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This is giving ME a stomach ache

1K views 5 replies 4 participants last post by  justsambam08 
#1 ·
So it was Ice's first day of having all senior and rice bran only. He was obviously okay during the day, there were like 4 piles of pretty solid poop in his stall, but tonight when I turned him out he acted weird. Usually I turn him out, he might go and roll, and then he'll go to his spot at the fence and start cribbing. Well tonight he rolled, was doing a lot of grunting, but got up fine. And then he just stood there for like 10 minutes. I went to go bring another horse out, and when I came back he was laying flat out. I watched him for three minutes and he stayed like that, so I decided to see if he would get up when I approached him. He did sit up, but I walked right up to him and he was still laying there. While I was standing there he decided to pass gas, which made me feel a little better.

Normally I would be happy that he trusts me enough to let him walk up to him when he's laying down, but I had just switched feeds. I had to go and corral a pony out of his turn out, and he did get up and follow me to the gate. He didn't object to me pressing on his belly, and I did hear ONE little gurgle, so I let him go back to whatever he was doing and went to go grab another horse. He did start cribbing right as I was getting in my car, so that made me feel better that he was at least doing something normal.

I went to check his stall and it looked like he didn't eat any of his rice bran, so he only had senior, and there was only like a handful of his hay left.

-sigh- Thank you for reading my worry rant. Cookies for all.
 
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#2 ·
Was it a sudden change in feed? Or was this just the first day you finally eliminated the other feed? He still gets his five flakes of alfalfa mix hay, right?

Dang horses, worrying us so much :?. Here's hoping he's back to his grouchy antisocial self in no time :D.
 
#3 ·
Yep, still 5 flakes, and it was the first day that we eliminated the safe choice. He actually looked pretty funny, he poked his head out of the stall while he was eating, and it looked like he'd been snorting the rice bran. He also did let me open his stall door/put one foot in his stall to put on his halter today. But in his defense, I was super nice to him and brought him a new bottle of fly spray so I'm sure tomorrow it won't happen again.
 
#5 ·
How are you preparing his food? Are you using pelleted rice bran or powdered?
We feed the powdered rice bran and I have found it works best if I wet the feed just enough to make the rice bran stick to the pellets (we feed strategy). Give it a good stir and our girls gobble it up. Neither of them is fond of extremely wet or mushy food, so I just use enough water to get things to bind together and feed it before it sets and gets mushed.
 
#6 ·
I'm using the powdery rice bran, since thats all they had at the feed store. If its pellets, he pretty much eats whatevers in front of him.

Thanks for the advice! He ate it on.....Tuesday? when we first started giving it to him, and I'll check tonight to see if he ate it, or if he's being picky (it will be a first) and then try wetting everything down a little bit to see if that helps.

I also put it at the bottom of his bucket versus on top when I was making barn breakfast, so if he wanted to get to the senior he'd have to eat the rice bran.
 
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