08/20/2023
I think Red would have wanted me to share the journey he and I went through the last 6 years since his PSSM diagnosis in hopes to help other horses and maybe give them some extended time with their humans.
Here are some things I want to share with everyone that I have learned sometimes the hard way along my journey.
1. If you have a PSSM horse for God sakes, stop breeding them! This is an absolutely heartbreaking disease. If you own a horse, I don't care if they have any symptoms, get them tested! Red was 16 or 17 before I knew he had a problem! You can extend their life just by knowing and feeding them properly. The couple hundred dollars you spend to test you will save by proper diet starting young. There is no cure or medicine for PSSM, you only help is diet.
2. Be careful who you take your advice from. There is a lot of poor advice not based on actual long term experience. And what works for one horse may not work for another. The person who tried something for a week and think they are getting results is not who I want to get my advice from. People mean well, but be careful who you put your trust in.
3. Only change one thing at a time. Repeat, only change one thing at a time. You will never know what does and doesn't work if you change more than one thing at a time.
4. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. Most vets are not up on this disease. I went through four who couldn't find anything wrong with my horse who was dying in front of me. It was Carly who told me what was wrong with him. And too many vets give awful nutrition advice. Their education is not about nutrition. Just because it came out of your vets mouth does not make it good advice!
5. You are the only one who is going to be in your horses corner. You need to do your research and be your horses spokesperson. No one else will do this for you. This applies to anything going on with your horse. Also if you board, it is NOT the barn owners job to know and decide everything for your horse. You should never do anything with your horse just because someone told you to, I don't care how much you trust that person. Research, ask questions, learn. Now also remember, research too isn't always accurate. Reading one article on something isn't research.
6. Does your horse have PSSM? Then it has gut issues! Period. Most horses have gut issues! If you are in the pSSM group and Gina says your horse has gut issues, don't waste your time doing what I did and saying no, I don't think so. Then getting so desperate you give in and try some gut stuff and find out he had gut issues. Just assume your PSSM horse needs gut support. And let me add, I had no gut issues but decided to try probiotic.....took away my severe allergic reactions to cats. Gone. Gut is the key to everything. Even if you can't see gut issues with your eyes or symptoms, every living being needs gut support because the gut is the key to everything....good feet, good immunity, fighting disease, allergies, etc. This past spring 11 horses tested all zero on my property for worm count.....not because I have 1000 acres or pick up manure in the field or the other things they try to say causes worms but because every horse gets good gut support and they can fight their own worm battles. We still worm once in fall even if low counts. This applies to ALL horses not just PSSM.
7. Immubiome is gold! If your horse is labeled a picky eater you may truly want to ask yourself are they a picky eater. 6 years ago my horse would NOT eat anything, sometimes not even his food. When I finally agreed with Gina to try gut stuff I went with immubiome. I had to syringe it along with the magnesium and other things I wanted him to have. He would NOT eat it. It fixed his gut and he went from the 16 years of life always being some sort of picky to I could buy individual vitamins and minerals in powder form and add like 10 different powders to his food and he would eat every drop AND look for more. He was not a picky eater. His gut just never felt right. Immubiome is the only commercial horse supplement I will use.
8. Get away from commercial horse feeds and supplements. They are a rip off and costing your horses their lives. I ended up taking a 12 week holistic horse health class where I learned how to properly feed horses in a healthy way. It is cheaper and it works. It's a little more time consuming because it is a lot of ingredients but it works. We are dumping the poisons into our horses that are giving them IR, cushings, hoof problems, skin problems, allergies, etc. This is no different for humans and our other pets. Dog foods are full of awful ingredients....even the expensive ones. Human processed foods are not good for us either. Sugar is good for no one! And stop saying there isn't anything wrong with my horse, they are so healthy so what i am feeding them works. Yeah, on the outside. Just like that gorgeous, thin, 20 year old girl who eats nothing but processed food and junk food who by the time she's 50 is fat, has diabetes, and is very unhealthy. You don't see the problem all those years when you are eating crappy, you don't see the problem until you are old and the problem is now a problem. I have physically witnessed how changing a horses diet can fix feet problems you have struggled with for years. Take away allergies. Take away skin issues. Make an extremely hard keeper not so hard. Stop sunburn! Weird, huh. Make worm counts on horses that had high ones now not be high. Fix eye issues. Fix arthritis. This one is BIG! The commercial things we are pumping into our horses causes the inflammation and issues. Heck, I can vouch for that in my own body. Fix your diet the arthritis goes away. Then we turn around and after pumping the stuff in that is causing the inflammation, we buying an expensive joint supplement to try to take it away. Oh, and that IR horse that has been fat on air for years.....took him off of ration balancer and went with more natural diet and he's no longer got fat pads and is at a perfect weight. Over vaccinating, over worming, these things are poisons to their body. Yes they need these things at times. But not in excess.
9. And medications. That's the vets first answer. Let's give them medication. Run! Run away from it as much as you can. I know of a Cushing horse right now the vet told the girl to feed him ANY senior feed. Her NSC is 24%! Let's give him 24% feed and pergolide. Pergolide is awful for them. Bute, banamine, all those other meds that some people are just dumping in their horses on a regular basis.....these are terrible on our horses. A horse doesn't need Bute just because it has a little pain. I get a little pain sometimes but I don't run for the pain reliever. That s**t eats your stomach. Stomach is key to everything. There are natural remedies.
10. Stalling your horse goes against everything their bodies were built for. It is simply bad for them. They are herd animals that require constant movement with friends.
11. They must have hay 24 x 7. A horse should never go more than 3 hours without food in their stomaches. Find a way for this to happen.
12. NSC. That rule of you can not feed any food above 10% NSC is not completely accurate. You can feed that 10% NSC all day bit if your hay is 15% NSC, that's a problem! If your hay is 6% NSC, that means a few lbs of 15% NSC grain is ok because most of their food is only 6%! There is an actual math calculation for this. Test your hay if you can. When I did feed commercial feeds, there was not one of the low NSC feeds that had decent ingredients.
13. Learn about ingredients and reading ingredient labels. Soy, distiller grains, wheat midlings....these are NOT great for horses. Vitamins and minerals in the forms of sulfates are not easily absorbed. Foods that add digestive enzymes.....your horse makes their own digestive enzymes.....you shouldn't be feeding them grains that have to add enzymes in order for your horse to digest them. If you learn about ingredients, you'll swear off commercial feeds too.
14. Protein. I love to read the debates on what protein % is the best to feed. You know that means nothing. 14 percent of a grain with good healthy ingredients is NOT the same as a 14% protein that is made with crap. They will not get amino acids they need from crap ingredients and that percentage is totally useless information. Also, most horses get most of the protein they need from grain and/or hay. If you feed your horse too much protein, protein digests in the stomach and this food is only there for about 15 minutes, what doesn't get digested moves on and becomes ureic acid which your kidneys then have to deal with. If it is more than your kidneys can deal with then it leaks out, hence our leaky gut. These high protein, high alfalfa diets are the leading cause of leaky gut.
15. Fats. Oils have their place but too much fat just clogs the liver. Remember horses are herbivores and they don't have a gallbladder to process fats like carnivores. High fats diets are no good. Feed good fats like h**p hearts flax, and rice bran has a good place in some diets.
16. Sugar. Let's just say sugar is poison. Avoid it as much as possible.
17. Make sure you have a good Farrier. Feet are as important as gut. Oh, and throw out all those expensive thrush meds. Fix their guts and health you won't have thrush. Ever wonder why we blame the wet conditions? Yet we can have 10 horses standing in the same conditions and 5 get thrush and 5 don't. Internal health! But if you have thrush, some apple cider vinegar and tea tree will fix this right up.
18. Herbs are a horses best friend. In the wild this is a horses only medicine. They are inexpensive, full of nutritional and medicinal value!
19. Homeopathics: I've been wowed over by these as well. I have one for my dog to help him through thunderstorms. One that helps his leg when he does whatever he does to his leg. These are great for all kinds of sickness and injury.
20. Ever have that horse that is just mobbed by flies? So one day in my class, the teacher said an unhealthy horse with low immunity will attract more flies. What a big moment for me. Because at the beginning of my horses diagnosis, he was attacked so bad by the bugs. I broke down and got him fly sheets. The last 2 years I've noticed he's not as bothered. This year in particular. I have his gut so healthy and his immunity so good that he didn't even need a fly sheet. Black horses are excluded from this concept.
I hope that I said something in these 20 tips that helps someone else's horse because I really believe that my horse Red would want me to Shar all of the knowledge he has lead me to seek out with others so their horses too can get a few more good years of life with you.
Thank you again to Carly and Gina for all they have done.
