Could you skip lunch every day?
by Eleanor - October 20th, 2008.Filed under: equine ulcers.
Probably not, and you are not even designed to be a grazing all day with a continuous output of gastric juices (i.e. acid). Yet somehow we expect horses to do just fine on two big meals a day separated by 10 hours or more. Back in 2005, the Journal of Animal Science published a study about Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome (EGUS), and here is an important excerpt:
“Horses grazing at pasture have a decreased prevalence of EGUS. During grazing, there is a continuous flow of saliva and ingesta that buffers stomach acid, with stomach pH >4 for a large portion of the day. Conversely, when feed is withheld from horses, before racing or in managed stables, gastric pH drops rapidly and the nonglandular mucosa is exposed to an acid environment. Intermittent feeding has been shown to cause and to increase the severity of gastric ulcers in horses, and an alternating feed deprivation model was developed to produce EGUS experimentally (Murray and Schusser, 1993; Murray, 1994; Feige et al., 2002). The nonglandular mucosa is the most susceptible to ulceration in horses subjected to intermittent feeding due to its lack of mucosal protective factors. Studies have shown that stomach pH drops 6 h after feeding (Nadeau et al., 2000) and DM content decreases 12 h after feeding a mixed-feed diet compared with horses fed a hay diet (Coenen, 1990). Thus, horses should be fed hay continuously or every 5 to 6 h to buffer stomach pH.”
J. Anim. Sci. 2005. 83:E18-E21© 2005 American Society of Animal Science
Gastric ulcers in horses1 F. M. Andrews2, B. R. Buchanan, S. B. Elliot, N. A. Clariday and L. H. Edwards
Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville 37996
Direct link to the article
Thus, by noon or so when you are munching down your own lunch, and your horse is standing around in a turnout (or even worse, in his or her stall), your horse’s mucosa is being subjected to an assault of an increasingly lowered ph until dinner time (which isn’t even consistent at most barns – another important consideration for horses). Add to that the daily stresses of training and loss of herd stability and even boredom and you have situations ripe for ulcers. If you truly cannot get your horse a midday meal, he or she really needs to be in some sort of pasture environment with grazing available. Don’t let his empty stomach bathe in acid. And don’t deprive him of his need to chew and to graze and release tension and acid-buffering saliva.