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Madeleine Innocent

Digestive ailments in horses are common. The horses digestive system is delicate as anyone who has been involved with these beautiful beings knows well. However, it’s normally our habits and practices, often well intentioned, that cause them.

Symptoms can include neck extension, drooling saliva especially from the nostrils, an anxious look, kicking the belly or touching their sides constantly and rolling repeatedly.

Several common practices that contribute to these conditions include stress, diet and lifestyle conditions.

Stress is probably the biggest factor. Reports of colic increase at the weekends, showing our demands can be too stressful.

Horses are prey animals. All prey animals must be on super alert 24/7 to avoid being someones dinner. They must be super alert to all and any sounds, sights and feelings as these are their reliable guides to something not quite right.

Without understanding this, without working gently with this natural characteristic of horses, more stress will be added. As anyone who has experienced stress knows, appetite is one of the main areas that drops off.

Horses are herd animals. The herd provides them with some safety against predators. A single horse is much more vulnerable to attack by a predator, so their stress is magnified many times.

Just having a similar companion, can bring the stress down significantly.

Being a herd animal, horses are friendly and co-operate with each other. Being without a friend is not just lonely and boring, it can lead to increased dullness.

An excellent example of this co-operation can be seen as they rest side by side, nose to tail, gently swishing flies of each others faces. Or the neck massages they do for each other.

A factor often ignored is that these sensitive beings easily pick up on our feelings. They reflect them. Our stress and anxiety become theirs.

As herbivores, horses need to graze constantly. Not only is the food of low nutritional value, grazing means they need to keep moving.

The horses digestive system is geared to consume bulk 

food of low nutritional value. The volume makes up for the low values. Feeding horses small feeds of high nutritional value gives them too much energy in short bursts. This is not unlike fleeing from a predator. It’s highly stressful.

And it leads to stomach ulcers.

The stress plus the lack of constant food is almost guaranteed to cause ulceration in the horses gut.

This situation is very common in stabled horses, but much less so in horses who are free to graze and wander.

The addition of slippery elm to the feed can do much to alleviate the symptoms, without side effects. However, if the main cause remains, so will the problem. The living conditions of the horse are what homeopaths call the maintaining cause of the malady.

As a side note, the constant wandering a horse does while grazing means the joints are moving regularly and the blood is freely flowing. Standing for long periods is unnatural and can lead to locomotive issues and great stress.

Colic can occur from eating too much food of high nutritional value or from eating food they don’t yet have the right microbiome balance to digest. New food always needs to be introduced gradually, to allow the microbes of the gut to adapt.

Prey animals can never show their ailment if at all possible. The predators aim for the weaker animals as that’s going to be the easiest hunt.

Horses are one of the most obliging animals there are. They will perform despite pain. The will work despite injury. They are very good at hiding pain and suffering.

Sadly, this natural characteristic is frequently abused.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have consequences.

The bit can be a source of torture. Tight nose bands and martingales are often used to subdue a horses clear indications of stress and/or pain; throwing their head up. Damage is often unseen. Badly fitting saddles can cause tremendous back pain. Heavy riders can contribute to every problem.

Training is generally too fast for these sensitive beings. Financial expense is substituted at the horses expense.

Digestive ailments in horses is a man-made phenomena. We humans are the cause. We create the stress and it can be passed from generation to generation. Foals can be seen wind sucking.

The great thing is that if we are the cause, we can be the solution. We can be very creative. We simply need to shift our focus, our perspective. That naturally leads to changing our habits.

As long as we respect another for who they are, we can remove the maintaining cause. With that out of the way, we can now work on any remaining problems that have become stuck or won’t heal. There is little better than good homeopathic treatment for that. It naturally supports good health, including good gut health, and supports a flourishing immune system.

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