Our Top Tips to Avoid Colic

Equine Answers to your most asked Questions:

How to Prevent Colic in Horses

Whether it’s a summer heatwave or a cold snap in winter. Colic is always a worry for horse owners and we should be mindful that our horses and ponies are drinking sufficient water to avoid the dreaded impaction colic! With less turnout and exercise due to frozen arenas and slippy or rutted fields in winter, or increased dry matter intake during summer as a result of drought conditions meaning less grass, it’s important to make sure their gut keeps moving with extra moisture. 

Horses eating diets high in dry matter such as hay consume more water than horses grazing good pasture all day. This is because as dry matter intake increases, the body needs additional water to maintain normal gastrointestinal (GI) tract function and saliva production. Water intake provides the horse with proper moisture to digest and transport feedstuff through the GI tract, helping to avoid impaction colic.

Sand Colic Prevention

Sand colic is a type of impaction colic caused by a build up of sand in the horses gut as a result of grazing on sandy soil or from eating forage from a sand floor (eg. winter turnout paddocks and arenas). Sand in horse droppings can be an indicator of an accumulation that requires attention

How to remove sand from your horse's gut - To help avoid this, a regular sand cleanse for horses is recommended for individuals prone to higher than normal sand ingestion levels. Using a psyllium and binder based product such as Equell Dry Up can help to bind sand and other toxins in the gut and expell them as part of the normal droppings. For horses on sandy soil a sand cleanse should be carried out once a month.

How to increase water intake in horses:

Here are a few tips to increase water intake and help keep your horse’s gut moving well: 

• Ensure fresh, clean water is available at all times. Check automatic drinkers to make sure they are working properly and if using buckets, wrapping a layer of straw round the bucket can help prevent freezing in winter. Regularly cleaning buckets/troughs in summer will avoid build up of algae and topping up with cool fresh water encourages more drinking.
• Add extra water to their normal hard feeds to make a mash (warm water makes a really nice winter mash!) 
• Try adding a natural flavour, like apple cider vinegar, molasses, or apple juice to water and offering to your horse by hand (don’t add to their main source of water in case they won’t drink it!) 
• Make a warm “soup” using a small handful of soaked beet pulp (or similar) to a bucket of warm water and offer - we have found most horses will drink a whole bucket of this when offered!! 
• Adding salt or gut friendly electrolytes for horses to feeds can encourage your horse to drink more and replace minerals lost during sweating. Particularly useful in summer heat but also essential in winter - try adding a salt water bucket to your horse water buffet if you use one! But always make sure plain fresh water is at least one of the options in your water buffet.

What to Feed a Horse with Digestive Issues

Soaking hay will increase moisture intake and makes the fibres more easily digestible. Unlike soaking hay to remove soluble sugars, doing so to increase fluid intake involves placing the hay in tepid water for only a few minutes prior to offering it to your horse. For horses not accustomed to eating wet hay, you might have to start with small amounts and increase the ration as the horse adjusts to consuming it. 

Natural Horse Supplements 

Güt Food is our completely natural gut balancer for horses and ponies, including prone individuals. It is full of prebiotic fibres, vitamins and minerals to support horse hindgut health and appetite, mimicking the horse's natural foraging behaviour by providing a large variety of different plant fibres in one serving. 100% natural and packed with superfoods, it helps support diversity of the gut microbiome for optimal digestion and overall well-being. It can be used to tempt fussy feeder's in both their hard feed and for use in horse herb water buffet's by adding a couple of scoops to a large bucket of water.

As always - monitor your horses behaviour carefully, avoid any rash changes to routine/diet and consult your vet if you have any concerns.

~ The Equell Team