Evolution of Peebs' Poop Problem

Back when I bought Peebs I was told that he had occasional soft poop and watery discharge down his butt and hind legs. I've had a couple different vets look at him, and tried various supplements, feed, probiotics, and what not. It would kinda get better, then kinda worse and was basically a constant thing.  I learned to deal with it and so did Peebs.  He wasn't colicky, kept weight on great, and was otherwise completely fine.

We're gonna need a bigger bucket

Over the summer I had the chiropractor, TS, out to work on him a couple of times.  She's a vet, and had also offered advise on our poop problem.  She has a client in the Bay Area whose horse had the same problem and they did a full work up at Davis.  They switched the horse to a completely pelleted diet, no hay, no grazing. And that worked.  The plan for that horse was to leave him on the hay pellets for a while (not sure how long) and slowly try adding hay back in to see if he could handle it.

The second time I had TS out this summer Peebs was having a bad poop week and had actually lost some hair on his butt and hind legs.  TS read me the riot act and told me to either try the pellets or take him in to the vet school for a work up. Since taking him in for a work up sounds expensive I started him on the hay pellets.  I slowly switched him off the beet pulp he was getting to the pellets, then started adding more pellets and less hay.

Approximately 6lbs of soaked timothy pellets in a standard water bucket

We got up to 6lbs of soaked pellets and one flake of grass hay twice a day, and our poop problem stopped. It was amazing.  His butt and hind legs looked normal for probably the first time in the year and half I've owned him.  It made me sad thinking of how long I let this go on before doing something about it.  Since he was doing ok on half pellets/half hay, I left it at that and never fully put him on straight pellets.

Thank god he's an easy keeper

So Peebs is currently on the 6lbs of pellets and a flake of hay twice a day.  Once a day he gets his Horse Guard vitamin/mineral mix and Omega Horseshine. No other grain, no grass, just some cookies or carrots. The theory is that for whatever reason, his GI tract can't handle too much long stem fiber, but is ok with short stem, aka pellets. We did have a relapse a couple of weeks ago and I was pretty upset until I found out a barn mate was trying to be nice and feeding him a flake (or two) of hay at lunch when she fed her mare.  I felt like a bitch when I had to tell her not to do that, that he can't have any extra food. Knock on wood this keeps working and we can officially end our poop problem!

The curious case of the open hay bales

Not much to report on the pony front.  It's been a killer week at work, big project, coworkers leaving early/not helping/me doing 90% of the work. I haven't had the energy to ride much, just a couple of quick bareback rides. 

My barn owners are on vacation, and have been since right after Christmas.  I was doing morning feeding last week, doing stalls, working the arenas, some night feedings, and will be doing mornings again next week.  I don't really mind the extra work (and really like working off most of my board); in fact I really like going out first thing and feeding in the morning.  When I was feeding last week, I noticed a few bales open in the stacks, in places I wouldn't open a bale.  I always climb up and push down from the top, not open in the middle of the stack.  Didn't think much of it at the time.

One of the other boarders, L, has been doing most of the pm feedings and did the am feedings this week. Tonight she noticed two open bales in the middle of a full stack, with flakes missing.  No one who knows anything about stacking hay would open a bale there.  L and I talked, and couldn't think of anyone in our barn who would do that. We feed mostly high quality timothy.  We have a few horses that get alfalfa and some get just a plain grass mix.

The two open bales with missing flakes.  That's about half way up the stack.

There's a barn next door that not nearly as nice as ours, that does mostly self care.  They have a high turn over rate of boarders.  We think that one of their boarders might be stealing our hay.  I called our barn owners, and they are going to talk to the owners of the other barn.  The wife is home all day and can easily watch the hay barn as it's directly across from their house. I'm also going to park Rick's truck as close to the hay barn doors as I can so no one can access it.  You can still access it from inside the barn, but it would a lot less convenient for someone to steal from.  Hopefully this stops our hay thief.