Question

My 11-year-old Oldenburg foundered several years before I owned him. I have had him for two years and have tried several things but can't keep his stool solid. He doesn't have diarrhea always, but does at least once or twice weekly. He wears a muzzle while on pasture and receives a small amount of pelleted senior feed. His weight and appetite are good. Right now, he is on a probiotic supplement and a daily dewormer. What do you suggest? Would EquiShure help?

Answer

While your horse does not have the typical diet that would respond to the use of a hindgut buffer such as EquiShure, the fact that he has a chronic problem with diarrhea that does not respond to probiotic/yeast supplementation may be an indication that there is still a hindgut pH imbalance. This may be due to something that occurred in the past before you got this horse, but it is really difficult to know exactly what. Perhaps it is associated with the laminitis incident, for example. Because what you have tried isn’t helping your horse with this specific problem, I would think that EquiShure would certainly be worth trying.

If you feel that the probiotics has not made any improvement, you may want to consider stopping that before starting EquiShure, because probiotics containing lactobacillus have been found to decrease cecal pH, which is contrary to the action of EquiShure.

Further, you may want to consider discontinuing the daily dewormer for a period of at least two weeks to give the hindgut buffer a chance to work without compounding factors. It would also be good to take the horse off the dewormer to be certain the diarrhea problem is not due to a reaction to the dewormer itself or any ingredients used to make the dewormer product. Recent research suggests that the long-term use of daily dewormer is a factor in the development of resistant strains of parasites.