Holistic Horseworks Talks with April Love

Gassy Horses: What Does That Really Mean?

April Love

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Some horses seem to pass much more gas than others. Is this something an owner should be worried about?

Yes!

Excess gas indicates a problem with digestion. In this episode, April talks about how to prevent future colic incidents with natural methods.

Resources

Dynamite Apple Cider Vinegar

Horse Yoga video

Organic Parasite Control Podcast 


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Lillian: Hi, this is Lillian, I’m here with April Love. I have a question about gassy horses. There is one horse at the barn that is far more gassier than any of the other horses. He is constantly farting! Is this something the owner should be worried about?

 April: So it's really interesting. When I was younger, we just thought it was funny. We'd say, “Oh, they're gas propelled.”

But actually. when your horse is building up gas just like us, you know when we get gassy and bloated, you're not digesting your foods and you have blockages in the cold.

So, it's really important to do some bran mashes, and get things moving, but normally there's something in there that's blocking it and the hays and grains are fermenting.

The horses that are gassy, you'll usually see them with a belly that's hanging down a little bit lower, and that's usually can be sand or enteroliths, the stones, and most horses have that growing in their intestines by the time they're two years old.

All it takes is a foal chewing on a piece of baling twine or plastic, or, you know, a horse just eating hay off the ground and there were cut strands of baling twine in there.

And it's something that the body can't break down.

So, the body starts to send minerals and calcium around it.

Kind of like an oyster building a pearl. You know is building and building and building.

And it gets worse.

So, while they're not seeing colicky signs now, they probably will in future.

Sure, because that is hays and grains fermenting in there. That's what's creating the gas. On my horses, we did 1/3 of a cup of raw organic apple cider vinegar.

I like Braggs. Dynamite has a really good one too. I really love their apple cider vinegar and you can get a 5-gallon container that will last you a long time.

And you know, watch your parasite loads.

We prefer organic dewormers.

And if you live in an area where there's sand or if you soak your hay pellets.

When you're feeding this sand, go to the bottom because when they cut the first cutting of hay, you have gopher holes, so there's a lot of dirt clots in the hay.

If you're buying first-cutting hay as well.

So then there's sand and dirt and sometimes you'll see horses eating dirt trying to find the minerals that they want.

So, it all comes back down to. You can do Dynamite Dynapro is amazing at helping to settle all that, but you still need to do my horse yoga, which would be, you know, when you're doing the front leg circles and you're doing the belly lifts and the butt tucks.

It's moving everything forward and back and clearing out, you know, the miles of intestines that's in there. But if you have a farty, gassy horse, you really want to do preventative and a lot of that information is in my book that's on Amazon Horse 102 Holistic Alternatives and we talk about gas and blockage and things that you should have on hand just in case your horse does have colicky symptoms, it's a great thing to always have the Dynapro in the fridge ready to go.

It's a living organism and apple cider vinegar, psyllium once in a while, and do that horse yoga to get all of that stuff moving.

Do not just say, “Oh yeah, I got a gassy horse. No big deal.” You've got things going on in there that could be a $5,000 vet bill. So, it's really a lot easier to spend a couple hundred dollars on apple cider vinegar and you know probiotics for the gut.

So that's what I would recommend for your gassy horse.

And my yoga for horses is on my YouTube channel: Holistic Horse Works.

There's also one if you have a colicky horse that what we use, what product we put in the mouth, the moves that we do to move the gas left, right, forward, backwards and hopefully the horse can pass whatever blockage it was.