Hindgut Dysbiosis

1. "Everything starts with the gut."

For years we've all heard the saying 'everything starts with the gut'. Personally, I think it's only half the story because I now believe everything starts with adaptation.

The gut is simply one of the first places where we begin to see the consequences when a horse has been adapting for a little too long.

That's why hindgut dysbiosis has become such an important topic. Once we understand what it actually means, an extraordinary number of seemingly unrelated signs suddenly begin to make sense.

The horse that's always looking round at his right flank; the one that's become girthy for no obvious reason; the unexplained faecal water; the recurring bloating; the horse that's become grumpy and reactive.

At first glance these can seem like completely separate problems, but increasingly, we're learning they aren't. But before we dive into the biology, I'd like to introduce you to one horse whose story taught this lesson beautifully.

One horse, five years, hundreds of clues

This was, without question, one of the most challenging gut cases I've ever worked with.

It's also important to say from the outset that this was an extreme example. Please don't read this and think your own horse must be this poorly for hindgut dysbiosis to be relevant - most horses never reach this stage.

The reason I'm sharing his story is because it perfectly illustrates how small problems can quietly build over several years until the body simply can't compensate any longer.

When I first became involved, almost every part of his digestive system was struggling. He had significant hindgut dysbiosis, he had both squamous and pyloric (glandular) stomach ulcers, his small intestine was bloated with persistent gas.

Everything pointed towards a gut that had gradually lost its balance, but that's only the end of the story. To understand why, we have to wind the clock back.

Five years earlier...

His journey really began following sarcoid surgery. The surgery itself was entirely necessary, as was the medication, but, as is so often the case, there was another side to the story.

Any significant illness, surgery or medication asks a great deal of the body. The immune system has already been working hard, recovery requires enormous resources, and for many horses, the gut microbiome is one of the first places to feel that pressure, especially when antibiotics have been involved.

Rather than bouncing back, this horse never seemed to regain his previous balance – and looking back, this was the first sign nudge that something deeper was changing.

Two years later...

New signs began appearing. He became increasingly girthy, his belly was uncomfortable, he seemed slower, flat, and definitely not himself.

At the time these probably looked like individual issues but these day we see them differently - because digestion isn't simply about extracting calories from food – it’s how a horse builds itself.

Every protein, mineral, vitamin and fatty acid has to be absorbed through the gut before the body can use it.

Meanwhile, the hindgut has its own extraordinary job. A horse isn't designed to live on cereals - they're designed to live on fibre, and trillions of microbes work round the clock fermenting the fibre from the horse’s grass forage day and night, producing the vital compounds that ultimately help fuel – and energise - the entire horse.

When that community of microbes loses its balance, the effects ripple throughout the whole horse.

Then another piece of the puzzle appeared...

By now he wasn't just uncomfortable - he was becoming chronically stressed - and this matters more than we  realise.

Stress isn't simply an emotion - it's biology. And when any animal enters survival mode, the nervous system has one priority – stay alive. To do that, it diverts precious resources towards the muscles, heart and brain – the organs and tissues needed to escape danger.

Other jobs become temporarily less important, and digestion is one of them. After all, if a tiger is chasing you, digesting lunch isn't exactly top priority.

For short periods this is a brilliantly designed survival mechanism - the problem comes when that switch never really turns off. Digestion begins slowing, the gut environment changes, the stomach becomes more vulnerable, nutrient absorption becomes less efficient. And gradually, almost imperceptibly, the whole internal ecosystem begins drifting further away from balance.

By early 2020...

Something new appeared - his sheath became permanently swollen. His owner understandably sought veterinary advice - one suggestion was fatty tissue, another was musculoskeletal pain.

Both observations made sense based on what could be seen from the outside, but neither quite explained why this was happening.

Meanwhile another clue had appeared. His osteopath wondered whether ulcers might also be part of the picture. Now the dots were beginning to join, because chronic stress doesn't simply affect the hindgut - it can also profoundly influence the stomach. And once multiple parts of the digestive tract become involved, one problem rarely stays as one problem for very long.

Then everything accelerated

He developed confirmed stomach ulcers. His appetite deteriorated, he became increasingly defensive around his belly, the casual "girthiness" had become genuine pain. And meanwhile he swung round to his right side repeatedly, he cow-kicked beneath his abdomen, ears pinned, he bit, his owner could barely change a rug safely…

What was noticeable was that almost every painful reaction centred around the right-hand side of his body. And anatomically... that's exactly where the hindgut lives.

For me, this became one of the biggest clues of all.

Finally...

One spring morning he broke through a fence and helped himself to an unrestricted grass feast.

That single event didn't create the problem - it simply tipped an already struggling digestive system beyond the point where it could compensate. Within a very short time he developed severe faecal water. And suddenly, all those little clues collected over five years finally pointed towards the same destination.

One connected story. And once we understand that one piece of biology, all of those seemingly unrelated clues begin to make perfect sense.

2. What actually is hindgut dysbiosis?

"Hindgut dysbiosis" sounds rather intimidating, doesn't it? In reality, it simply means that the microbial community living in the horse's hindgut has drifted out of balance.

When everything is working well, think of it as a thriving little village. Thousands of different microbial species quietly go about their jobs, with some specialising in breaking down tough plant fibres, while others produce valuable nutrients and postbiotics. Together they create an environment where every member of the community helps keep the others in balance, because a healthy hindgut isn't built around one "magic" bacterium – it’s built around balance of the bugs.

That's why I prefer talking about balance rather than good bugs and bad bugs - almost every ecosystem needs a little bit of everything. Problems usually begin when one group starts overwhelming the others.

And when that happens, the whole biological conversation changes.

A horse is, first and foremost, a fibre fermenter

This is probably the single most important thing to understand about horses. They're not designed around cereals, or concentrates – fibre trumps everything. Every mouthful of mature grass or hay eventually reaches the hindgut, where trillions of microbes patiently ferment those plant fibres around the clock.

It's an astonishing process - the horse can't digest cellulose on its own. Instead, it provides a warm, stable home – the caecum - for microbes that can.

In return, those microbes produce a whole range of beneficial compounds that help nourish the horse from the inside out – including something we talk about a lot here – P5P (activated vit.B6). And much of the horse's energy currency also ultimately depends on this remarkable partnership.

Which means… when we disturb the microbial community, we're not simply upsetting digestion - we're affecting one of the horse's most fundamental biological systems.

Why do horses start looking at their right side?

One of the questions we’re repeatedly asked is “Why does my horse keep looking round at his right side?"

It's a perfect example of how behaviour often gives us biological clues. The horse's large intestine sits predominantly on the right-hand side of the abdomen, and when that environment becomes irritated, uncomfortable or overly acidic, many horses begin drawing our attention to exactly where they feel it (my dear old Murf was a classic right hind pointer with his nose).

They may repeatedly look towards their right flank, some become girthy, some aim a well-intended cow-kick beneath their belly, while others pin their ears when touched or rugged. “Grumpy” is a term often used, and understandably, because hindgut dysbiosis hurts. And when these signs appear alongside bloating, inconsistent droppings or faecal water, they become part of a pattern that's well worth exploring.

Meet MacAttack

Our own Mac was one of the horses who taught me this lesson. When I first met him in the next field to where we’d just moved to, his favourite hobby was biting me. Not playful little love nibbles, but proper, determined, "keep away from me" bites.

He was also in a terrible state with the worst sweet itch I’ve ever seen, so it wasn’t long before I’d taken over his care. Changing rugs required military planning - doing up sircingles involved keeping one eye firmly on whichever leg looked most likely to launch itself in my direction.

At the time, I thought I was dealing with a difficult horse – but I wasn't. I didn’t know it at the time but I was dealing with a horse in proper pain.

As we gradually worked through his digestive health over the following years, something remarkable happened – he just became nice to be around again, because he wasn’t hurting anymore.

So where does the discomfort come from?

This is where things become particularly interesting. A healthy hindgut is a remarkably stable environment. The microbes that specialise in digesting fibre prefer conditions to remain relatively steady, i.e. a neutral pH. They don't enjoy dramatic swings, and they don't thrive in chaos. And they certainly don't appreciate becoming increasingly acidic.

When that balance begins to shift, the entire microbial community changes with it. The fibre fermenters start to struggle, while the unfriendlies seize the pportunity to multiply more rapidly – and gradually the microbial "village" becomes less diverse and less stable.

That's what dysbiosis really is – not one villain or one infection – simply an ecosystem that's lost its balance.

Balance before bugs

This is one of the biggest shifts in my own thinking over the years.

I used to spend a lot of time talking about individual bacteria - these days, I'm much more interested in the environment those bacteria are living in, because microbes respond to their surroundings. Create a healthy environment, and many beneficial species naturally flourish.

Create an environment that's stressed, inflamed or overly acidic, and a very different microbial community begins to emerge – a bit like a neglected garden. You can spend every weekend pulling out weeds or… you can improve the soil, which changes everything.

The same principle applies remarkably well inside the horse's hindgut.

Which brings us to one particular group of microbes. If you've been reading this and wondering what actually pushes that balance in the wrong direction? ...you're asking exactly the right question, because one particular group of bacteria plays a surprisingly important role in that story.

Meet lactic-acid bacteria. They're not automatically "bad", in fact, some are perfectly normal in the right place – such as our own human gut biome! The problem begins when they start appearing where they shouldn't, or when conditions allow them to multiply faster than the rest of the microbial community can keep up. And one place they’re not welcome is – you guessed it – a horse’s hindgut biome.

And if they manage to gatecrash in, the biology starts changing surprisingly quickly. Let's go and meet them.

3. Meet lactic-acid bacteria

So far we've talked about balance. Now let's look at one of the reasons that balance can begin to drift. Meet lactic-acid bacteria.

Now, before anyone starts thinking these are the villains of the story, let's slow down for a moment – because biology is rarely that simple. The problem comes when the environment changes in their favour. Just like weeds appearing in a neglected garden, certain microbes flourish when conditions begin to suit them. It's the change in balance that matters.

The stomach is the first checkpoint

Let's begin right at the front of the digestive tract.

Every mouthful a horse eats carries millions of naturally occurring microorganisms – all perfectly normal. And fortunately, the stomach has a wonderfully important secondary job besides digestion - it acts as one of the body's first security checkpoints.

Strong stomach acid doesn't simply digest food - it also dramatically reduces the number of microbes travelling further down the digestive tract (which is why the stomach acid is so vital).

You could think of it as border control as most unwanted travellers never make it through.

What happens when that checkpoint becomes weaker?

Now imagine that checkpoint isn't working as effectively. Perhaps the stomach is already inflamed, perhaps the horse has painful ulcers, perhaps normal stomach acidity has been altered.

Suddenly, far more microorganisms are able to continue their journey into the small intestine, which changes the biological landscape.

One group that benefit from this change are the lactic-acid bacteria. Instead of being largely held at the front end of the digestive tract, they now have the opportunity to move further downstream.And this is where the story starts becoming interesting.

A case of being in the wrong place

One of the fascinating things about biology is that almost nothing is universally good or bad. Location matters, numbers matter, balance matters.

The small intestine has a very different job from the hindgut. Here, food should be undergoing rapid enzymatic digestion - it isn't designed to be a major fermentation chamber. So if increasing numbers of fermenting bacteria begin setting up home here, they're effectively carrying out the right job… in the wrong room.

And just as brewing beer in your sitting room might create a bit of chaos, so can fermentation in a part of the gut that isn't designed for it.

Sugar changes everything

Now let's add another ingredient - sugar.

Whenever easily fermentable sugars and starches become available, certain bacterial populations can multiply extremely quickly, and trust me - bacteria don't need much encouragement. Give them food they enjoy and they reproduce astonishingly fast!

This is one reason sudden dietary changes can sometimes have such dramatic effects inside the digestive tract. It's not simply that the horse has eaten different food - the microbial community itself begins changing in response. Different microbes, different fermentation, different chemical by-products - different biology.

Why does acidity matter?

As these bacterial populations increase, one of the substances they produce is... lactic acid - that's where they get their name.

Now we're back to something we touched on earlier. The hindgut works best when its microbial community exists in a relatively stable environment. As acidity increases, that environment begins changing, and the fibre-loving microbes become less able to thrive, while others - lactic acid bacteria - gain the advantage.

Gradually, the balance shifts further, and once that shift begins, it can become self-perpetuating. The more the environment changes, the more it favours the microbes that created the change in the first place.

This is where the horse begins to notice

Remember our horse from the case study? Persistent bloating, gas, proper discomfort, looking round at his right side, faecal water.

No random symptoms - they were the horse experiencing the consequences of a digestive ecosystem that had gradually become less stable.

One change led to another, then another, until eventually the horse could no longer compensate.

This is something I think is really important to understand. Most horses don't wake up one morning with hindgut dysbiosis - they slowly drift towards it, often over months or even years.

Fermentation is wonderful...

...when it happens in the right place.

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings I come across. Fermentation itself isn't the enemy - without fermentation, horses couldn't survive - their entire hindgut depends upon it. The question is simply: where is that fermentation happening?

When fibre reaches the hindgut, fermentation is exactly what we want. But when easily fermentable material encourages excessive fermentation further forward in the digestive tract, tthat's a very different story. Location changes everything.

Then there's another piece of the puzzle - there's one naturally occurring plant component that deserves its own conversation – meet pectin.

Pectins are found throughout nature - they're a completely normal part of plants, but they also influence which microbes thrive inside the digestive tract. And once we understand what pectins actually are, a great many feeding questions suddenly start making much more sense.

Let's have a look at those next.

4. Pectins, grass... and why context matters

By now we've met one of the groups of bacteria that can influence the balance of the hindgut - but microbes don't simply appear out of nowhere. Like every living thing, they respond to their environment, which brings us neatly to another piece of the puzzle - pectins.

Now before anyone quietly removes every carrot from the feed room... please stay with me. Because, as with almost everything in biology, context is everything.

So... what actually are pectins?

Pectins are completely natural - in fact, they're one of the substances that help give plants their structure. Think of them as part of the natural "cement" that holds soft plant tissues together.

You'll find pectins in young leaves, flowers, fruit, in rapidly growing plants. They're not harmful - they're simply part of how plants are built. So the question isn't whether pectins are good or bad. The more interesting question is... “How much, and in what context?”

A horse wasn't designed to live on leaves

Here's where horses become wonderfully different from us. When we picture a horse grazing, we naturally imagine them enjoying lush green grass. But if we step back and think about what horses evolved to eat, a slightly different picture emerges.

Wild horses spend much of their time searching for mature, fibrous forage. Long grasses, seed heads, stemmy plants, roughage – this is where the fibre lives.

The leafy, rapidly growing parts of plants are only one part of the picture, and they're very different nutritionally from the mature stems that make up traditional hay.

Fibre feeds the horse...

...but it also feeds the microbiome. This is something I think often gets overlooked.

We're not just feeding a horse - we're feeding trillions of microbes. Those fibre-loving microbes thrive when mature forage is constantly passing through the hindgut - it's what they evolved alongside - it's what keeps that microbial community diverse and remarkably stable.

The more we support those fibre fermenters, the better the whole ecosystem tends to function.

Spring changes everything

One of the reasons spring can be such a challenging time isn't simply because the grass grows quickly - it's because the plant itself is changing, because young grass is busy building leaves.

Leaves naturally contain higher levels of pectins than mature stems, and they're also richer in rapidly available nutrients designed to fuel growth. For the plant, that's exactly what's supposed to happen. For horses, particularly those whose digestive systems are already struggling... that seasonal shift can become one more pressure on an already fragile microbial balance.

Again, notice the language. I'm not saying spring grass is "bad” - I'm saying some horses cope with it better than others, and that's a very important distinction.

Why hay often suits these horses so well

From a hindgut perspective, it isn't especially surprising that a horse does better on hay than grass. Good-quality hay is made from mature grasses, and those grasses have moved beyond their rapid growth phase. They're generally richer in structural fibre and provide exactly the sort of long, steady fermentation the hindgut was designed around.

In other words... they encourage a slower, calmer biological state. That's one reason many horses with recurring digestive sensitivity appear to settle when their diet shifts back towards mature forage.

"But aren't pectins good for the gut?"

Yes. And no. This is where things become wonderfully confusing.

If you've ever read about the human microbiome, you'll probably have seen pectins described as highly beneficial - absolutely true... for us humans. But our digestive system is very different from the horse's.

We host a completely different microbial community, with different nutritional needs and different fermentation patterns – and what's beneficial in one species isn't automatically beneficial in another. It's one of the reasons I get a tiny bit frustrated with this supposed equine probiotics, because they’re based on the human gut biome - but horses aren't very good at being people.

What about beet?

This is another question that crops up surprisingly often. Beet has long been promoted as a highly digestible fibre source for horses - there are certainly many horses that seem to do well with it. Equally, there are horses whose digestive systems seem infinitely happier without it.

Personally, when I'm working with horses showing clear signs of hindgut imbalance, I prefer to simplify the diet as much as possible and build it around species-appropriate grass forage first - my priority is always restoring the environment.

Again... it's less about one ingredient being universally right or wrong - it's about understanding what this particular horse needs right now.

It's all about the environment

You may have noticed a theme beginning to emerge - we're no longer talking about individual bacteria, or individual feeds, or individual symptoms. We're talking about an ecosystem.

Every dietary choice slightly alters that ecosystem, and every period of stress alters it too. Medication can alter it, as can illness and management. None of these things exist in isolation - they all become part of the same biological conversation. And once you start seeing the horse through that lens, so many apparently unrelated pieces suddenly begin fitting together.

Could this also explain colic?

Now let's take this one step further, because once digestion begins losing its normal rhythm, and fermentation starts happening where it shouldn't, it's not difficult to see how the risk of gas, discomfort and even certain types of colic might also begin to increase.

And that's where our story heads next.

5. When the gut stops being "just the gut"

One of the most fascinating things about working with horses is this - very few problems stay politely in one place. A horse rarely arrives saying, "Excuse me Carol, I have a mild hindgut imbalance."

Instead they arrive with a collection of seemingly unrelated clues.A swollen sheath or recurring faecal water. Tight muscles, girthy, unexplained sensitivity to pollens or insects, poor topline, a horse that suddenly feels "different". At first glance, those signs don't appear connected at all – but increasingly, they are.

Why does hindgut imbalance affect the whole horse?

The answer lies in remembering that the gut isn't an isolated organ - it's part of a continuous connection involving the digestive tract, immune system, liver, kidneys, lymphatic system, nervous system and metabolism – and none of these systems works in isolation. Each depends on the others.

So when the digestive environment becomes chronically unsettled, it shouldn't really surprise us that the consequences begin appearing elsewhere too.

The body is always trying to adapt, it's always trying to restore balance, and sometimes the signs we're seeing are actually evidence that it's working incredibly hard to do exactly that.

A swollen sheath... and a bigger question

Let's go back to the horse from our case study.

One of the things that puzzled everyone was his permanently swollen sheath. His vets weren't wrong - they simply couldn't find a single explanation that tied everything together. One possibility suggested fatty tissue, another suggested musculoskeletal involvement.

Both observations had merit, but what interested me was something different.

Why this horse? Why now? Why alongside digestive pain? Why alongside chronic stress? Why alongside worsening behaviour?

When several seemingly unrelated signs appear together, I find it much more useful to ask whether they're connected than to treat each one as an isolated event. And that's where biological patterns become so powerful.

The body's brilliant housekeeping team

Think for a moment about everything constantly moving around inside a horse's body. Nutrients, waste products, inflammatory compounds, hormones, immune signals - everything has somewhere to go, everything has to be processed, everything has to be cleared away.

That's the silent, relentless work of the body's housekeeping systems. The liver transforms, the kidneys filter, the lymphatic system helps drain and recycle tissue fluid. Every second of every day they're keeping the internal environment as clean and stable as possible.

Most of the time we never even think about them, until they begin working harder than they were ever designed to.

When adaptation lasts too long

One thing I've learned over the years is that the body is astonishingly tolerant. It will compensate... and compensate... and compensate some more, long before we notice anything from the outside.

That's why I rarely think in terms of a single trigger - more often I see layers. Perhaps surgery, then medication, then stress, then dietary change, then another stressful event. Each on its own might be manageable, but together, they gradually push the body further away from the comfortable balance it naturally tries to maintain.

Eventually, the body begins asking for help – and the swollen sheath may be one clue, faecal water another, behaviour another - they're all part of the same conversation.

"He's just become grumpy..."

I hear this surprisingly often, along with "He's become difficult to rug,” or "He's suddenly started biting."

I see it a different way - the horse isn't being difficult – they’re telling it how it is. Pain changes behaviour, being uncomfortable changes behaviour, persistent digestive irritation changes behaviour.

That doesn't mean every grumpy horse has hindgut dysbiosis - far from it. But I do think behaviour deserves to be listened to before it's corrected. Sometimes it's the earliest clue the horse has been trying to give us all along.

Could this also increase the risk of colic?

It's certainly one reason I always pay close attention to digestive function.

When digestion is working well, each part of the digestive tract performs its own carefully choreographed job. The stomach begins digestion, the small intestine continues it, the hindgut ferments the fibre - everything happens in the right place, at the right time.

But once that rhythm begins to break down, the picture becomes messier. If larger amounts of undigested material begin reaching the hindgut, or fermentation starts occurring in parts of the digestive tract where it shouldn't, the result can be increased gas, pain, and altered gut movement – and for some horses, that may contribute to episodes of spasmodic colic.

It's one more reminder that digestive balance isn't simply about what comes out the other end - it's about keeping the whole system working in harmony.

A quick word about haylage

People often ask my thoughts on haylage, so here’s a thing.

Many horses don’t cope well on it – my Murf couldn’t go near it without getting a rapid case of projectile squits – wall art, we used to call it. Others seem to cope perfectly well with it – and seem to continue doing so until they don’t – which is said to be around 3-years.

Personally, when I'm supporting a horse showing obvious signs of hindgut imbalance, I  like returning to what the horse evolved to process best - good-quality mature hay, steady fibre, a calmer digestive rhythm.

Remember our unfriendly lactic-acid bacteria? If a horse eats haylage, they’re ingesting these little critters. Nuff said.

6. The horse is always telling us the story

One of the greatest gifts horses give us is telling it how it is. They don't read textbooks, they don't know diagnostic labels - they simply respond to how they feel.

Our job is to notice the pattern - not just one swollen sheath or one episode of faecal water, or just one grumpy day - the pattern. Because once you begin looking for patterns instead of isolated symptoms, the horse's story often becomes remarkably clear.

But could those patterns have started much earlier than we imagine? Sometimes the answer takes us right back to the very beginning of a horse's life.

One of the questions I used to ask myself more and more is this – “Why do two horses, apparently managed in a similar way, respond so differently?

One seems remarkably resilient, yet the other struggles with recurring digestive sensitivity, seasonal skin problems or metabolic challenges from a surprisingly young age.

Why is this? Of course, every horse is an individual, and there's rarely one simple answer. But increasingly, research is encouraging us to look much earlier in the story. And sometimes, right back to the beginning.

Every horse starts with a blank canvas

When a foal is born, their digestive tract is remarkably clean. They don’t arrive with a fully established hindgut microbiome already in place - that extraordinary microbial community has to develop over time.

And nature, being wonderfully clever, has already worked out how to do exactly that. One of the first things a healthy foal does is something that often surprises new owners – they eats their mother's droppings. Not because it's weird, but because it's essential.

This process, known as coprophagia, is one of nature's most elegant solutions. As the foal samples its dam's droppings, they’re collecting the microbial community from mum’s poos that will help populate their own hindgut.

Those first microbial settlers begin establishing the ecosystem that will support fibre fermentation for years to come – a bit like planting the very first seeds in a new garden. The healthier and more diverse those first communities become, the stronger the ecosystem they're helping to create.

The early months matter

The first few months of life are an extraordinary period of development. The digestive system isn't simply growing - it's learning, and the immune system is learning too.

The microbial community is gradually becoming more diverse - the nervous system is maturing, and everything is talking to everything else. It's one of the reasons early nutrition and management can have such long-lasting effects. Not because they determine a horse's future forever, but because they're helping shape one of the body's most important ecosystems during its earliest stages.

Every chapter builds on the one before

One of the themes you'll probably have noticed throughout this page is that biology rarely works as isolated events – it’s about layers. A healthy start helps create a healthy microbiome, a healthy microbiome helps support digestion, and good digestion helps nourish the whole horse.

The better nourished the horse becomes, the better equipped it is to adapt to life's inevitable challenges. Each chapter quietly supports the next. The opposite can also be true. If early microbial development is disrupted - perhaps through illness, necessary medication, major stress or other early challenges... the body may begin life having to adapt much harder than it otherwise would.

When someone contacts me about hindgut issues, I'm certainly interested in what's happening today, but I'm often just as interested in what happened years ago. Was there a difficult start to life?Repeated courses of medication? Early digestive problems? Long-standing stress? Major dietary changes? And what about mum’s gut history – because baby will inherit it.

Once we understand where it all started, it can be much easier to work out how to help the horse move forwards.

So where does KPU fit into all of this?

If you've read some of our other information pages, you'll know I often talk about KPU and the gut:liver:kidney axis. That's because over the years, I've repeatedly noticed patterns where horses with widespread metabolic challenges also seem to have long-standing digestive imbalance somewhere in their history.

Research into both the equine microbiome and metabolic regulation is evolving all the time, and we're still learning an enormous amount, looking beyond individual symptoms and exploring how the whole horse works as one beautifully connected biological system. which brings us back to where we started.

At the very beginning of this page I suggested that hindgut dysbiosis isn't really a story about bacteria - it's a story about balance. We've followed a story about one horse, through the hindgut, through the whole body, and even back to the first few months of life – and one thing becomes remarkably clear.

Everything connects - not because the body is fragile, but because it's brilliantly integrated. And that's also why there's genuine reason for optimism, because when we begin supporting the body as one connected system, rather than chasing one symptom after another, it's amazing how often the horse starts finding its way back towards balance.

So, where to begin.

7. Supporting naturally ...

There we have it - enough of the Carol-ramble, and let’s move on to what we can do about hindgut dysbiosis.

No question - we alleviate the discomfort, get the bad stuff out, and fortify the diet with quality meadow hay going through the hindgut to nourish the horse back to health. Generally you'll be looking at something along the lines of the following,

Don't panic though! If it all seems like a minefield, there's also a COMBO for leaky gut/faecal water, and for even deeper support there's our Hindgut Reset Programme - all in our Gut shop page. Meanwhile here's the process deconstructed for you:

1. First up, we need to get some immediate pain and stress alleviation going. There's always pain when there's dysbiosis so it’s a our DuoBute.
2. If a horse is showing signs of chronic stress as well, we suggest a 1-month/1kg course of our StressTonic. Feed these together for a couple of days in a p.m. feed to start taking the edge off, then we begin the hindgut regeneration programme alongside.
3. For straightforward dysbiosis with no faecal water, it's a a 1-month course of our SiboCARE. It's also adviseable to feed Spirulina for around 2-weeks to help deacidify the hindgut environment and mop up mycotoxins. Once the SiboCARE is finished, we suggest toning the liver/kidneys/lymphatics with a 1-month course of our LKLCARE.
4. If there is faecal water then there's leaky gut, so the gut membrane needs repairing. That's a job for our GutAminos.
5. If you need deeper support, head to our Hindgut Reset Programme.
6.  Note: if you think your horse might be a KPU candidate, have a read of our KPU page to see if it resonates with you.

Thereafter?

1. We recommended our BiomeTonic which support the intestinal environment, creating a friendly home for the friendly gut microbes to thrive, but a hostile (neutral) environment for the unfriendlies. Some horses seem to need it permanently; others (like MacAttack) did well on it being fed occasionally, i.e. a couple of weeks every couple of months. It's very much horses for courses so your horse will no doubt tell you.
2. Our WildFed mix is also useful to feed occasionally to add valuable prebiotic roughage nutrient diversity to the diet. You can either add to the feedbowl or sprinkle a handful over hay every other day or so.
3. Finally, we look at fortifying the diet, dumping the junk feeds for feeds made from multi-species grass forage fibre, i..e a meadow cob or chaff, and getting as much quality hay going through the hindgut, while closing the nutrient gap with forage-balanced minerals - see our EquiVita/VitaComplete range.