Toxic Plants & Horses

Since it's spring/early summer in most areas, I thought I'd do a post about some toxic plants to horses. I've had one up close and personal with one toxic plant: buttercups. Luckily there are only a few dotting our pasture, but Jetta of course decided to sample them. Most of the time, horses won't eat them because they aren't very palatable, unless of course you have an overgrazed pasture or an idiot horse who is bored and curious.



Mouth ulcers can result from eating toxic plants - this is what
Jetta's sores looked like.

 None of these photos are mine, but show you what to look for and the symptoms of ingestion.



Buttercup - part of the Ranunculus genus.

 Buttercup ingestion causes irritation of the mouth, colic-like symptoms and diarrhea. The one that I experienced is irritation of mouth - Jetta had lesions on either side of her mouth.



Bracken Fern - very common in the NW. Toxic even if it is dried and baled into hay.

Symptoms of bracken fern poisoning may include: loss of coordination, depressed heart rate, arrhythmia, weight loss and eventual death if not promptly treated.



Milkweed - I think most people know that
milkweed is poisonous, but if not, take note!

Signs of milkweed poisoning are: disorientation, loss of muscular control, spasming, rapid and weak pulse and respiratory paralysis. Ingestion is rarely fatal, but still needs immediate veterinarian attention.



Pigweed

Pigweed ingestion can cause kidney failure, as well as respiratory distress, weakness, lack of coordination and coma.



Red Maple is another common toxic plant.

Red Maple's fresh leaves are considered ok. But the fallen and wilted leaves can be toxic. Just three pounds of fallen leaves can be lethal. Also look for these leaves in your hay as they are still toxic when dried. Other symptoms are depression, dark brown urine, rapid pulse, increased respiration and coma .



Azaleas are toxic to all animals - including your dogs!

 Symptoms of azalea poisoning include: excessive salivation, usually green and frothy, muscular weakness, slow heartrate, vision problems, colic and gastrointestinal problems. If left untreated, poisoning by this plant can cause death within a few days.



Cherry (all varieties) and peach, are toxic because they produce cyanide.

Consumption of the leaves from these plants can result in death within minutes if enough are consumed. Other symptoms include: troubled/labored breathing, flared nostrils, loss of control of urination and defecation, lack of coordination, trembling and agitation. Basically, cyanide prevents the absorption of oxygen into the blood stream to horses basically suffocates. The leaves are the most toxic when the plant is stressed or wilted.



Black Walnut

Black walnut isn't actually toxic when ingested. It's toxic when the horse's feet comes into contact with it, such as in shavings, and it causes laminitis. Only 10% of black walnut in your shavings can bring on laminitis and even the nuts falling in the pasture can make the ground toxic.

Oleander is very toxic

Horses don't have to consume very much of Oleander to cause symptoms and any part of the plant is toxic. Luckily this plant is very unpalatable, but it is commonly consumed by horses when accidently included in grass clippings. Symptoms of ingestion include: death within 12-24 hours, labored breathing, profuse sweating, abdominal pain or colic-like symptoms, diarrhea (may or may not be bloody), abnormal heartbeat (either too fast, too slow, or erratic), poor circulation, tremors or shaking and muscle pain and twitching.

These are just a few of the plants that can be toxic to horses, just doing a quick google search will turn up a whole bunch more!
Source: Understanding Horse Nutrition - Poisonous Plants

The best treatment is prevention. We mow our pasture to keep the weeds down. Know where your hay comes from and check for toxic plants in the hay. Make sure that there are no toxic trees in or bordering the pasture. If you suspect that a horse has eaten enough of a plant to cause major physical problems or enough to be fatal, don't hesitate to contact your vet for advice and/or treatment!

Hind Gut Acidosis?

So I was grooming Jetta the other day and looking at her hooves trying to decide if it's time to have the trimmer out. Her hooves are still working on getting better, even though it's been almost two years since I got her and she started getting trims. Looking at her hind feet I noticed that one had a bull nose to it and just the other day I read a post at the Barefoot Horse Blog about bull nosed hooves. Interested I pulled up the blog post again and read it thoroughly. Lucy Priory, the blogger, linked bull nosed hooves to poor trimming and poor diet. I'm pretty sure that my wonderful trimmer is not causing the problem (I hope) and we've been having issues with the diet. Lucy at the Barefoot Blog referenced a previous post about hind gut acidosis and the symptoms fit Jetta almost perfectly. Mild colic symptoms, rancid smelling droppings, and low energy plus the hoof thing. Her dropping aren't really loose, but they do smell pretty bad. I've never stabled a horse before that got a lot of grain and almost no pasture access - Jazz was the only horse I've boarded before and she just got a handful of oats plus vitamins and hay with a couple hours of turnout a day - so with Jetta I assumed that it was pretty normal, no one mentioned anything. She's also been pretty grumpy, which I'm pretty sure is mostly an attitude thing (she's in raging heat right now), but maybe this might have something to do with it. I was thinking about ulcers and just treating her for them and seeing if it helped, but I think for now we'll try treating the hind gut acidosis.

Subtle bull nose hoof, which looks amazingly similar
to Jetta's right hind hoof.
Photo from the Barefoot Horse Blog.

We'll see if changing to a low starch/sugar feed helps. I hope it does! This past week or so I've just noticed that Jetta seems kind of low energy. She's still being obnoxious and goofy and still has her sassy attitude so I wasn't really sure what was going on, but hind gut acidosis would make sense. My poor baby. Her vitamins already have probiotics in them so that should be helping. Maybe I'll get a tube of probios and give her that as well, especially cause it's time for worming again.

To read more about this, go here and here.

Feeding

Jetta's looking pretty thin, so I've decided to add some alfalfa and Cool Calories to her diet. Last year she kept her weight pretty well on Triple Crown Complete, alfalfa and orchard grass. Triple Crown was a 10% fat, 11% protein, oat and beet pulp feed that had all the vitamins Jetta required.

This year she's getting Allegra Cadence and just plain grass hay along with a vitamin supplement. The Cadence had 7% fat and 17% protein. I think she's missing a lot of the nutrients from the orchard grass so I hope that alfalfa will help add some weight. I'd rather not increase her grain because that could increase her risk of colicking and I feel better feeding less grain and more of a forage. We'll just have to see how hyper her alfalfa makes her. I've had some great results with Cool Calories in the past. It was one of the things that helped put weight on Grady - we tried rice bran and beet pulp to no avail. It's basically a fat supplement (99% fat) and it doesn't result in a lot of extra energy. So we'll have to see. I could go back to the Triple Crown, which I like, but the Allegra is included in the board fee.
The BO recommended beet pulp and rice bran as being more "economical" so I guess she doesn't mind soaking beet pulp, lol. It never worked for me in the past with Grady, but I don't know if it might help Jetta. I would rather pay a little extra for the alfafa and have that work, than load Jetta up with beet pulp and rice bran but save money (but if I give her a ton of it, will it still end up being cheaper than a bale of alfalfa?).

The benefits of beet pulp is that it is low in sugar, high in fiber, and has a lot of calories. On the downside, if you can call it that, is that it doesn't have a ton of energy, only approximately 2.33 Mgcals/kg which compared to vegetable oil at 8.98 Mgcals/kg, is not a lot. But this can be beneficial in that you don't have a super hyper horse. It is very comparable to alfalfa, though it has less protein resulting in less waste. (All excess protein is simply peed out)

Rice bran as a supplement could also work. It is 20% fat and 60% starch. Again, the starch is digested and shows up in the blood stream as glucose thus increasing energy of your (already slightly crazy) Thoroughbred. So I think I prefer the Cool Calories to the Rice Bran, even though it is more expensive - less hyperness, more fat = more weight gain.

What works for your horses?

  

Sources: The Advantages of Rice Bran
             The Myths and Realities of Beet Pulp by Susan Garlinghouse