High blood sugar

[krlindstrom]

I have a mini/shetland cross and she has been having problems with her feet over the past year. I have had the vet take several rounds of xrays to keep track of what is going on. She put her on thyroid med but that hasn't helped. We keep her off the green grass, but I hate to keep her cooped up in her stall so much. I tried a grazing muzzle, but she has figured out how to get it off. With her last blood workup the vet said her sugar was high and suggested we soak her hay. ugh! Does anyone know of a supplement that can be used to help her process sugars? thanks!

 

[candycar]

I use Remission supplement by AniMed. It's for horses prone to laminitis. High sugar and laminitis run together. I started my too fat/probably metabolic mare on it to help with laminitis. Now I feed it to all my minis just as a precaution. The ingredients are mostly a digestive aid, but it works. The scoop that comes with it is too big for mini dose, so I just use 1 teaspoon a day for loading and active flare up, then down to 1/2 teaspoon for maintenance. Put it in a small amount of timothy/grass pellets or what ever hard feed you give.
You could also test your hay for sugar/starch to see if that's the problem. Depending on how you get your hay(all at once or a couple of bales at a time)
Do you have a drylot or all pasture? Drylots are our best friend when it comes to minis.

 

[krlindstrom]

candycar - Thank you for all the useful information! I'll have to get some of that! Right now I feed her grass hay, then mix her Thyro L in with a small amount of mini/poly pellets but it doesn't list the sugar/carb content. She has a 12x24 stall but besides that the rest of our property is grazing land and it is getting very lush right now. How do you check the sugar/carb content of grass hay?

 

[candycar]

If you are in the US, you should have a county extension agent. They help/oversee ag and related areas. Mine has a hay probe that he can take samples of my hay with. After getting the sample I send it to a lab. www.equi-analytical.com has all the info and forms you need. It cost $18 for the "fast track" test. It'll give you most of the info you need for horse hay.
Once you get your test back, it's kind of confusing to read. From what I can gather from other sites(safegrass.org), NSC is starch+WSC and should be less than 12% of dry matter. If you can get an NSC less than 9% that would be the best. I have never gotten one that low. I have fed up to 13% and not had problems. Most "low NSC" feeds for horses are 14%, so I think anything under that would be ok.
I ended up buying my own hay probe because this year I had to get 4 different loads of hay and felt bad having him come out all the time. I found one for less than $200. It's worth it for me. I have All my hay tested. It's nice to share your results with your "hay guy" so he can amend his fields if he wants and tell his clients the has "tested hay".

 

[plaid mare]

Welcome to the forum! This thread is full of hay sugar intel that I knew nothing about.I had no idea there was a hay probe, nor a site dedicated to testing, ect. Thank-you candycar.

 

[Willow Flats]

If you are in the US, you should have a county extension agent. They help/oversee ag and related areas. Mine has a hay probe that he can take samples of my hay with. After getting the sample I send it to a lab. www.equi-analytical.com has all the info and forms you need. It cost $18 for the "fast track" test. It'll give you most of the info you need for horse hay.
Once you get your test back, it's kind of confusing to read. From what I can gather from other sites(safegrass.org), NSC is starch+WSC and should be less than 12% of dry matter. If you can get an NSC less than 9% that would be the best. I have never gotten one that low. I have fed up to 13% and not had problems. Most "low NSC" feeds for horses are 14%, so I think anything under that would be ok.
I ended up buying my own hay probe because this year I had to get 4 different loads of hay and felt bad having him come out all the time. I found one for less than $200. It's worth it for me. I have All my hay tested. It's nice to share your results with your "hay guy" so he can amend his fields if he wants and tell his clients the has "tested hay".

Candycar, thank you for posting this information. The place I get my hay tests all their hay, and I have learned that one type of hay is not always lower in sugar than another type. They look it up for me when I go in, but just this morning I went online to check for myself and wasn't clear how to read the analysis and boom, here you were! I have lush green grass which I let them out on early this morning for a short time. We have to be so careful in the early days of Spring!

 

[Maryann at MiniV]

Sugar content in growing pasture is higher in the morning than in the afternoon. And Spring grass also has higher content.

 

[Cayuse]

I have also used Remission. But really the best thing that you can do is soak the hay and limit the grass. A dry lot or semi dry lot is the best thing when in comes to insulin resistant/metabolic/ high sugar
horses especially if they are already experiencing some foot problems because of it. Can you put up a round pen or fence off a small area for her and keep trying with the muzzle until she has the area nibbled down?
Maybe attach it to her stall so she can go in and out at will?

 

[Willow Flats]

Sugar content in growing pasture is higher in the morning than in the afternoon. And Spring grass also has higher content.

My vet says the sugar content is higher in afternoon after the sun is out. For this reason some people let their horses out to graze in the night and early morning.

 

[chandab]

My vet says the sugar content is higher in afternoon after the sun is out. For this reason some people let their horses out to graze in the night and early morning.

In general, this is true, but there are things that can affect it, such as morning frost, dew, daytime and night time temps.
Plants photosynthesize during the day creating sugar, then they respired during the night using the sugars they made during the day. If I recall correctly, it's safest to graze from shortly after like midnight to around 10am. [I'm sure your latitude makes a difference, as your daylength will be affected by location.] Over night grazing is not safe here due to the coyotes, so I do the best I can.

 

[Willow Flats]

I bought Annie a grazing muzzle and have been letting her on pasture early each morning with Kriss and so far so good. She has not tried to remove it. I didn't give her any turnout until I got it so muzzle = green grass. It does her good to be grazing and it does me good to not have the worry.

 

[Cayuse]

I just thought of something else. Metformin might help.

 

[fourluckyhorseshoes]

SmartPak has a laminitis and insulin resistance supplement that we have one of our minis on.