b'YOUR GUIDE TO THE 2017 AAEP CONVENTION SPONSORED BYstarting horses with more severe lesionsHorses have a natural grazing pattern (Grade 3 and 4) on the same dose, plusin which they eat for many hours a day. sucralfate or misoprostol, and if theresTheir natural diet is made up predomi-no improvement after four to six weeks,nantly of highly fibrous forages. However, change your treatment strategy. many performance horses are housed in In closing, Banse acknowledged thatstalls and consume high-starch concen-EGGD is difficult to treat and can taketrate feeds to meet their increased caloric upwards of six to eight weeks to resolve.demands. These feeding and manage-Before discontinuing treatment have yourment practices are in part to blame for veterinarian perform gastroscopy. And ifthe increased incidence of gastric ulcers the condition doesnt improve, change orand colic seen in this population. add treatments. The research team randomly assigned 31 2-year-old Quarter Horses to be fed Feeding Frequency Affects Gastrictheir daily grain (4.6 pounds of Purina Ulceration in Exercised Young Horses Ultium) twice a daya feed schedule that We know exercise intensity and dura- replicates that of many U.S. performance tion are key contributors to gastric ulcerhorses(15 horses) or in 20 equal feed-COURTESY DR. LUKE BASSrisk. Long periods between meals alsoings using an iFEED automated feeder Horses fed grain 20 times a day using an increase a horses chance of develop- automated feeder had lower ulcer scores than(16 horses). They programmed the frac-ing ulcers. So what happens when youhorses fed twice a day. tionated meals to be fed every hour for switch to a much more frequent feeding20 hours, followed by a four-hour break. schedule? the effects of two feeding strategies onAll horses also received 2% of their body Luke Bass, DVM, MS, Dipl. ABVP,exercising horses gastric ulceration, bodyweight per day as grass hay. The research-and his team at CSU aimed to determineweight, and body condition.ers weighed and body-condition-scored A46 TheHorse.com/AAEP2017 AAEP Wrap-Up THE HORSEMarch 2018'