winter. Still, grass firmed him up, even still eating the same amount of hay, and he started looking good again.

Then this past week I gave him some hay from an older (but smelled fine) bale I had left over before getting a new load. He and another horse were eating from the same bale. Other horse was fine, but “poopy pants” started getting the squirts again. Vet was out to do shots and just shrugged it off as older horse (19) that can’t handle hay (or possibly something sprayed on the hay).

Other than the hay, I’d also switched him to alf/tim pellets (soaked) with a vitamin supplement (DuMor Vitamin Gold) because he was getting pretty fat on pasture. He also gets Omega Horseshine and Remission (suspected but not confirmed IR).

I pulled him off the hay and returned him to his pre-poopy meals of TC Sr, OHS, and Remission. Turned out on pasture 23 hours a day. Added a late afternoon meal of soaked alf/tim pellets (not much). He continued to have sour-smelling swamp butt through yesterday (Saturday). I ordered Bio-Sponge last night.

Today he’s been in the stall all day due to the Tropical Storm/whatever dumping a ton of rain. I’ve been giving him hay from the new load (same supplier, same type of hay…mixed grass…mostly timothy) just to see.

Diarrhea all but gone. I’ve been picking his stall and checking his butt throughout the day and this last time I went out he had nice looking piles and a completely dry butt.

That’s an amazing supplement! LOL!

[Bluey]

You just never know what will work, do you, or how it will work.

Where did you say you ordered that magic stuff from? (Just kidding).

We got a horse from a bad situation, where he was starving, the vet considered him some over 25 and he had similar problem.

We did get it stopped somehow while refeeding him on alfalfa alone, then started re-introducing senior feed, that we had to wet down to a mash, he could not chew any more.

After some weeks, he finally seemed to have straightened out, but always had smaller piles of bigger, very soft apples, at times yellow looking and stinky, just not always.

Once he was on his feet, someone that had a 31 year old needed a companion and took him.
They both lived in a pasture with a free choice large square alfalfa bale all for themselves, giving grandkids leadline rides on weekends and they reported he had normal output now.
They also fed the soaked senior feed pellets, but said not really much of that, the horses stayed in good weight with little.

Not similar to your horse, but something to consider, if your vet agrees trying that could work for your horse.

[RhythmNCruise]

Yeah, I’m thinking alfalfa might help. It could be that the alfalfa/timothy soaked pellets he’s getting are helping, I don’t know. Lord knows I’ve tried it all. At least I’ll have the Bio-Sponge on hand if/when he gets it again.
I’m happy to know he can eat the hay I just bought too. Though I see some stemmier bales in there that I think I will avoid for him and his older friend. The fat 8yo can get the stemmy hay. Vet said he had “perfect teeth” which is amazing considering he’s never had them done. He’s just gifted like that.

[Desert_Topaz]

Having watched a similar change in my mini’s poopy pants simply from switching part of his daily intake to soaked alfalfa/oat cubes I can totally believe that different hay could clear things up. Does the new hay look less mature than the old hay? So, more leafy, less stalky? More stalky means more lignin, which makes it harder to digest.

[RhythmNCruise]

[QUOTE=Desert Topaz;8684101]
Having watched a similar change in my mini’s poopy pants simply from switching part of his daily intake to soaked alfalfa/oat cubes I can totally believe that different hay could clear things up. Does the new hay look less mature than the old hay? So, more leafy, less stalky? More stalky means more lignin, which makes it harder to digest.[/QUOTE]

I’m not sure. I want to think it’s hay-related, but honestly he was still eating the same amount of hay from the same load when the grass started popping up this spring and the diarrhea stopped. I mean completely. Dry, clean butt, no more squirty gas passing, normal piles of poop.

Then he was off of hay completely for a couple of weeks when the pasture had filled in good and they were out 24/7. And I started tweaking his feed because he was putting on weight and I figured I needed to cut his calories. So I gave him and his easy-keeping buddy a little soaked alf/tim pellets and vit/min supplement while my 27 yo ate his TC Sr meals. At about the same time, I decided to let the fatties finish off a bale I’d found hiding in the horse trailer. It seemed okay, probably not much nutritional value, but smelled fine and was actually finer-stemmed. I put it in the nibble nets and they worked on it while the old guy cleaned up his soaked TC Sr.

Then the poopy pants started back even with plenty of green grass (still out at least 23 hours a day…only in to let old guy eat twice a day in peace.) I removed the hay right away (other fatty showed no ill-effects from it), and switched both back to TC Sr. themselves (much less than old guy). Diarrhea persisted in poopy-pants gelding for a few days after the switch. Added a small amount of the alf/tim pellets, soaked, in place of the hay, so they had something to snack on while oldie finished his food. Then, decided to split 1/4-1/2 pad of the new hay between fatties. Figured he already had diarrhea, so it couldn’t hurt anything.

Then he cleared right up the day I posted this thread.

And the next day, he had runny poop again. Ahhhhh!!!

The hay in this new load is inconsistent. Some of it is fine and soft and seems to be mostly grass hay (honestly am not sure of the mixture…definitely some timothy, possibly some orchard or brome?). Then I opened a significantly stemmier bale yesterday, and it seems to have a good bit of alfalfa mixed in. The horses are leaving most of the thicker stemmy pieces, but they are loving the bits of alfalfa they’re getting out of it.

Haven’t checked him yet today to see how he’s doing.

Oh, and the day he cleared up, he was inside most of the day to avoid the brunt of the Tropical Depression’s downpours. So less grass than usual, and I kept giving him hay (softer/finer bale) throughout the day.

But in winter, when there’s no grass and ANY kind of hay…even the softest/finest, his diarrhea is really bad. What he has right now is mild in comparison, I’d say.

Oh, and I switched to Coastal Bermuda winter before last to see if that would help him. It may have slowed the diarrhea down a little, but didn’t eliminate it. I had to stop with that hay though because my appy gelding was getting impacted and tried to colic twice. It was very pretty hay…he just can’t tolerate it.

So! Who knows?! I’m glad the Bio-Sponge is on its way. And I’m glad the horse in question looks like the picture of health right now. He looked terrible over the winter. Just terrible. I really don’t want a repeat of that. But I don’t think ANY nutrients were sticking with him…it was all running straight through. That seems to have stopped at least. He’s picked up a lot of weight (need to watch that too…he can get obese), and his hair coat is the best its ever been. Over the winter it was the worst its ever been.

Sorry to keep rehashing this. I think I’m trying to work it over in my head to see if I can solve it.

I’m very close to having him tested for IR/Cushings because of his past obesity and symptoms (abscesses and foot soreness when on pasture). Not sure if either could cause diarrhea to show up like this, but his loss of condition over the winter really woke me up to the fact that something serious might be going on. I just think if it was something like that, he wouldn’t improve so much when the grass returns.

sigh Thanks for letting me ramble.