Okay, I knew Isis’ supplement helped her. The past few weeks have really highlighted just how much she needs it.
For about the past month, Isis has not been eating her supplement. She gets a low-starch pelleted grain and 2 ounces of Grand Meadows Complete, a powdered supplement. She decided that she didn’t like the pellets and she didn’t like the supplement. She quit eating her grain.
Four years ago, we started Isis on Joint Combo Hoof and Coat. It is a pelleted feed supplement with biotin, zinc, MSM, glucosamine, Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids. The week we started her on that supplement, she had horrible rainrot. The poor kid was bald from the tip of her ears to her hocks. I was out of town for a week and had dreaded returning. I knew the rainrot would be worse since I had not been able to treat it for a week. For the first time, she was healing herself instead of the rainrot getting progressively worse.
A few months ago, I changed her supplement to a comparable one that had a higher Omega 3 content. A recent article in Equus or Performance Horseman had outlined the benefits of a higher Omega-3 versus Omega-6 content for horses with laminitis. Unfortunately, this new supplement was a powder instead of a pellet. She ate it for a few months and then decided some time in December or January that she wasn’t going to any more.
In January, she started getting rainrot. At first I didn’t think anything of it, because even when she is on the supplement she would still get mild cases. This time, however, the rainrot continued to worsen. It spread from her legs to her spine and along the drip line on her back and sides (although not under her mane).
Earlier this month I cleaned out several ounces of the supplement out of her bucket. She was off the supplement and the rainrot was back with a vengence. She didn’t care for the grain any more either.
I changed her supplement back to the pelleted Joint Combo and switched her grain from the Triple Crown Low Starch to Triple Crown Complete (also a low carbohydrate grain, although it does contain a little molasses).
Isis is in heaven. She loves this grain. It’s like candy to her after having been on pellets for almost a year.
Tomorrow marks the first week she has been back on the supplement. Guess what? She is finally starting to fight off the rainrot (except she has this nasty stuff on her belly now…)
