Understanding and Managing Scours in Horses
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Scours, or diarrhea, can be a common issue among horses that causes dehydration and discomfort. It isn’t just a messy inconvenience. It’s a red flag that something’s gone awry in the gut, and in adult horses, it often signals hindgut dysfunction, particularly in the caecum and colon where fluid reabsorption normally occurs.
It's important that we monitor the consistency of manures, as it tells us about gut health generally.
Causes of Scours
Bacteria such as Salmonella and Clostridium difficile are common culprits. Keep your feed bins and water troughs clean.
Viruses can also lead to diarrhea. You can't really avoid viruses. You can only support immune function generally by supplying adequate zinc.
Parasites can disrupt the digestive system and cause diarrhea. Mass emergence of worms, or a heavy burden of mature parasites will cause digestive upset. Wormy horses will have a dull coat and often have a ‘grass belly’.
Dietary Changes: Sudden changes in diet, exposure to lush grass, or mouldy hay can irritate the bowel.
Stress: Stress from travel, competition, or changes in environment can accelerate gut transit time. We always encourage owners to offer hay during transport. This can be particularly useful for horses with a history of ulcers.
Antibiotics can upset the balance of good bacteria in the intestines, leading to diarrhea. Read more about that here.
Toxins: Ingestion of toxins can damage the bowel lining and cause diarrhea. If toxin is the cause it is persistent and often accompanied by other symptoms like loss of appetite, elevated pulse, or signs of abdominal pain. See Mycosorb toxin binder here:
Sand: If ingested in sufficient quantity, sand may produce signs of low grade colic and/or intermittent chronic diarrhea. If you suspect sand – mix the manure in a bucket with water and notice any sand settling out. As sand accumulates in the large colon and caecum, you might hear a ‘waves on the beach’ sound in the gut. One solution for preventing sand colic is psyllium husks. When we had our horses in a sandy paddock we gave them a psyllium/bran mash once a week which cleared any sand out.
Food Allergy: Skin wheals or other concurrent signs of an allergic response, like sneezing would support this. Test results are often non-specific. Food trials involving withholding different feeds are easy to carry out and may help identify the offending feed.
Managing Scours in horses:
We call Bio Mos and Yea Sacc "the best gut supplements you've never heard of" because they work.
Horse owners buy this prebiotic and probiotic combo it again and again. It's been our highest repeat business along with Calm Mix for over ten years, and they rave about it in testimonials. Whether it's loose manure, managing horses with a history of ulcers, or malodourous manures which indicates gut imbalances - it seems to be effective at improving gut health generally irrespective of the reasons.
As hoof care professionals, we've given these pre and probiotics to horse owners whose horses persistently have poo spatter on their legs, because we don't like having poo up our arms for the rest of the day! And the next time we go there the horses no longer have loose manures.
Not only do they work, but inclusion is low at only 10g per day, and a 1 kilo bag is 100 days supply, making it incredibly affordable. If you or a friend is using a different gut product, please compare our price per dose.
Comments