How to Manage Gastric Ulcers in Horses with These 4 Feed Options

Equine gastric ulcer syndrome can be a painful, debilitating and even dangerous condition for any horse to suffer through. So if your horse is suffering from gastric ulcers it's important to do whatever you can to help them recover quickly and fully. Modifying a suffering horse's diet is one of the easiest and most effective ways to promote healing, so you should consider implementing at least some of the following modifications into your horse's feeding regimen for the duration of their illness.

Free feeding

In the wild, horses graze slowly, providing a slow but near-constant influx of food into the stomach. As such, the horse's stomach has evolved to secrete small but constant amounts of digestive acids to effective digest food taken in this way. Prolonged periods without food, such as time during close stabling or transport, can provoke or exacerbate gastric ulcers, as the lack of food matter to absorb and neutralise the constantly secreted digestive acids can cause large concentrations of acid to attack the stomach lining itself.

To counteract this, you should make sure that a mixture of foods are available to your horse at all times, preferable a mixture of fresh grass and hay. If possible, you should keep your horse on the paddock for the duration of their illness, to allow grazing whenever necessary. 

Feed before exercise

During exercise the blood flow to a horses stomach is markedly decreased, weakening the stomach lining's natural defences against the acids it secretes, and reducing the flow of harmful chemicals and by-products carried away from the digestive tract through the bloodstream. Gastric ulcer syndrome can be a prolonged illness, so eliminating all exercise until the horse is well again is usually impractical. Instead, you should make sure that your horse never exercises on an empty stomach.

Moist feed

Another way you can speed healing of ulcers is by introducing moist feed into your horse's diet. The digestive acids of horses are strong and highly concentrated, and during a bout of gastric ulcer syndrome you should attempt to increase your horse's water intake to dilute these acids and allow the ulcers to heal more quickly. However, horses do not drink while they eat, and since they graze for prolong periods of time, a horse's stomach may go a long time without significant water intake, even if more water is offered.

Moist feeds, such as wet mashes designed for horses undergoing dental treatment, are an effective solution to this problem, allowing your horse to hydrate itself and dilute the stomach acids while it feeds.

Nutritional supplements

There are also a number of ways you can increase the levels of beneficial nutrients into your horse's diet:

  • PectinWhen pectin comes into contact with stomach acid, it transforms into a mucus-like substance that, in sufficient quantities, coats the ulcerated stomach lining in a protective, acid-resistant layer. Consider supplementing your horse's diet with feed containing foods high in pectin, such as beets or soy bean hulls.
  • Surfactants—Surfactants are essentially naturally occurring soaps, and when consumed alongside pectin then can drastically enhance the pectin's protective effects. Oats and alfalfa are good sources of surfactants, and can be easily included in a sick horse's diet.
  • Micronised feedA diet high in complex starches can exacerbate gastric ulcers in horses, as the bacteria which cause ulcers will consume the starches before they are absorbed by the stomach lining, causing them to reproduce more rapidly. However, micronising some or all of your horse's regular feed breaks down these starches into more simple, quickly-digested molecules, allowing your horse to quickly and easily digest their feed without nourishing the bacteria causing their illness.

If you have any addition concerns or questions, contact horse feed suppliers or your horse's vet.


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