Category: Latest

New Treatment Method Softens Dry Hooves, May Fight Laminitis

Posted on: December 19, 2023

This fall (fall of 2023), I created a successful treatment for softening dry and rock hard hooves, but that may be the least interesting part of the story.

I may have discovered a potential secret to treating laminitic horses.

I now believe fully treating a laminitic foot includes directly treating inflammation in the sole and frog of the hoof — as in, treating the bottom of the foot — in addition to the heat and digital pulse higher in the hoof.

And I have learned that a successful way to treat the bottom of the hoof is making sure the treatment doesn’t get immediately removed by dirt and shavings.

After much experimentation, I wound up concocting a winning cream mixture of regular hand cream, Equate arthritis cream (which is similar to Aspercreme) and Laminil (a mast cell stabilizer; prescription required) to Kurt’s sole and frog.

I held that cream mixture in place with a freezer bag and duct tape for one to four hours, depending on my schedule.

And, bingo. Kurt went from very lame to sound over a few weeks.

Today, Dec. 19, he galloped around his pasture at a pretty fast pace. I have no video. I had a work crew at my house removing a downed tree, and I didn’t want to ask the foreman to stop talking to me so I could go video my horse. But I was tempted. The foreman commented that the galloping Kurt was beautiful. A 28-year-old Connemara pony that everyone wrote off as ready to be put down got called beautiful today when he raced around his pasture. Big victory for us.

My initial search to treat dry hooves

I’ve been searching the internet for “best treatment for dry horse hooves” since 2017 (six years now).

I have never found a satisfactory answer.

Every fall, Kurt, a chronically laminitic pony since 2010, has suffered from his feet getting too dry, often after I’ve cleared up a frog infection in August.

He goes back and forth between feet too wet and too dry.

I would celebrate solving one problem only to face the other. A frog infection is easier to treat than a dry foot, at least in Kurt.

This hasn’t seemed to be a laminitic episode. He hasn’t had heat or a pulse. I’m guessing that low-grade laminitis is percolating all the time, but the main issue is his feet get too try and don’t have any flexibility. The hooves are rock hard, like walking on a Dutch clog.

I have applied a ton of cream to his feet over the years, including on the sole and frog. It has seemed to make him worse. And that makes sense in hindsight. Nothing is going to make shavings stick to his feet like cream, so I was just encouraging dust to collect on his feet and dry them out.

My first successful experiment in moisturizing Kurt’s feet this year was Sept. 23 when I gave Kurt’s feet a quick soak in plain warm water, then applied cream and covered each foot with a freezer bag secured loosely around his ankle with a piece of duct tape about 18 inches long.

After an hour, Kurt was noticeably better (see video for before and after clips).

But he was less sound the next day. The treatment was a short-term fix.

I redid the treatment every afternoon, he walked around well at night, then he stood in his shavings the next day, and he was back to sore by afternoon.

While I recognized that my timing was wrong — I should have been applying the treatment in the morning, moisturizing his feet during the day while he was in the shavings — I really just wanted to come up with a solution that was more long-lasting.

I started trying to improve the formula, and I dropped soaking his feet when I did, because Kurt and I both hate soaking his feet.

I first added in Equate arthritis cream to the hand cream, targeting pain and potentially inflammation. It’s really cheap ($3.30ish at Walmart). I used maybe a fourth of the tube on two feet.

I saw another big improvement. And the effects lasted a little longer. We were able to skip a day here and there from treatment.

But when I finally started adding in Laminil cream, that was a game changer. Kurt’s walk started getting some bounce and confidence.

I am selling nothing. I say this in every post, but I’ll do it again here. I get nothing for writing anything in this post, and most of these items are probably already in your home.

If you want to see if arthritis cream for a sore foot, or hand cream for a dry foot, is all you need to make your horse’s feet less ouchy, try it and see what happens.

You will be out less than a dollar in ingredients.

Also, I want to point out this works to soften a hoof for a trim. I trim Kurt’s feet, and boy has this helped.

I couldn’t do anything with his rock hard soles all summer. A hoof knife was useless. I could sand them with a belt sander, but even that took work.

Another plus is this is first time since maybe July that Kurt hasn’t been getting sore after I trim him.

I’m pretty excited to have solved this issue for Kurt. He doesn’t mind the freezer bags. He doesn’t seem to notice.

One note: Don’t use comfort boots for this. Wet feet and comfort boots wind up creating ulcers on the horse’s heels. Some soaking boots will work, and we did that for a few days, but I don’t want Kurt destroying his soaking boots walking around. The bags hold up well unless Kurt trots.

Analyzing what we do in general to horses’ feet

Wetness: I see websites that suggest dry feet can be moistened by soaking a horse’s feet for 15 to 30 minutes per day. Does taking a shower every day make a human’s skin more moist? No. It dries out the skin. Same for a horses’ feet unless you add moisturizer afterward and make sure it stays there. Farriers often complain about horses going from wet paddocks to shavings and back again all day, saying that it is a bad combination for creating overly dry hooves.

Shavings: Most horses, especially mine, stand in shavings a lot. Kurt tends to stand in his shavings from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., though he walks out in his pasture for chunks of time. After 7 p.m., he goes out to graze overnight and stays out most of the night with the exception of a nap around 4 a.m. in his shavings. He picks that schedule. I don’t make him do anything. The shavings are doing what they are supposed to do. It’s just a bit of overkill having a horse stand in moisture-drawing shavings so much.

Dry weather: When it rains now in the Midwest, where we are, it really rains. The rest of the time, it’s really dry. We had a particularly dry year in 2023 (creating a hay shortage in addition to dry hooves). Continuing weather challenges mean my treatment for Kurt’s dry hooves has to be sustainable. I am willing and able to apply cream and bags. It’s not something I dread every day. And Kurt doesn’t run off when I show up with my stuff, even though I don’t halter him and he can run off now.

How long must one keep this up?

I intend to keep applying the cream and bags at least a few times a week until Kurt stops improving.

If I could be so lucky as to have him one more summer, I’d love the chance to test this again in the summer of 2024 during the worst heat and dry weather.

I’ve been so amazed already. I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to keep him sound.

If this catches on, remember where you heard it first. There are a lot of vets who think I’m crazy. No, I’m just determined. I’d like to take something away from 25-plus years of fighting laminitis 24/7 in six horses. If it’s credit for a freezer bag potion, so be it.

Mastitis treatment clears up frog infections in horse foot

Posted on: November 18, 2022

August 2022 was the third August in a row in which Kurt, 26, developed an infection in the frogs of all four of his feet.

This time, I applied a drug for cow mastitis to his frogs, and that seemed to fix the issue.

I thought this summary of our experience might help someone else.

There were no physical changes in Kurt’s frog during the summer. No wet area. No deep crack. No smell.

In mid-August, he started moving less and put his feet down toe heel. Watch the video to see that toe-heel placement (it’s the third clip in the series of clips).

Standing still, Kurt looked fine. Grazing, he could lean over his front toes and look as normal as any horse. I’ve never seen a horse having an active bout of laminitis lean over its toes.

This wasn’t a new bout of laminitis, though it likely was the result of compromised hoof walls from Kurt having chronic laminitis since at least 2010.

A study by Susan Kempson and Elaine Campbell at the veterinary school at the University of Edinburgh found that horn considered to be of poor quality had a weaker permeability barrier than horn of good quality.

Thus, laminitic hooves that no longer have good horn would not be moisture proof, as typical hooves are. This would allow bacteria and fungus to reach sensitive tissue.

I thought I could prevent the frog infections this year by spraying Kurt’s frogs every day with a Listerine type product. His frogs looked fabulous all summer. They were not too hard or too soft. I could use a hoof knife on them; in the past, they have been too hard to trim with a hoof knife.

I was so confident in my plan that I wasn’t watching for any walking issues that would indicate a frog infection.

But Kurt has one other “tell” when it comes to the frog infections: He bites his heel bulbs. The worse the infections get, the more he bites his heel bulbs. This year, the biting reappeared in August and got worse as September arrived.

He’s been biting his heel bulbs occasionally going back to at least 2014. So I’m wondering how long he’s been getting these infections, and I haven’t known it because they’ve been masked by numbness from laminitis.

Since Laminil has knocked out the inflammation in his feet the past few years, Kurt is really feeling these infections now.

I put together the video to show Kurt’s response to treatment. The video starts with him sound, miraculously, in May 2022 despite April and May traditionally being bad months for him. That victory, I believe, is due to him being treated throughout the spring with Laminil IM, a therapy that stops inflammation.

The video shows Kurt still sound in late July.

Then, the video shows how Kurt’s walking went south with the frog issues and was at its worst in late September 2022 and early October.

I was panicking by that point.

Internet searches suggested that thrush is the most common infection in the frog and back of the hoof.

But thrush involves moisture, and the frog often smells.

August 2022 here was very dry after one big rain at the start of the month.

Kurt spent his daytime hours during August in his shed in deep shavings in front of several fans and an air cooler. If anything, I was worried his feet were too dry. He walked around his pastures at night. He was free to walk around during the day, but the flies made him want to stay in.

When the frog pain occurred a year earlier, in August 2021, I soaked Kurt’s feet every day. It took several tries to find the right soaking agent, but we succeeded in getting rid of the infections with a Listerine-type product, which is why I kept using it to spray his feet over the winter and through the summer.

This August, soaking did not help at all. I kept trying for five weeks. I first used the same Listerine-type product and, when that didn’t work, I tried (one at a time) Clorox, apple cider vinegar, and various other things.

He got worse.

Things looked pretty hopeless the last weekend of September, and he was starting to lie down a lot. I stumbled over a YouTube video by a farrier who said he used a mastitis product of penicillin mixed in sunflower oil to cure a bad frog infection.

Using Go-Dry on Kurt’s feet

I ordered a box of 12 tubes of a product called Go-Dry and tried it starting on Oct. 1.

Kurt was definitely better within 24 hours, continued to improve day by day, and was close to sound in a month. His right front took longer to heel than the other frogs.

There are other products with the same formula. I have no affiliation with Go-Dry, and I’m not promoting it over other options.

Go-Dry comes in a dewormer-like tube, though smaller, and I found one tube applied generously did two feet, so I used two tubes per day to do all four feet. One box of 12 tubes lasted six days.

Removing the cap was a bit of a puzzle. It came off if the whole tip was pushed to the side.

I applied Go-Dry in the central sulcus of each of Kurt’s frogs and collateral grooves next to his frogs, then spread it all over the heel area across both bulbs, along the hairline, and into the dimple area, rubbing it in for about 30 seconds.

I had no guidelines here. I was just winging it.

Apparently, Go-Dry’s usefulness in hoof issues is common knowledge to others. When I asked if the local feed store had any after I started using it, one employee there, a jumper rider, looked surprised at first because he knows I have no cows, then said, “Oh, for your horse’s hooves.”

Am I sure it was the Go-Dry that made my horse better? He improved the day after starting treatment and just kept improving.

The weather didn’t change. His diet didn’t change. His bedding didn’t change.

In 2020, I interpreted the toe/heel walking as his feet being too dry and tried moisturizing them for weeks. He got worse.

So I believe the sunflower oil was not what fixed the problem in 2022. I think it was the penicillin.

How do we proceed from here? I am not sure.

I don’t want the penicillin to become ineffective for these infections. I’m using Go-Dry on his feet twice a week right now. That will need to end.

Will he stay sound? Hope so.

How do we prevent the frog infections next year? Definitely looking for that answer.

Laminitic horse avoids winter laminitis during polar vortex with Laminil IM and Laminil Cream

Posted on: February 25, 2021

Post reviewed Nov. 26, 2022

I would not intentionally torture my longtime laminitic horse with two weeks of subfreezing temperatures, including three consecutive days with highs ranging from 4 to 10 degrees, a stretch that ended with a big snowstorm and an overnight low of -4 degrees.

In the past, a single night near zero has been enough to make Kurt’s feet uncomfortable immediately, with lasting effects for weeks.

But this is what Mother Nature gave us in February 2021, and it allowed us to see how well Laminil kept Kurt’s compromised immune system in check, preventing it from overreacting to the weather, which likely would have caused an inflammatory attack on his feet.

The cold temperatures started in the St. Louis area on Feb. 6 and stayed well below freezing until Feb. 19.

My biggest concern was that Kurt, 25, would fall apart after the temperatures warmed, something I had seen previously with a winter laminitis case in 2004. In that case, the horse withstood the weather stress of two consecutive ice storms but then fell apart as the weather warmed with the worst case of laminitis my farm has seen.

I was determined to use the new tools I had to prevent that from happening to Kurt.

As the cold snap started, Kurt’s Laminil IM shots were increased to once every three days, and he started getting Laminil Cream on his feet at night as the overnight temperatures dropped to zero. He returned to IM shots every five days a few days after the polar vortex weather ended.

Through the freezing weather, he got free choice hay, as always, and ate more than normal. He looks fatter now (his hair is puffier), but his weight tape says he’s the same weight.

His shed was bedded with shavings twice as deep as normal to try to keep his feet warm.

He doesn’t like to wear boots, so I didn’t put them on, but they were ready to go if he seemed sore. I really didn’t want to mess with boots in the snow. They tend to turn into snow-filled icicles.

Kurt’s Cushing’s like heavy coat likely kept his body warm. Horses on a farm down the street were double-blanketed.

I would say Kurt was bored, because the snow took away his reason to walk around and nibble at what’s left of the grass. Otherwise, he did fine.

Kurt walking on Feb. 23, about a week after the worst of the polar vortex of February 2021.

I have thanked Willowcroft Pharm for what I termed a “medical miracle,” because there is no logical reason that Kurt came through the polar vortex of 2021 unscathed — based on his long history of doing poorly in zero-degree weather — other than Laminil protected him.

This old pony has been through so much in his 25 years. He does not need one more thing to knock him down.

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.

Can a chronically laminitic horse recover? Yes, with systemic laminitis treatment, Laminil IM

Posted on: January 24, 2021

Kurt lunges himself on Dec. 20, 2020

Kurt trotting on the lunge line on Feb. 3, 2021

Post reviewed on Nov. 26, 2022

A practical and effective treatment for laminitis now exists, according to my longtime laminitic horse Kurt, who turned 25 in 2021 and is dancing around like a 2-year-old.

The treatment is Laminil IM, an intramuscular injection of Laminil, a mast cell stabilizer designed to prevent the release of inflammatory mediators that can lead to a range of problems.

The idea is to treat the horse systemically and stop laminitis from the inside out.

Don’t wince at the thought of giving injections into the muscle.

I was that person for years, unnecessarily.

In July, I gave Laminil IM a try, because I knew it made sense on paper.

Kurt has completely changed over the past six months.

He can walk, trot and canter (see the videos at the top of this post).

He’s off painkillers.

And I hadn’t realized how much he seemed to have brain fog over the past 11 years until it went away.

He’s very alert and interested in life again. At 25!

In fact, he’s been a bit too high. My attempts to lead him around often turn into me scolding him to behave like a trained horse.

He is trained. But he hasn’t been ridden or asked to do anything since 2002.

And he wants to play.

As for Kurt’s brother, Robin Hood, the bay gelding discussed on this site for years, I lost him in August 2018 at age 22 due to a very large splenic mass. That was a very sad time for us.

Thankfully, Kurt is fine with living alone.

Many people thought I should put down Kurt when Robin Hood died, given the damage to Kurt’s feet and body.

I’ve run this next photo before, but Kurt was a refined pony in 2001. His body condition in later life reveals how much his immune system has been damaged.

I never thought he could feel this good again.

Laminil IM requires seconds of effort on my part every few days, not hours and hours of drudgery that my six laminitis horses endured over two decades with almost no results.

I believe that the trigger that created laminitis in my horses remains on my farm, and Laminil IM is overcoming it in Kurt.

And for the first time since 1998, when all the laminitis started at my farm, I can answer the question: Can a chronically laminitic horse recover?

Yes.

Why no posts since 2018?

Three years have passed since I have posted anything on my horses.
Some people have emailed me and asked why.

I’m never going to write about a treatment working or not working without letting months pass to see what happens.

In my last post in January 2018, I wrote about being sure that Laminil Cream was working in treating my horses’ laminitic hooves.

The improvement was obvious. The heat disappeared, and the pounding pulses went away or were reduced to barely detectable.

But, as time went on, I was faced with the fact that the rest of the horses’ body remained compromised.

I was tamping down laminitis bouts in the hoof but not fixing the cause.

I was never going to win the war against laminitis that way, but I would say that Laminil Cream is an excellent adjunct therapy as part of a more comprehensive approach. And I’ve heard from others that it’s fabulous for weak hooves of non-laminitic horses; farriers have been amazed at the improvement in those hooves.

Comprehensive approach

Willowcroft Pharm CEO Dr. John Kelly, PhD, has been working on coming up with a more comprehensive approach to laminitis.

Since Laminil Cream was launched in 2017, Dr. Kelly has listened to all of the feedback from horse owners as they used the cream, as well as vets that have used Laminil Perfusion, and he has studied a seemingly impossible amount of research on mast cells at the same time.

Much of that research has been on mast cells’ role in a range of human diseases, because use of mast cell stabilizers in human disease is an exploding field.

I am not qualified to explain how it all ties together. He will do that one day.

But, he used all this knowledge to come up with a better way to give Laminil to the horse.

For me, a self-described average horse owner, Laminil IM is practical and effective.

And it works!

This video is of Kurt walking on Jan. 23.

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.

Is laminitis linked to rising temperatures?

Posted on: March 26, 2017

Robin and Kurt graze May 1, 2016. The heat and humidity of 2016 nearly killed these two laminitis horses.

Robin and Kurt graze May 1, 2016. The heat and humidity of 2016 nearly killed these two laminitic horses.

Post reviewed Nov. 26, 2022

There are many theories as to what is driving the insulin-resistant form of laminitis to record highs. The answer may be rising temperatures.

Researchers from The Netherlands published a study in March 2017 linking human diabetes to increased outdoor temperatures.

The researchers concluded that a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature could account for more than 100,000 new diabetes cases in humans per year in the U.S. alone. The study appeared in the open access journal BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care.

Laminitis is on the rise throughout the world, according to many sources. Equine veterinarians repeatedly have chosen laminitis as their biggest challenge on surveys. And an annual U.K. equine survey estimated in 2016 that laminitis ranked second in equine illnesses in the country, behind lameness in general, and accounted for 6.8 percent of illness.

The insulin form of laminitis far outpaces other forms of the disease.

The Netherlands study authors took note of recent data showing that patients with type 2 diabetes who were exposed to moderate cold for only 10 days improved insulin sensitivity. They attributed this improvement to cold exposure activating brown adipose tissue, which combusts large amount of lipids to generate heat.

The researchers described their study as the first to assess the association of outdoor temperature with diabetes incidence and the prevalence of raised fasting blood glucose on a national and global level. They used 14-year longitudinal state-level data from the U.S. and showed the overall diabetes incidence rate is higher in warmer years. For each 1 degree Celsius increase in temperature, they found an overall increase in diabetes incidence of 0.314 per 1,000.

NASA reported Jan. 18 that the Earth’s 2016 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern recordkeeping began in 1880. Globally averaged temperatures in 2016 were 1.78 degrees Fahrenheit (0.99 degrees Celsius) warmer than the mid-20th century mean. This makes 2016 the third year in a row to set a new record for global average surface temperatures, NASA said.

At the end of the summer of 2016, an unbearably hot summer that took a big toll on my two laminitic horses, I looked at what the future holds for my location near St. Louis, Missouri, according to two groups of scientists.

By 2030 (not so far away), St. Louis will have 46 days with a heat index above 105 degrees, a sharp increase from the total of 12 days in 2000, according to Climate Central. That’s a month and a half of dangerous weather. By 2050, the number will jump to 63.

Florida, Texas and Arizona are looking at even bigger increases. McAllen, Texas, will have 179 days (more than half a year) at that level by 2050, the group says.

By 2100, St. Louis’ average summer high will be 96.69 degrees, up from the current average of 86.85 degrees, a terrifying jump.

Climate Central looked at summer temperatures since 1970 and based its projections on current greenhouse gas emissions trends continuing.

The Union of Concerned Scientists looked at weather changes in St. Louis from 1946 to 2011.

Among its findings: On very hot, humid nights, the temperature rose 2.1 degrees and the dew point increased .6 degrees.

On hot, dry nights, the temperature increased 4.4 degrees and the dew point increased 7.7 degrees. Not sure why those would be still be called “dry” nights.

As for humans and diabetes, currently, more than 34 million Americans have diabetes, and one in four doesn’t know it, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. Another 88 million Americans have pre-diabetes.