- Remove at risk ponies from paddocks before the warm spring days and do not return them to the paddock to live until the feed has dried off. Return them to a little free grazing and increase the length daily over several weeks until, if they are low risk cases, they can stay out all the time.
- Provide supplements in the form of mineral licks or in the feed (make your own to suit your pasture and soil type).
- Make small, progressive changes in the diet. Never take horses which have been on grain and dry feed and then put them straight into lush grass without a changeover period of at least 3 weeks. Longer is better! When taking horses from poor feed to grain do the same, decrease the roughage and increase the grain slowly to allow the gut flora to adjust so that the new diet is digested and not fermented.
- Avoid feeding bread and sugar, limit molasses, etc.
- Monitor green grass and grain intake vs. roughage intake.
- Reduce grain intake during periods of illness or stress. Grain increases the inflammatory response.
- Reduce grass and grain intake in comparison to energy outlay. Only replace what is used.
- Never try to fatten a horse quickly, the main reason horses fail to do well when first brought in from the paddock is because they cannot digest the diet. Make changes slowly and you will get better value from the feed.
- Include an organic form of the mineral sulfur in the diet which aids enzyme activity in the gut.
- Balance the diet so that magnesium, calcium, phosphorous and all essential mineral levels are adequate.
- Balance the diet to compensate for unhealthy pasture, toxic plants and acidic soils (low pH) e.g., on pastures dominated by weeds or plants containing oxalates (African runner grasses such as kikuyu) feed dolomite.
- After treatment with antibiotics/worming products, restore normal gut flora by feeding probiotics (live, beneficial bacteria).
- Virginiamycin is an antibiotic which is not absorbed into the blood stream of horses and only exerts its effects on bacteria in the digestive tract. It has been used in the past to control grain induced acidosis in feed lot cattle. Founderguardâ for horses at the dose rate of 5g/kg body weight has been shown to inhibit those bacteria which lead to high concentrations of D-lactic acid. The antibiotic must be present in the digestive tract for 4 days prior to exposure to the carbohydrate to prevent laminitis and is therefore not a treatment but is a preventive measure if used prophylacticaly. However, in my experience this should not be used as an excuse not to rectify all the risk factors associated with grass and grain and I occasionally hear of cases where laminitis has occurred while feeding this product.
Last Updated on Friday, 22 April 2011 18:50 | 
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