I'm often asked for tips on fussy eaters, and especially when horses are starting out on minerals, because let's face it - I wouldn't want to eat a raw spoonful ... 😶
A quick digress though - a horse may be being fussy for a very good reason, as going off their food can be a classic sign of SIBO/leaky gut, plus it could very well be that there's a risk of squamous ulcers kicking in – these are the ulcers at the front of the stomach/foregut, usually caused by poor feeding practices and/or poor-quality junk food in the feedbowl.
One of the many things we know about the gut microbiome is that it trains the immune system – it’s able to tell the immune system what it needs to be worried about, and what it doesn’t. If the microbiome’s disrupted, it creates inflammation in the SI, which begins to break down that fragile gut wall membrane that’s responsible for letting the good compounds and nutrients into the bloodstream to fuel the body, and for keeping the bad guys out of the body.
When it breaks down, that’s leaky gut. And now the immune cells start to see proteins that haven’t been completely broken down to the peptide levels they’re accustomed to, so they start making antibodies against commonly eaten foods. Cue a gut crisis!
Cue bloat, gas, wonky poos, and miserable pain. The gut becomes sensitive to the regular foods it sees every day, so now the horse is either not eating, or they're so uncomfortable that they don’t know what to eat, because everything they eat exacerbates the symptoms and the pain, which can be crippling.
We've got a relevant Blog post explaining this - The misery of SIBO - another case of everything's connected, so if your horse has gone off his food and is miserable/depressed/in pain with it, this Blog may help.
However, if you're sure that it's just that your horse being sniffy about his feedbowl, and having myself seriously acquired a very worn T-shirt on all things fussy, here are my Top Tips for cunning feed disguises, along with client suggestions as well:
Hope some of the above helps 😊.
The content in this website is intended as a sharing of knowledge and information from our own research over many years, together with clients' experiences and our own personal experience over 5-decades of horse care. This website is about enlightening towards a more naturopathic approach to support a healthy lifestyle for our horses. Any information contained within is not intended as a substitute or replacement of veterinary or other professional advice, and we would encourage everyone to make their own equine healthcare decisions based upon their own research.
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