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| Emmie is so big and pretty |
It’s been 6 weeks since I brought miss Emmie home with me from Warrenton, and she is turning back into a real horse!! Race horses are fed up and trained to be epic beasts on the track. When a horse’s racing career ends, for whatever reason that may be, we let it down and turn it out to just be a horse for a few months. The horse proceeds to lose its race conditioning and strength. What we have to remember is, that horse was a strong athlete. With hard athletic work comes the natural aches and pains. Wouldn’t you be muscle tired and sore after a lengthy foot race? I would. It’s important to take care of our athletes, especially if we want to retrain them for a new career.
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| Dr Jim working on Emmie |
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| Hanging out with acupuncture needles! |
The day after I brought her home, I had my wonderful chiropractic DVM, Dr Jim Yanchunis of Integrated Veterinary Services, come out to evaluate and treat Emmie. “Dr Jim” presses a fat needle cap with two pounds of pressure along the muscle fascia and acupressure points to determine where a horse might be sore. He rates a horse’s pain 1 through 5, and can tell me why the horse might be sore there, and how I can help the horse get better with physical therapy stretches. He can also tell me if a horse has ulcers, and how bad they might be, with a reaction at the various acupressure points for ulcers! Race horses are on a high powered grain diet, which can cause ulcers, and even turning them out on grass won’t eliminate ulcers if they already exist. Emmie was very reactive to Dr Jim’s examination, and she was worried he was going to cause her more pain. With that, he recommends feeding a magnesium supplement to calm her reaction and essentially forget why she was hurting in the first place. Most performance horses become deficient in magnesium with work, and I like to use the MagRestore to replenish their magnesium levels.
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| First visit from Dr Jim |
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| Second visit from Dr Jim |
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| MagRestore |
The first page from March 15 shows red over a large portion of the mare’s body. With consistent stretches, ulcer medication, magnesium supplement, and light lunging over the last several weeks, the proof is in the follow up on April 19! It’s amazing to see the improvement in such a short time! She still has grade 2 hind gut ulcers, so she remains on Ranitidine. I also plan on hitting her gut with the Cavalor Gastro 8 paste, as I have seen incredible results with this regimen.
In the last few years, I had been having trouble getting proper topline muscle and body weight on my show and hunt horses. And as it turns out, my very good, long-time friend Lindsey Williamson, from whom I bought Emmie, is an Equine Specialist for Tribute Equine Nutrition! Based on her suggestion and guidance, I started feeding Tribute to one horse in October 2014. After a few weeks, I began to see a huge difference in her topline, so I started another horse on it, and now my entire barn eats Tribute and I could not be happier with how they look! My “used to be” hard keepers are now FAT!!! I am feeding Emmie a combination of feeds from the Tribute line, because I knew she would thrive on it. She gets fed twice daily with Tribute Kalm Performer and Tribute Essential K. The Kalm Performer is providing the easily digestible fat calories to improve her overall body condition, while the Essential K ration balancer is providing the easily absorbable protein to quickly improve her muscle development. The unique combination of amino acids that make up the available protein in the Tribute feeds makes a whole world of difference! Both feeds are giving her the daily therapeutic dose of the live, encapsulated live yeast “Equi-ferm” that is an active probiotic and prebiotic to help the bacterial population in her hindgut better digest her feed material while healing her hindgut ulcers from the race track. She was eating about 6 lbs. per day, split into a breakfast and dinner meal but now that all the good spring grass is filling her up, she is eating quite a bit less. But I’m not worried! It’s amazing how quickly her topline has developed and her body weight is absolutely recovering. For more information on Tribute Equine Nutrition and its unlimited benefits, please call Lindsey Williamson at (540) 717-6882 or check out their website www.tributehorsefeeds.com.
We have also found huge benefits in feeding Triple Crown Alfa-Lox. It is a dry chopped alfalfa forage supplement designed to support normal digestive health in mature horses. It promotes gastro-intestinal health and acts as a buffer against ulcers. And with all this grain and forage, I insist that all my horses have hay in front of them in the barn. Emmie has had some difficulty eating dry hay, and I noticed she was leaving most of her hay in the feeder at the end of the day. A lot of our horses tend to dunk the hay before they eat it. I’m convinced Emmie has no idea how to do this, because I have caught her choking twice in her stall on just one bite of hay, BEFORE I fed her grain. So now, we feed her one flake of hay at a time soaked down in a clean muck tub on the floor so her neck is completely stretched down. She can scarf down one flake of wet hay in about 15 minutes. She’s not a huge fan of the Alfa-Lox, and I am considering wetting that down too so she can chew it without the risk of choking. It’s a pain in the butt, but worth it for a happy and well fed horse!
I have been regularly lunging, but have only ridden Emmie on 2 separate occasions so far. With her over reaction to everything, I just decided there was truly no point in riding her consistently until her body no longer hurt and her ulcers were at least minimalized, if not entirely gone. Would you be able to remember what you learned in class if you were sitting in an uncomfortable desk with a stomach ache? In fact, you might even get angry that the teacher was making you sit there. This is my theory on retraining my off the track Thoroughbred. I know I won’t get any good work out of her until she can focus and be happy, and if I don’t wait, she may even resent me.
She is very nicely schooled on the ground. She moves away from pressure and is very easy to lunge on a line or in the round pen. I have been very impressed with how balanced she can canter in a 20-30 meter circle. She rocks back on her hocks and lifts at her withers. It’s quite fun to watch her go. I find myself drooling with anticipation more often than not.
So, I am just trying to keep her in a consistent daily program. I truly believe that when she is ready to move on, she will easily blossom into an incredible show horse!!
Watch your back, Michael Jung! Muahahahaha.....
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She is very nicely schooled on the ground. She moves away from pressure and is very easy to lunge on a line or in the round pen. I have been very impressed with how balanced she can canter in a 20-30 meter circle. She rocks back on her hocks and lifts at her withers. It’s quite fun to watch her go. I find myself drooling with anticipation more often than not.
