PSSM : Our miracle diet

So this year with Drift we made it through the Winter/Spring and Autumn/Winter transition without too much trouble. The seasonal changes in the weather and therefore the grass seem to have brought on his two major episodes of azoturia. He has PSSM and the chronic nature of it means his AST and CK levels only have to be slightly elevated for him to be pretty poorly. 

The unpredictability of the weather is a nightmare at the change of seasons; one minute it can be quite warm in the sun, the next a bit of rain and it can feel absolutely freezing! So we’ve managed him really carefully this year, we’ve been monitoring him constantly and he has a rug collection that outdoes my coat collection (and I love coats, I’m always feeezing!)

Keeping him warm is absolutely crucial in preventing and episode occurring and he has to have a long warm up and equally long cool down after a session. 

But mostly what is the magic to keeping him right?!

 

Diet diet diet.

Drifter has a bare minimum diet- we have to keep his sugar and starch intake as low as possible! He doesn’t get carrots and apples or anything with molasses in and we try to be careful with lush grass. Realistically he’d be better off only having grass at night when the sugars are lower but it isn’t viable for us at the moment as the other option would be to stable him daily which I won’t do. He’s a horse and being outside with his herd is his happy place. In future I’m hoping to get a track system in place like Kate’s, so he has the best of both worlds!

LET US OUT!!

Now he has a very specialised hard feed too. I choose to get my supplements from Forage Plus. They are incredibly knowledgable, helpful and the supplement quality is the best we’ve had by far. 

So Drifts diet breaks down like this:

1 scoop simple system Lucie nuts

1 cup micronised linseed 

1 tbs Forage plus Magnesium oxide

1 10g scoop Forage plus Natural Vitamin E oil equivalent to 5000iu.

1 tsp salt 

He also loves a treat of course and for these we rely on Agrobs!

When I was having on going issues with Drift it took a while to figure out what was causing the issue. Once we transitioned his diet, in just seven days he had significantly improved and within six weeks he was back to the old drift who we know and love. We are always tweaking his diet and we’ve found what works for him through trial and error! And you know what, that’s okay. 

Drift has to have a diet of high protein which is provided by the Lucie nuts but in recent reading it has been documented that an amino acid supplement can also significantly help horses suffering with pssm. So we’ll be trialing this over the coming weeks once our order arrives from forage plus, and we’ll keep you all updated!

Flying a whopping 1m25

 

Now he is fit and healthy and he feels fabulous! We try and do our absolute best for him, but I’m sure we have lots of further challenges ahead, but for now we are just enjoying him :) He’s had a couple of months off competing before we have slowly brought him back and he kicked back off a few weeks ago with a lovely double clear at Southview. Now onwards and upwards to get him back out to BS again over the next few weeks.