I practised tomorrow's test with Jazz today and he seemed to me to do it very well. We won't score well because it has both extended trot and extended canter in it, neither of which we can do. But I will be looking for the scores and comments on all the half passes and the medium trot and canter. I'm looking forward to it, I hope the weather is kind.
No-one else got ridden but SH got exercised - 5 miles on a new canal we were trying out. Very pretty and a well maintained towpath wide enough to walk two abreast on.
Buttie is very round and I don't know what to do with him. With the other three all needing decent amounts of haylage during the day to maintain their weight, he is getting too much. I feel bad about muzzling him 24/7, or locking him up, but I don't know how unhealthy it is to let him get fat even if there are no signs whatsoever that it is affecting his feet. He's a puzzle.
Has anyone heard of using cinnamon for IR/laminitic horses? I read about it on Horse and Hound Online today and apparently it lowers blood sugar levels very significantly. If Ace continues to be a bit footie on stones, I'm thinking of putting him on it as well as all the rest of the stuff he gets. I'm going to test him on the path he hates tomorrow to see how things are going with the charcoal, yeast and prebiotic. He looks well and is muscling up, looking beefier in himself, and he is very happy striding around on the concrete yard with no boots on. One of his front feet is now wider in the heel than the shoe that came off it, by about 5-6 mm. The other isn't, so they aren't quite a pair. That's OK, he can have what he wants, I can see that his legs aren't quite a pair either, one turns more than the other from the knee down, and that's the smaller foot.
Jazz huge central sulcus's are still there in his front feet, but clean and dry, and I fill them with hydrogen peroxide every day to keep out any fungus. I am also putting nappy cream on four hairline thin, but long, quarterline cracks on his back feet. He has always had them but I have decided to see if keeping his hoof more flexible with cream will make them grow out. Chasing them out with a knife and removing ground pressure have done diddly squat, and neither did flushing them with peroxide every day for three months last winter. They are of no real importance but it annoys me to see them on such high performance feet, and they are so very visible because his feet are white!
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I think I bought some kind of supplement with cinnamon in it for IR horses, but Tucker would not eat it. If you just do a Google search for Cinnamon supplements and IR horses, you will find a lot of information and opinions.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to hear how the competition goes. A few points on the extended gaits may not matter too much in the score if everything else is good. But I do like your approach, just looking for improvement on the movements you know you can do.
More recent evidence has come to light that cinnamon doesn't have any impact on insulin response, Dr Kellon and the other experts I keep track of are no longer recommending it. I tried it with Bebe for a while a few years back, can't say it made any difference (she liked it though, and her feed smelled like Christmas).
ReplyDeleteAmandaF
Tetley is prone to thrush, even in this climate, so I just bought a clay based powder with copper salts in it and plan to use it on a regular basis. I use iodine a lot but worry that it adversely affects the frog tissue.
ReplyDeleteI am sure that it's better for all creatures to be slim, except for seals maybe. I wonder if it would work to put the haylage in racks where Buttie can't reach it and let him eat what the other horses knock or drop out? That still might be too much.
Can you see the Tetley movie?
The Tetley movie is superb ML, he looks SO well.
ReplyDeleteAmanda, does that mean that they don't believe it lowers blood sugar after all? The first study seemed pretty conclusive, but maybe I won't waste my money yet....
We got some medium Jean, I'm about to post a pic.
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I use cinnamon in my armoury, my horses eat it ok and it is cheap enough to have a go with. Not sure about research in horses but the research in humans was pretty positive.
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