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I will add some molasses or crushed up star mints to make it more inviting. I will give the mash within 12 hours of the arrival of the front, so if the front is due to arrive on Tuesday morning I will feed the mash on Monday evening; If it is due to arrive on Tuesday evening, I will feed the mash on Tuesday morning.

If you have children at the barn, you will probably have no shortage of volunteers to mix up the mash somehow it is something that children love to do.

Ulcers:

If your horse has ulcers, medication is the primary solution. Do not mess around with ulcers; they are dangerous and can cause your horse a very painful death.

If your horse colics and you can't figure out why, the chances are that he has ulcers. The only way to be sure is to have the scoped. The vet will come and put a tube into the gut with a camera and take a look to see if any ulcers are present.

The vet may see some old scarring or some inflamed spots that have not yet ulcerated. For conditions such as these as well as for perfectly healthy guts, there is a product called Ulcergard from Merial limited. Ulcergard is a preventative medication and can be used on healthy guts to keep them healthy. If your horse actually has ulcers, however, Merial also make a product called Gastrogard I'm pretty sure that you can buy Ulcergard over the counter but Gastrogard will require a prescription form your vet.

I'm not here to sell you either of these products and there are other products on the market, but these 2 are the best I have found and are the industry standard. One thing I would point out is that Gastrogard is basically Ulcergard at 4 times the strength; you use a tube per day of Ulcergard and 1 tube per day of Gastrogard. There is no difference in price between the products so if you want to do this without a prescription, then this is the way to go. However, DO NOT MESS WITH YOUR HORSE"S DIGESTIVE SYTEM WITHOUT THE GUIDANCE OF A VET! Make sure your horse has ulcers before administering the high dose of the medication. Assuming the presence of ulcers and treating ulcers that don't exist can be fatal!

Stand by for the next and last article in this series How to diagnose and treat colic.

Learn more about this author, Heather J Powell.
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