Your horse’s digestive system plays a vital role their overall health and wellbeing. Here we examine this topic in detail and will outline practical information that all horse owners can avail of.
For a healthy horse, a balanced digestive system is key. However this balance can be upset easily by a variety of factors which can have a detrimental effect on a horse’s health.
Bacterial Health
Friendly bacteria in your horse’s hindgut assist in the fermentation of fibre and the synthesis of protein and a host of B vitamins. Millions of friendly bacteria die naturally and are lost from your horse’s digestive tract every day. Replenishing these friendly bacteria is vital to supporting your horse’s normal digestion and immune function, helping your horse maintain weight and condition. Live yeast is scientifically proven to aid maintain this healthy balance of friendly bacteria and so impacts on health and vitality.
Causes of Digestive ill Health
The levels of friendly bacteria in the hindgut can be severely reduced by the composition of the diet, meal size, time of feeding, and environmental stress. Diets which contain high levels of cereal starch and limited quantities of forage have a negative effect on the hindgut and alter the balance of microflora including friendly bacteria, to the horse’s detriment. Other factors affecting the balance of good and bad bacteria include the use of wormers and certain broad spectrum antibiotics. Horses that are stabled for a large proportion of their day or who travel and compete regularly are also susceptible to digestive unbalances.
Symptoms of an Unhealthy Digestive System
Symptoms of an unhealthy digestive system includes
- failure to thrive
- lack lustre appearance
- loose droppings
- frequent bouts of colic
- increased susceptibility to illness or infection
These can be a stress response to reduced levels of friendly bacteria in the digestive tract.
Restoring Digestive Health
Feeding Gut Gold can help ensure that the levels of friendly bacteria are re-established quickly following any of the above conditions. Gut Gold is a pre and probiotic supplement that contains a live yeast Saccharomyces Cerevisiae formulation that includes a balanced combination of Mannan oligosaccharide (MOS) and Beta-glucans to help achieve gut health. The ingredients in Gut Gold assist as follows:
- Saccharomyces Cerevisiaecan help increase nutrient digestibility by helping to enhance the activity of fibre digesting bacteria in the hindgut, which can result in increased fibre digestion and more efficient use of the vitamins and minerals from the diet
- MOSare natural polysaccharides that block pathogenic bacteria in the gut from multiplying,
- Beta-glucansare also natural polysaccharides, which modulate the immune response
Maintaining a healthy digestive system results in a healthy horse. A healthy is a happy horse and happy horses make happy owners! For more advice and information, please contact our expert team on 051 304010 or here.
