Laminitis is a condition when the blood circulation to the hoof and laminae decreases. This causes inflammation and swelling which causes pain and pressure in the foot. If separation of the hoof wall tissues and bone occurs then it is called founder. There are different ways that cause laminitis; toxins, interference, and environment.
Toxins will cause loss of blood supply to the foot. The bacteria that live in the hind gut of the horse can produce these toxins if there is interference with their normal activity. This will cause the “wrong” bacteria to multiply.
Interference (shortage of nutrients or oxygen to laminae) is caused by insulin resistance or shock, and/or stress.
The environment will cause laminitis by having toxins enter the foot. Examples is if the horse stands on hardwood shavings such as black walnut.
So what do we feed the laminitic horse? The idea is to feed them as a diabetic. How we do this is by providing feed with low glycemic I index. These type of feed is grass hay and lower starch feed. We should try to avoid corn, barley and molasses. Fats should be fed in forms of rice bran if extra calories are needed. The Cool Command feed is a low starch feed and has no corn in the formula. When feeding your horse it is ideal to feed them multiple small meals in the day. It is also very key not to have your horse overweight.
Reference Lower Starch aricle for more information.
No comments:
Post a Comment