Category: Excess iron

Turmeric pellets reduce coat, sweating of horse with Cushing’s disease

Posted on: February 15, 2021

Kurt's hair is dry in 6-degree weather on Feb. 7, 2021

Kurt’s hair is dry in 6-degree weather on Feb. 7, 2021.

Post reviewed on Nov. 26, 2022

Turmeric pellets may be a relatively cheap and easy-to-use treatment if your horse is dealing with Cushing’s disease and related symptoms, such as sweating.

I cannot say turmeric pellets improve laminitis issues in the hoof.

But turmeric pellets have reduced my gelding’s sweating during the winter, including when the temperature drops to zero, and made him much more comfortable, improving his quality of life dramatically.

Turmeric, an herb belonging to the ginger family, is the major source of curcumin, a polyphenol (micronutrient) that has been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects, according to many studies.

However, a major problem with curcumin is its poor bioavailability.

I initially started trying to give my horses turmeric in powdered form in December 2014, because of its chelation activity. It removes iron from the cells of the body and lowers ferritin levels, according to many sources, including the Hemochromatosis Help website. If my horses indeed suffer from iron overload, as I’ve suspected for years, the turmeric should help.

Adding turmeric powder lasted only a few weeks each time I tried it because the horses wound up colicking. I assumed that the turmeric, along with the horses’ on and off again use of bute, was making ulcers flare up.

During the three winters prior to the 2019-2020 winter, Kurt, my last horse and a longtime sufferer of laminitis, developed a huge, curly coat and sweated all winter, even when the temperature dropped below zero. He didn’t mind his wet coat icing over like everything else in sub-freezing temperatures, but I panicked through every deep cold snap.

In the fall of 2019, I noticed that SmartPak was selling turmeric in pellet form. I have no affiliation with SmartPak and receive no compensation or discount for saying the brand name.

Kurt started on the supplement Oct. 31, 2019. Two months later, it was obvious the turmeric was having a positive effect on his coat. Sweating was greatly reduced on warm days and nonexistent on cold days.

That is still true.

Here are photos of Kurt’s excessive coat in December 2016 and January 2019 and then his much lighter coat in December 2019, two months after he began the turmeric pellets, and in February 2020.

And here are pre- and post-turmeric-pellet photos of Kurt’s wet coat icing over on Dec. 10, 2018, a day with a morning low of 14 degrees, about the time when the photo was taken, and his coat completely dry in 6-degree weather on Feb. 7, 2021.

I give the turmeric pellets to Kurt separately after he eats his forage balancer. He likes the pellets more than his forage balancer and treats them like dessert. The dose is one scoop a day of 10,000 mg of turmeric. At least one study has used a higher amount.

I’ve tasted it and it tastes like someone dumped a spice rack in my mouth, but it’s not bad.

I don’t know why Kurt can ingest the pellet with no issues, while the powdered turmeric always led to a bouts of colic. Some studies suggest turmeric actually improves ulcers.

A study presented at the 2020 AAEP meeting by Michael St. Blanc, DVM, from Louisiana State University’s School of Veterinary Medicine, indicated that turmeric and devil’s claw fed together as a supplement to horses with pre-existing equine gastric ulcers did not worsen the ulcers, according to a report on thehorse.com. In fact all study horses — those fed the supplement and the control horses — saw their ulcers improve, likely due to the change in management of the horses once they were enrolled in the study, St. Blanc said. The turmeric dose in that study was 12,000 mg.

Cushing’s syndrome in horses is unique, according to VetFolio, in that it involves hyperplasia (an increase in the number of cells) in part of the pituitary gland rather than tumors in a different part of the gland — which occurs in humans.

Either condition can result in excessive production of adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH).

The excess ACTH causes the adrenal glands to make too much cortisol, which can lead to immune suppression and insulin resistance.

The website vetspecialists.com, a joint venture of the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine (ACVIM) and the American College of Veterinary Surgeons (ACVS), says equine Cushing’s disease, or pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID), is the most common endocrine disorder in horses, ponies, donkeys and mules. PPID most often affects older horses (teenage or older) but has been observed in some younger than 10 years of age.

Affected horses are prone to chronic infections such as sinusitis, dental disease, and sole abscesses.

The website lists these signs and symptom, and my gelding Kurt had them all (expect the abnormal heat cycles in mares):

1. Failure to shed hair fully each spring.
2. Long, wavy/curly hair.
3. Chronic infections.
4. Repeated laminitis episodes sometimes with associated hoof abscesses.
5. Excess or inappropriate sweating.
6. Increased water intake and urination.
7. Lethargy.
8. Loss of muscle mass, typically noticed over the back and hind quarters, as well as the “pot-bellied” appearance.
9. Infertility or abnormal heat cycles in mares.

There seems to be ample evidence in human studies that turmeric can help alleviate the cell activity behind Cushing’s disease. I am not finding a study in horses that examined curcumin’s effect on the pituitary gland or Cushing’s symptoms.

Authors of a German study in humans and rodents said their research “demonstrated for the first time that curcumin has anti-tumorigenic actions on rodent and human pituitary tumor cells in vitro and in vivo.” The research was published in 2009.

Given all the money I’ve thrown at laminitis supplements so far, the price of the turmeric pellets seemed more than reasonable.

I will keep Kurt on the turmeric pellets for the rest of his life, assuming they are available.

Check hay, feed for high iron levels when treating laminitis in horses

Posted on: March 26, 2017

Post reviewed Nov. 26, 2022

Many owners of laminitic horses test their hay to ensure the sugar levels are low.

I found out in winter 2016 that the mineral levels in the hay and feed are equally important, and I hadn’t been looking at those.

Let me say up front that I am not a person who pushes myself to do math. But horse owners need to do just that, since feed and hay providers generally don’t provide the detailed information we need to feed our horses properly.

Both my horses looked awful in December. They were sweating profusely, and their hair was far too long and thick, even for Connemara horses and ponies in winter. Kurt looked as if he would pass out at any minute. The temperature dipped to zero a couple of times, and both horses were still sweating. I’ve never seen that in 20 years of dealing with laminitis. They fit the classic description of horses with Cushing’s disease. And, of course, this affected their feet. I kept the horses upright, but their feet looked as bad as their hair.

The one interesting factor in that development was they didn’t look like that 30 days earlier.

Robin colicked for three days Nov. 7 to 9, 2016. It was not an impaction colic; he was eating, drinking, and eliminating waste normally. But the colic (discomfort when eating) came with a very high fever of 105.4 degrees. My vet came out Nov. 9 to look at him. We reached no conclusions on the cause of the colic. Robin returned to relative normalness in three days after taking banamine orally for those three days.

At any rate, the vet saw both horses Nov. 9, and they were not sweaty furballs ready to pass out.

If I had asked the vet to come back in December, she would have said, “What changed to cause this?”

What changed was a new load of hay delivered Nov. 9 by my regular hay provider (my sixth hay provider over the last 20 years). The horses had been eating a second cutting of hay prior to that, and they hated it. The hay provider switched back to the first cutting of hay Nov. 9.

Nothing else changed.

In late December, I bought a different source of hay from the local feed store and fed the same amount. The horses immediately stopped sweating and shrank in size by February. I won’t say they lost weight, because no Connemara loses weight in that short period of time. I think inflammation was reduced. But the horses appeared smaller, and Kurt’s hair started falling out in chunks in January and February.

I tested the hay from the hay provider (through Equi-Analytical, the equine division of Dairy One), and the sugar and starch levels were very low. I selected a test (“Equi-Tech” option on the form) that included the mineral levels. The iron level was 52 milligrams per pound of hay (mg/lb), or 114 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg). That doesn’t sound like a lot until one does a little math.

The National Research Council, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, provides a list of “Nutrient Requirements of Horses” along with a calculator.

The NRC recommends 400 mg of iron per day for a 500 kg (1,100 pound) adult horse on maintenance feed (click the “Other Nutrients” link at the top of the calculator). A kilogram is 2.2 pounds.

The Alberta Agriculture and Forestry Service says the NRC recommendations are the minimum levels one should provide.

The toxic threshold for iron in horses is generally listed as 500 mg/kg (Juliet Getty Ph.D., Eleanor Blazer).

Unfortunately, that’s a ratio of iron to feed. It’s not a maximum total.

I generally give the horses as much hay as they want, based on equine nutritionist Juliet Getty’s theory that horses will eat less and be much happier if they have hay in front of them all day. When they start trashing the hay, I give less.

If my horses were given an estimated eight flakes of hay a day (3.75 pounds each), the horses were given 30 pounds of hay a day and 1,560 mg of iron. It’s hard to tell what they eat when you put out a lot of hay and let them pick through it all day.

Next, I tested the Enrich Plus, a balancing feed marketed as a “low sugar, low starch formula.” One might conclude that the product is good for insulin-resistant laminitic horses. I know I did. Testing Enrich Plus cost me $54 using the “Trainer” option at Equi-Analytical, so please download the Enrich Plus results and pass them around. That’s a fair amount of money for something that should be printed on the bag, in my opinion.

The sugar level in Enrich Plus is low. But the iron level is 1,200 mg/kg, or 544 mg per pound, and each horse was getting about a pound a day.

With hay and feed, the horses’ daily iron intake totaled 2,104 mg of iron.

Since I don’t have a maximum tolerable iron total, I have to use a little logic. The horses are getting more than five times the daily recommended level of iron in their feed and hay alone. If I were eating five times the recommended amount of salt in my diet, my physician would lock me up. I’m going to conclude the horses’ iron level from two parts of their diet was unhealthy.

Getty, the nutritionist, says, “Studies have shown a direct correlation between iron intake and insulin levels in the blood, making it an important factor in managing the diet for these horses.”

What about the grass?

I didn’t have much grass to test during the winter (and testing grass requires shipping it in dry ice) so I tested the soil.

Tests on my two upper fields, where the horses hang out the most, showed the soil is very acidic, at a pH level of 4.4 (despite me adding a little lime last spring to try to get it closer to 6 or 7) and has an iron level of 797 mg/kg (mg/kg is the same as ppm). The level was marked as excessive by the testers. That level would convert to about 398 mg of iron per pound of grass.

Getty says, “Forages grown from acidic soils will be higher in iron.”

Note that I’ve been working hard since January 2016 filtering the excess iron out of the water, assuming that was the issue. All the while, the horses have been drowning in iron.

The iron level in the horses’ current hay is 31 mg per pound, and the horses don’t want as much hay now. At six flakes a day (2.1 pounds per flake), the horses are offered 403 mg of iron from the hay. They’re probably not eating that much.

I switched them to Triple Crown 30 as a forage balancer. Thank you to Triple Crown for listing the iron level on the bag and saving me another $54 in testing fees. This product has 750 mg/kg, or 341 mg per pound, of iron, and the horses are getting half a cup three times a day for a total of about 10 ounces a day and 213 mg of iron per day. It’s not zero, but better.

Filtering water stops laminitis in horses; water tests indicated iron level was safe

Posted on: May 22, 2016

Post reviewed Nov. 27, 2022

Nearly two decades of laminitis at this farm may have finally come to an end.

Filtering the well water with RV filters appears to have stopped the laminitis in the two surviving geldings.

The boys are staying pasture sound on 8 acres of spring grass in May 2016 following the removal of iron and other elements from their water starting Jan. 4, 2016. They have hay in their shed, but they mostly eat the grass around the clock.

I suspected the water was the cause of the laminitis after my 8-year-old dog, Whinny, died Aug. 6, 2005, of complete liver failure. The common denominator between the horses and dog was water. I didn’t put together until spring 2016 that some of the horses and the dog had similar abscesses on their legs from time to time, indicating their immune systems were being compromised. I had stumbled over a photo of Whinny’s leg and couldn’t believe I missed that similar symptom.

Two days after Whinny died, I did a water test through a university extension office, and the water showed an iron level of .017 parts per million.

Several water experts say the EPA’s maximum recommended level for iron is 0.3 ppm. Note that the Water Research Center says this standard is based on taste, odor, color, corrosivity, foaming and staining properties, not health considerations.

The extension office water test said the iron level was well below the EPA recommendation.

Water test August 2005

Water test August 2005.

After a well repairman suggested in May 2015 that our well had an iron problem (without me bringing up the topic), I did another water test in September 2015 using a cheap water testing kit from a home improvement store. It showed the water levels were perfect for several heavy metals, including iron.

Water test in September 2015.

I am not even hinting that these tests didn’t work properly. I am suggesting that using a water testing kit to rule out a water source as the cause of laminitis may not work. There seems to be a disconnect between what is being tested and what is affecting the horses.

The following video shows a month-old RV filter on our outdoor well spigot. The filter is designed to last three months. On our well, each filter gets clogged and starts spitting out trapped iron within days.

Without the filter, the water was always clear.

I’ve written in previous posts that I played with filtering the outdoor water in 2015, but there were periods when I removed a clogged filter and didn’t have a new one to replace it right away. And the indoor water wasn’t filtered; the horses drank a fair amount of water from buckets filled indoors.

Also in 2015, I added curcumin and ginkgo, supplements that chelate (remove) heavy metals, to the horses’ diets intermittently.

Starting Jan. 4, 2016, all water was filtered.

Within two weeks, the horses looked as if someone popped them with a pin. They shrank and looked like different horses.

And they were suddenly able to consume a lot more forage. On Jan. 14, 2016, we bought 100 bales of brome that the horses really liked. I gave the horses as much hay as they wanted. By Feb. 20, the bales were gone. These two Connemaras ate 100 bales of hay in five weeks and got no exercise other than walking around, and they lost weight. I have no other explanation than perhaps removing the iron improved their metabolism. Through years of laminitis, they gained weight just looking at hay.

Both horses lost their winter coats in March 2016 as a normal horse would do. The two previous winters, Kurt’s hair looked as if it would never come out; I figured he was developing Cushing’s disease.

Iron overload likely caused my horses’ laminitis

Posted on: July 12, 2015

Toxicology test on horses' iron level

Toxicology test on horses’ iron level.

Hematology test on horses' iron level

Hematology test on horses’ iron level.

Post reviewed Nov. 27, 2022

In “Clue” like fashion, I’m declaring the cause of my six horses’ laminitis over the last 18 years as an excess intake of iron from weeds, trace mineral blocks and well water, leading to insulin resistance and the insulin form of laminitis.

The insulin resistance and laminitis were exacerbated by me following veterinary guidance to restrict the horses’ hay, keep the horses on dry lots and prevent the horses from eating so-called “lush grass.” I now believe these moves were the exact opposite of what was needed to get the horses’ metabolism functioning properly.

In the game of “Clue,” I’d get immediate confirmation of whether my assertion is correct. Unfortunately, with the laminitis, I will receive no such feedback.

But a cascade of events led me to this conclusion.

In October 2014, I needed to have my leaking well fixed (the water pressure was down considerably, and a pond had formed to the west).

But I also wanted to have my horses’ iron levels tested at Kansas State University’s lab. I suspected iron as the cause of the horses’ laminitis for a decade but had no proof.

A previous iron test done through the local zoo did not provide useful results.

Several experts recommended KSU for these tests (I’m not making such a recommendation at the moment). I was hoping to do a three-test panel of serum iron, TIBC and ferritin (a hematology test) and a serum trace mineral panel (a toxicology test). I admit I didn’t know what I was doing. I wanted some data.

There wasn’t enough money to do the tests and fix the well.

The iron tests for my two living horses totaled $400, including my vet’s fees. I chose to do the tests and hope for the best with the well.

My vet didn’t provide this iron test as a regular service but agreed to draw the blood if I did the mailing.

I sent the package in a vet-provided cooled envelope by overnight shipping on a Thursday. KSU said shipping on Thursday was fine as long as the package arrived Friday morning. I don’t know what happened to the package after it got under way. I don’t know when it arrived or was tested, and all may have gone as planned.

I received results from KSU that suggested my horses had toxic levels of iron (see images at top).

A university vet who provided comments on the tests said the toxic level “could be indicative of artifactual hemolysis” within the submitted sample. In other words, the blood got too warm or tainted in transit.

I talked to a lab person by phone, and the blood was indeed considered compromised.

I personally believed the results were correct as far as the horses having too much iron but couldn’t be sure, and I couldn’t do the tests again due to the cost.

I had my own iron level tested through a company I found online, Lab Corp, for considerably less money, and my iron level was normal, making me think the iron theory had come up short.

My sister told me my iron results did not seem normal, given that all the women in my family were anemic. She said I likely was anemic, too, and was being affected by the iron in the water.

Meanwhile, also in 2014, veterinarian Frank Reilly, a leading advocate for laminitic horses, posted on his website the iron levels of common pasture weeds (scroll down to the tab titled “Equine Insulin Resistance High Iron“). The iron levels are really high. Excess iron can fuel insulin resistance. His site provides plenty of research on that, too.

I knew my horses had been eating more weeds than anything else in recent years because I had intentionally ignored the grass, thinking that less grass was better. The grass went away, and the horses ate the weeds.

I was suspicious of the well water having too much iron, since the water turns everything rust colored and has eaten through the bottom of all my aluminum tanks. But I still didn’t have proof there. A water test in 2005 showed nothing suspicious.

I did find out that the horses’ trace mineral blocks were 25 percent iron, and I threw those away in 2012.

In November 2014, I emailed Dr. Reilly, asking how one might reduce the iron level in horses through supplements. He spent his Thanksgiving holiday investigating this idea. He emailed back that curcumin and ginkgo could reduce the iron level, and he provided suggested amounts and where to buy it. Purebulk.com sells the curcumin (250 grams, $70 at the time — it’s gone up). Reilly suggested feeding 1/2 tablespoon a day. Starwest Botanicals sells ginkgo leaf cut and sifted (1 pound bag). Reilly suggested feeding 1 tablespoon in the morning and 1 tablespoon in the evening.

After giving the horses the two supplements for a few weeks, I stopped because my gelding Kurt was breaking out in drenching sweats as we entered yet another frigid winter. We eventually figured out the sweats were caused by thyroid powder (no longer given).

Also, a friend had sent me a camping filter for the well head to filter out iron, but I don’t use the well head during the winter due to the hose always being frozen. I carry buckets of hot water outside. So I didn’t put on the filter.

All these things nagged at me, but polar vortex winters tend to keep one busy.

I considered putting the horses back on the curcumin and ginkgo, but I wanted to do the iron tests again to see if the previous tests were correct. Does one want to chelate iron from a horse that doesn’t have excess iron?

There was no money to repeat the tests, and the situation with the well was becoming more of an emergency.

Everything came together in May 2015, when I finally had the well fixed, and a well company employee blurted out, “You must have an iron problem” when telling me how deep the well was. The casing is 350 feet deep (very deep) and collects iron all along the shaft, which gets transferred to the water as the water sloshes through, according to the well guy, an industry veteran.

The irony is not lost on me that fixing the well gave me more information than the iron tests.

Climate change may be causing laminitis

Posted on: July 12, 2015

This paddock changed from sand to grass over 18 years before erupting in weeds in 2015.

Post reviewed Nov. 27, 2022

Climate change is having at least two effects on vegetation that may be increasing the incidence of laminitis in horses.

First, weeds are proliferating due to increased carbon dioxide, rain and heat in the atmosphere, according to scientists at Purdue University and France’s Climate-Environment-Society consortium in Europe.

The global concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — the primary driver of recent climate change — has reached 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in recorded history, according to NASA data.

One carbon dioxide expert (Dr. Charles Miller) says these CO2 values are more than 100 ppm higher than at any time in the last one million years (and maybe higher than any time in the last 25 million years).

Second, the increased acid in the atmosphere from coal plant and auto emissions is leading to higher acid in rainwater, which is changing the makeup of soil, depleting nutrients such as magnesium, and giving an even bigger advantage to weeds over native grasses.

Weeds have more nitrogen in their makeup in general, and nitrogen has been implicated in laminitis.

Perhaps more important, weeds hold a lot more iron, and excess iron is known to increase insulin resistance.

Dr. Frank Reilly, an equine veterinarian in Pennsylvania and leading advocate for laminitic horses, tested common pasture weeds for their iron level and posted the results on his website (scroll down to the tab titled “Equine Insulin Resistance High Iron“) in 2014 along with photos of the weeds. He said horses will seek out chickweed, and its super high iron content causes a huge surge in insulin levels.

He lists several scientific articles that discuss how iron drives insulin resistance.

In my state of Missouri, the soil is largely red clay, and the red color in the soil is due primarily to iron oxides, according to the USDA.

The weeds in my state have access to more iron to begin with, so acidic soil and weed proliferation are a recipe for disaster for a horse here.

Add to that the well-meaning but misguided addition of iron to everything horses eat.

My horses’ trace mineral blocks, which they had access to from 1997 to 2012, were 25 percent iron, according to the manufacturer’s website. I threw them away in 2012 and wish I had never heard of mineral blocks.

Applying weed killer to pasture for horse with laminitis

Posted on: July 12, 2015

One of the horse pastures covered with weeds on May 31, 2015.

The same pasture on July 12, 2015, a month after application of weed killer.

I can answer the question: Can you use weed killer on grass grazed by laminitic horses?

Yes.

Over three weeks in June 2015, I sprayed my whole farm using GrazonNext, which was recommended by my local feed store.

I have 8 fenced acres, plus 2 unfenced acres.

I sprayed the weed killer manually, walking around with a 2 gallon sprayer.

The feed store suggested I give the weed killer two hours of dry time before the next rainstorm hit. Given the fact that we had the wettest June ever, timing that out for each field was the hard part.

The cost for the weed killer and sprayer was less than $200, according to my memory, since the receipt has disappeared from my desk. Horse owners probably can find these products cheaper online, but I wanted the help of the feed store.

I wish I did this years ago, but I kept getting instructions from veterinarians that my horses should NOT eat grass. The last thing I thought I needed was good grass.

I’ve done a complete 180 on that. After I read equine nutritionist Juliet Getty’s post on how insulin resistant horses should be grazing all the time to turn around the disease, my goal is to ensure that the horses have great grass that they want to eat.

Research has shown horses on dry lots with weeds develop laminitis, though scientists often blame the weeds’ nonstructural carbohydrate level.

Veterinarian Frank Reilly warns that the high iron level in weeds can lead to insulin resistance.

My horses lived for years on dry lots with only weeds for nibbling, and the laminitic bouts happened over and over.

I won’t use fertilizer to improve the fields. Too many horse owners have reported their horses foundering right after pastures were fertilized. Perhaps the nitrogen in the fertilizer triggers the laminitis.

But I was willing to apply weed killer.

My farm in May 2015 was covered in weeds despite me mowing constantly. I was in panic mode when I went to the feed store for help on May 31.

GrazonNext is designed for pastures, and animals can go right back on the fields after the fields are sprayed, according to the maker.

I can’t swear 100 percent that it’s safe for horses to eat because my horses wouldn’t touch the vegetation after I sprayed it until after a few rainstorms.

I can say that we had no issues, other than some grumpy horse faces during the spraying process.

The feed store figured out how much I should use: 4 ounces per 2 gallon sprayer. A 2 gallon sprayer was supposed to cover 5,000 square feet (an area 50 feet by 100 feet).

I was fairly careful in measuring out the 4 ounces as I refilled the sprayer each time.

I didn’t measure off the feet I was spraying.

Within hours of spraying, the dandelions and other weeds keeled over.

GrazonNext won’t kill crabgrass, which is very high in iron. Some of my fields have patches of crabgrass, so we have some work left to do, but I’m really pleased with the fields, as are the horses.

I let the weed killer stay on the weeds about a week before I mowed (another recommendation by the feed store).

In fact, the best advice the feed store manager gave me was, “Quit mowing and start spraying.”

After the weeds died, it was much easier to mow the fields.

Some spots were left bare because only weeds had been growing in those areas. But we had a lot of rain in June and July, and those areas came back with grass, a big surprise to me. If the rain hadn’t been so well timed, the bare spots would have remained, I suspect.

I did a lot of research on this weed killer, because I wanted to spray it on the unfenced areas where deer and rabbits graze in the evening. The product appears to be safe for those animals, too. The deer and rabbits look unfazed.

I did notice one thing in my research that may matter to people who use manure to fertilize a garden. This weed killer has a residual effect. If a horse ingests plants with the weed killer on them, the pesticide will be in the manure and will still be active. If the manure is used on a garden, it will kill vegetables in the garden. Someone reviewing the product online said she found that out the hard way.

The feed store manager said I likely won’t have to apply the weed killer every year.

Some weeds have popped back up already, but they look dead on arrival. They don’t bloom. They just shrivel up.

I also have been applying lime to the fields. I almost believe liming is more important than applying weed killer because the lime lowers the acid in the soil, which slows the development of weeds. Weeds thrive in acidic soil.

The horses are eating the limed grass more than the other grass.

Feed more hay to laminitic horse, equine nutritionist says

Posted on: June 14, 2015

Restricting Kurt's food intake has not reduced his girth.

Restricting Kurt’s food intake has not reduced his girth. Quite the opposite. During the first half of 2015, Kurt was given a flake of hay during the morning and evening and another overnight. He did have access to pastures, but there was no grass from January to March and the flies drove him into the shed from April to June (despite him being fly sprayed).

Guilt drives a lot of my laminitis research. I’m always looking to clear my conscience. Did I cause my horses’ laminitis? Or did something else do so?

Since 1998, when my first laminitis case occurred, I’ve routinely paid vets to heap on more guilt. Each farm call has led to the same conclusion: My horses are obese; thus, I must be overfeeding them and causing the insulin resistance and laminitis.

Now, a new article suggests my horses are obese because I’m underfeeding them.

I’m still guilty, just of a different crime.

The article is written by equine nutritionist Juliet Getty, Ph.D., who makes her money consulting so she’s not going to go too far out on a limb unless she’s convinced she’s correct.

The article is titled, “Can the Damaged Insulin Resistant Horse Be Fixed?”

It’s long, and I’m just picking out a few things, but the whole article is worth reading at least twice.

Getty says we’ve created the insulin resistant horse by doing all the wrong things in the name of helping.

She urges owners to give horses free choice, low-carb hay, so horses eat constantly and slowly, as they were intended to eat. As in, horses should never be without hay.

To those, including me, who blurt out, “That’s going to cost a lot of money,” she says it will save money in the end because the horse will eat less. My horses poop on their leftover hay so I have issues there, but she would probably say I need to work on how I feed my horses.

She also suggests turning horses out on pasture (preferably after testing the sugar level in the grass, which I personally think is a waste of time since the sugar level in pasture rises and falls all day long).

Getty says, “Horses who graze on pasture 24/7 will eat far less grass than those who are only allowed to graze on pasture for a few hours each day, with hay provided the rest of the time.”

She includes caveats such as it might be good to ease a horse into having hay full time by using a couple of slow feeders that are always kept full.

She suggests not stalling a horse, which may be out of the question for a lot of horse owners, but Getty feels that’s a big factor for horse health.

Getty doesn’t address calories. I would argue that today’s hay seems to have an excessive amount of calories (about 2,000 calories per flake), but I’m guessing she feels a horse will stop eating when it has enough calories.

She concludes that the only way to fix an insulin resistant horse is to help it return to its natural state. She emphasizes that continuing down the same path of restricting food will get the same results: more insulin resistance.

I would add that it is possible to get a horse to lose weight by limiting its food and exercising it like crazy. But the result is temporary. The horse is not healthy, and adding a little more hay will make that horse balloon up.

Other factors that Getty mentions are addressing inflammation and lowering iron intake.

I worry that a horse with insulin resistance from excess iron may not improve if it is given free-choice hay and it continues to shovel in the hay. The horse may get worse.

My takeaway from the article is it needs to be embraced in its entirety. Helping an insulin resistant laminitic horse requires addressing all the possible issues that are causing the insulin resistance, not just forage intake.

Getty’s suggestions are revolutionary. She’s going against the advice of perhaps all leading laminitis researchers and vets.

Some of the top speakers at laminitis conferences have visited my farm (as friends of my former vet) and advised:

— Kill the grass on the pastures completely;
— Dry lot the horses on the existing paddocks and rent out the pastures to thoroughbreds (my horses would have loved that);
— Break up the 2-acre pastures into tiny pastures to limit access and improve the grass;
— Move.

Over the years, I found that restricting the horses’ food and dry lotting them made them fatter. And miserable. And the laminitis continued.

I refused to listen to laminitis researchers who were anti-grazing.

Horses closely related to my own were on bigger and much lusher pastures within a few miles of my farm, and those horses were thin and healthy. It convinced me that the grass itself was not the problem.

I wanted my horses walking constantly, covering a lot of ground, taking in a steady stream of forage and keeping busy.

In 2007, I fenced my two ungrazed lower fields (an additional 4 acres to the overgrazed 4 acres already fenced) and turned my remaining horses loose. I felt even more guilty, if possible, but at least my horses didn’t hate me. In the end, there was no uptick in laminitic cases. If anything, the bouts dropped.

I haven’t seen a groundswell of criticism of Getty’s article. But it is a study in contrasts with advice from other experts.

Kathryn Watts, retired plant scientist, creator of the safergrass.org website and a onetime hugely popular speaker, used to have a PDF on her consulting page that started out:

“If you insist on keeping an obese, non-exercised, laminitic horse on pasture at least 12 hours per day all year long … I cannot help you or your horse. My pasture management advice will include limiting grass intake, increasing exercise and completely eliminating access to pasture during periods when environmental conditions make it impossible to control grass sugar content by cultural practices. If you cannot or will not limit intake, it will be a waste of your money and my time to give you a complete pasture management program.”

Thehorse.com posted an article June 8, 2015, on feeding the laminitic horse that offers tips from Jennifer A. Wrigley, CVT, of New Bolton Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The school founded the now shuttered international laminitis conference in 2001.

Wrigley’s tips include restricting hay for the laminitic horse and perhaps dry lotting the horse.

Those of us who dieted heavily in our teens and 20s will attest to the counterproductive effect of restricting food intake. It makes one want food more. I never looked at the science behind why dieting made me crazy, but the craziness was undeniable. Getty has provided the science.

Laminitic horses already go through hell.

After reading Getty’s article, I realize we have been keeping our horses in that hell perpetually.

No guilt there.

Another horse owner questions role of iron in laminitis

Posted on: November 28, 2012

A drinking glass with a three-month buildup of iron from the well water

This drinking glass shows a three-month buildup of iron from the well water. CLR removes the iron, and the glass looks clear for a few days before the process starts over again.

I have two reasons to revisit the topic of iron and laminitis.

One is an email I received Nov. 26, 2012, from a woman whose 6-year-old mare has been suffering from laminitis since February 2011. The mare was on supplements for a long time, including expensive laminitis supplements, and she still was chronically lame. A month ago, the owner went against conventional wisdom and turned the mare out on a 100-acre pasture with a stream running through it. The horse is now sound and bucking and playing like a foal. Needless to say, the owner has been pleasantly surprised. She’s investigating if the culprit may have been her well water, since the mare is now drinking exclusively from the stream. The owner describes her well water as I would mine: It turns everything orange and tastes bad.

The owner asked me about testing her mare for iron overload.

I suggested she do what I failed to do: a serum ferritin test.

I had Robin Hood tested for iron overload on Oct. 12, 2012, but I believe I asked for the wrong test. I did a serum iron test, which tested the amount of iron currently in Robin’s blood. A local zoo did the test. Robin’s serum iron level is 2.9, with normal being up to 2.6 and the toxic level being 4.6. These numbers are specific to the zoo’s lab. I can’t compare these numbers to the results of other labs.

At any rate, it would be more productive to know the amount of iron stored in Robin’s organs, and this requires a serum ferritin test, which is on our to-do list.

According to veterinarian and author Eleanor Kellon, the higher the serum ferritin, the more iron is stored in the body tissues. Primary storage sites are the liver and the spleen. Kellon says some horses are so heavily loaded with iron that their livers are found to be black on postmortem examinations.

When I first brought up iron overload as a possible cause of my horses’ problems, one prominent laminitis researcher told me iron was studied as a possible cause of laminitis and failed to produce laminitis in study subjects.

However, the human world is completely on board with iron being linked to diabetes. I’ve been hearing this from journalism friends with good sources, but I’m also seeing it in clinical research, which leads me to the second reason I’m revisiting this topic. I just stumbled over a study published September 10, 2012, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation that leads off with the sentence: “Iron overload is associated with increased diabetes risk.”

The study notes that other recent studies have found a negative correlation between serum ferritin and adiponectin, which is an insulin-sensitizing adipokine (a cell-to-cell signaling protein).

“Negative correlation” always makes my head hurt. Adiponectin would be lower in subjects with high serum ferritin levels.

The study says “the hypothesis that adiponectin links iron and insulin resistance is appealing, as decreased adiponectin levels are associated with obesity and type 2 diabetes and are causally linked with insulin resistance.”

The study suggests that serum ferritin levels could predict the presence or absence of metabolic syndrome in humans and that iron reduction may be a possible treatment for diabetes.

I wonder if the problem with the previous iron research in horses was it tried to overload horses’ iron levels in their bloodstream, whereas the destruction may occur over the long haul through iron buildup in organs. Under this scenario, an iron study would have to go on for a long time, which would be very expensive if it required housing horses for an extensive duration.

My three laminitic mares took two to three years to develop laminitis once living at my farm and drinking my well water.

I walk away from this iron theory from time to time as other things grab my attention, but I always seem to come back. What makes me look elsewhere is the fact that not every foundered horse is on well water.

But a lot of people provide trace mineral blocks for their horses, and many of these blocks are 25 percent iron. And a lot of feed makers are putting iron in the feed, too.

Some horses simply may be more sensitive to iron overload.

And horses that get additional iron in the water may be doomed.

More reports on negative effects of excess iron on horses

Posted on: December 1, 2011

On Nov. 11, 2011, Dr. Mehmet Oz probably made a few enemies in the multivitamin world when he recommended all but women of child-bearing age stop taking multivitamins containing iron because of a recent study that showed excess iron caused problems in the aorta.

In trying to find the study (which I never found), I came across other interesting reports on iron and eventually searched for items related to horses.

An article in “The Horse Journal” written by a veterinarian who isn’t identified by name says chronic excess iron leads to deficiencies in zinc and copper, leading to skin problems, tendon and ligament weaknesses, faulty production of joint cartilage and foot problems including laminitis. Excess iron also can cause anemia by creating a copper deficiency.

In trying to find out how common excess iron is, the vet turned to Uckele Animal Health, which does hair mineral analysis on horses. The vet says Uckele reported that high iron levels are one of the more common abnormalities it finds in horses.

My horses had a hair analysis done in 2004 after Angel foundered, though I remember my vet didn’t put too much stock in it, and I don’t know if it was the same type of test that Uckele does. It was done by a different company, and that company doesn’t appear to be in business now based on a quick online search.

We tested three horses: Angel (foundered in 2004), Goldie (foundered in 2002) and Kurt (white horse, completely normal at the time). What we noticed at the time was that Goldie and Kurt both had really unhealthy levels of arsenic (I have arsenic-treated wood for fencing), but Angel did not. And while I explained the difference in Angel by saying Angel had lived elsewhere for three years on a lease, Angel was the one that had just foundered, prompting the hair analysis, so it was hard to pin laminitis on elevated arsenic levels, especially since Kurt with his elevated arsenic showed no signs of laminitis.

As I review these old hair tests now and look at the iron levels, Kurt’s level was normal, Goldie’s was high at 410 ug/g and Angel’s was excessively low at 46. The normal range was 60 to 400.

Goldie’s copper was too high and her zinc was normal. Kurt’s copper and zinc were both too high. And Angel’s copper and zinc were both normal. Very unhelpful.

Well, at least Goldie’s iron was high and she foundered, and Kurt’s iron was normal and he didn’t founder. Can’t explain Angel.

The vet in the “Horse Journal” article gives a case study of a racehorse that was sound but nonetheless had many health problems, including dry skin and skin infections, tendinitis, desmitis and tying up. And his black hair was rust-colored, looking sun-bleached. When the horse was tested by this vet, the blood iron and ferretin levels were massively elevated. The horse eventually improved with supplementation of high doses of vitamin E, selenium, manganese, zinc and copper. And the vet notes that this problem will be with this horse for life; he will need the correct supplementation.

I have had nothing but skin problems with my horses during all the laminitis. Completely unexplained open wounds all over, especially in Goldie and Angel, and, while people have tried to convince me for years that it was sweet itch, I never really bought it. Also, Angel’s black hair was almost always rust-colored while here; she didn’t get enough sun the last couple years to explain how bad her hair looked. This is an interesting revelation.

A study on iron overload and insulin resistance as it might relate to laminitic horses

Posted on: October 26, 2011

Since I wrote about iron and insulin resistance in horses two days ago, I stumbled over a paper by Dr. Eleanor Kellon that appears to have been created in 2006. The title is “Iron status of hyperinsulinemic/insulin resistant horses.”

Kellon conducted a study to determine if insulin resistant horses and ponies also show iron overload in their blood.

Insulin resistant horses and ponies were divided into two groups: those that received a balanced mineral diet and those that ate whatever minerals crossed their path. Another group of adult horses and ponies free of obvious disease served as controls.

There was a significant elevation in body iron in the insulin resistant horses on uncontrolled mineral intakes.

Kellon says: “Risk factors for equine insulin resistance have not been completed identified but likely represent an interaction between genetic predisposition, underlying disease states and the environment. Since genetic factors are beyond our control and drug therapy for PPID (Cushing’s) does not necessarily lead to resolution of IR, identifying external factors has the potential to improve control. The role of iron overload as a risk factor for IR and therapeutic effect of lowering body iron levels has been documented in man.”

And she concludes: “Animals on mineral balanced diets had normal TSI and ferritin levels, and improvement in their insulin resistance, but since other measures were undertaken concurrently (e.g. reduction in NSC of the diet), the effect of the mineral balancing per se could not be determined. More extensive prospective and intention to treat studies are necessary to clarify the role iron might play in equine IR.”