Horses have been a large part of my life since quite an early age. The first horse my parents bought was so badly affected my two other sisters virtually gave up riding for many years as a result of him constantly bolting and bucking. He obviously didn't suit the riding school he had come from. The only plus was I learnt very quickly to ride very badly behaved horses, but not without many crashes along the way.

 

My family were not well off, so for the first ten years of my riding career I had quite a few horses on free lease to ride. I now believe this is where a lot of these horses end up - free leased or dumped in a paddock somewhere because they are quite often unsalable or people don't feel right selling a horse they know is dangerous or has something wrong with it that they can't fix. The unfortunate ones will be put down through no fault of their own.

 

The second time I read through Jenny Paterson's article Aspects of Pasture and Feeding that can Adversely Affect your Horse I wrote down all the horses names I'd ridden next to the symptoms they had. It was quite a revelation to be able to finally work out after all these years what had been wrong with them:

 

• Creamy: bucked, bolted and couldn't tie up (would constantly pull back),
• Bluey: couldn't move, very lethargic and stiff and didn't want to canter,
• Atlantic: big bloated belly and couldn't keep his top line on,
• Hamish: bucking fits, photosensitivity on the nose and bloated belly,
• Scotty: skipped in the canter (cross fired), very stiff behind, had trouble getting up off the ground in autumn and would collapse in float (travel tetany),
• Sussy: so girth shy she would flip over backwards or drop to the ground with her front end, double time in trot, very nervous and skittish and very touchy around the ears and head,
• Paziful: bucking fits, bolt off in short burst, photosensitivity (sun burn on nose and mud fever on legs), swollen tendon sheath, very swollen gut, extremely herd bound, bad colic attacks, head flicking and wind galls,
• Folly: very skittish, would leap sideways at the slightest thing, extremely nervous, short stepping behind and mild colic after breaking rains (autumn).

 

All of these horses were kept predominantly on grass as their main diet with no vitamin or mineral supplementation. Paz and Folly had quite high Lucerne levels as they were in Queensland where grass hay is difficult to find (but not impossible).

 

After all this I decided that I was going to breed my next riding horse because at the time I was of the belief that all of these problems had stemmed back to previous owners and mistreatment in their past. I had been given excuses by very knowledgeable horse men and women for a large number of problems and they all sounded very convincing at the time. As you would imagine, all of these problems had a huge affect on my riding career and constantly interrupted or stopped my riding for periods of time. I was sure if I bred my own horse this would put a stop to all this, wrong!

 

I bred a stunning Warmblood cross, a filly I named Jezan. Unbeknown to me I was about to go on a ten year journey of clinical issues that can arise from chronic mineral imbalances and myco-toxins. In her first two years Jezan lived in Queensland where she was given some supplementation for oxalate grasses. But from my recent research I have discovered that what horse owners are told to feed for oxalates in one state can be the complete opposite in the adjoining state. They both can't be right. So I now suspect that her mineral imbalances started right back as a growing, young horse.

 

Jezan later moved to Victoria where there are no warnings about oxalate grasses, which I found out the hard way. This is a major oversight in Victoria (most other states don't post any warnings either). Kikuyu, particularly in drought periods is quite a dominant grass in Victorian pastures. Jezan went from getting a very ad hock supplementation for oxalates to no supplementation at all and she was still growing, big mistake!

 

The first signs that things where not right was she developed patella lock out at about eighteen months of age and had this right up to the age of five. She had some behavioural issues earlier on, but they seemed to stop around four to five years of age. At one stage she started to behave like a stallion and was very aggressive. She 'clamped' me between her chest with her jaw which at the time was quite unnerving.

 

I broke her in myself quite late as I was waiting for the patella lock out to stop. Soon after breaking her in I noticed her lovely big trot was no longer there. Determined to not hold her in and to let her move out freely as much as possible in her early training this was quite a blow. Over the years that followed this got gradually worse and worse. She would suck back and was reluctant to move forward. Eventually it was so bad she just refused to strike off into canter and was dragging her back legs so badly that she even scrubbed out the toes on her hind feet.

 

Not knowing it was all connected (I had my suspicions but no proof) she also would have very glazed eyes, would stand with her back legs stretched out behind her (camped out) and developed photosensitivity on one back leg. She was very sensitive around her ears and hated the fly veil being taken off, even the noise of the velcro being undone would upset her.

 

Every summer the hair on her face would all come off and she would get large, flat, round swellings on her cheeks. She also developed white flecks and spots in her coat. I later observed these started to disappear once she was given a highly absorbable organic magnesium with boron plus extra organic calcium supplement. Another symptom I noticed was that she laid down a lot (as do a lot of affected horses).

 

In 2005, Jezan started to have colic attacks soon after I worked her so riding her had to stop, then she started to stack on the weight and developed clinical laminitis. There was no rotation of the pedal bone but she was clearly uncomfortable in her front feet as she would stand rocking from one front foot to the other.

 

I was giving her a herbal vitamin and mineral mix thinking this was giving her all she needed in that area plus a truck load of other herbal product to try and help the colic attacks. I had ten different vets see her in a period of two years and none of them could tell me what was wrong with her. She also had started ovulating all year round and it took me quite a while to work this out as she was also getting some pain from worms. One vet suggested that I put all my horses on a long term wormer which I've since found out can contribute to worm resistance.

 

Jezan also had an enlarged thyroid gland (just back from the throat lash) as a result of the parathyroid constantly overworking to keep the calcium levels in her blood (homeostasis). It was so enlarged that once she was on a highly absorbable organic magnesium with boron plus extra organic calcium supplement, the swelling went down so quickly she was left with three roles of loose skin.

 

 

2006 saw her colic attacks getting worse, plus her hormonal imbalances where very bad. She lactated over the summer and couldn't cope with the heat. She was now walking like an old woman, her head carriage was low and she looked depressed and even though she was on very little hard feed she still did not lose any weight. In 2007, the colic attacks got worse and I nearly lost her on one occasion. She was given as much pain relief as she could have and she pulled through it.

 

I contacted Leanne Wigginton at Healthy Horse, Rockhampton who gave me a list of things such as slippery elm and licorice root that seemed to help but still no cure. I noticed that her colic attacks seemed to be around feed time so I tried her on a tube of Gastrazole for stomach ulcers. She did pick up so I tried two full ulcer treatments but unfortunately this still did not work. She was also scoped and we found two low grade ulcers. The vet suspected there could have been more in the hind gut where he couldn't reach. This was consequently found later to not be the case. I did discover though that if Jezan had a colic attack and I could get some Gastrazole or Omoguard into her within the first half an hour of it starting she would stop colicing.

 

Late in 2007, I discovered that there were myco-toxins in feed and the environment that could make horses very ill, so I started to investigate and trial toxin-binders for horses. I had now thrown in my contract as a graphic designer and was working full time on researching the affects of myco-toxins. It was through this research that I found Jenny Patterson in New Zealand and fortunately for me she was looking for a distributor in Australia.

 

It didn't take long after working with Jenny to realise that Rye Grass, Kikuyu, Rye Grass and Clover hay and Jezan's current diet were causing major problems. We identified that Jezan quite possibly had insulin resistance, she was promptly put on a track system in her paddock with soaked 'horse safe' (brown top) grass hay. I soaked the hay for twelve hours in cold water to get rid of all the sugar and did this for some months. The track system enabled me to control what she ate as well as getting her off the bad grasses.

 

 

Within a few months of her being on the track system, meeting all her nutritional requirements through the ProVide It Plan with the correct vitamins and minerals as well as increasing the toxin-binder, she improved out of site. Six months later she looked like a different horse with not one colic attack during that time. Then disaster struck. I was away for five days in November and thought to make life easier for the person looking after my horses to not bother grazing Jezan on the safe grass I had started her on half an hour night and morning.

 

As I was to later learn that any drastic change to a horse's diet can kill off the good bacteria in their gut. By day four Jezan was in trouble and had a colic attack. She had another colic attack in January but mysteriously recovered instantaneously (five minutes before the vet arrived) after getting up from trying to roll. A final colic attack occurred in April, 2009 that she didn't recover from and had to be put to sleep. A full post mortem, histopathology, haematology and peritoneal fluid test were performed by The University of Melbourne and revealed that she had some inflammatory bowel disease (IBS) and possible Equine Cushing's Syndrome. Previous blood tests had come up with anaemia, but no known cause.

 

In my opinion, I believe the high sugar diet (Rye Grass, lots of green grass, molasses, grains), myco-toxins coupled with the massive mineral imbalance, in particular the lack of absorbable calcium (which is vital for good gut function) all contributed to her eventual demise. Jezan is still sorely missed and once again due to many unexplained symptoms I had to put my riding on hold.

 

You've probably worked out by now that I'm one of those people that seems to find everything out the hard way. I hope by sharing my story that other people with similar problems can avoid the same loss that I have experienced. Others are also sharing their stories on this site in the hope of helping other horses in similar situations. Please feel free to send your story through at any time.

 

I'm currently researching the causes of anaemia and stomach ulcers in horses that should be in the very low risk area of this affecting them (quiet lifestyle, no grain and access to grass 24/7), as well as conducting trials in horses and cattle for stringhalt through mineral imbalances, in particular Tetany. Please visit Gotcha Equine regularly for updates on this research. Results will be posted once I have more evidence and positive results from trials currently being conducted. Also, articles on pasture and soil improvements that are directly beneficial to your horses health and well being will be updated with new and relevant information as it becomes available.

 

Our aim is to inform as many horse owners as possible of this invaluable information in the hope to reduce the waste of perfectly good horses that could be in their prime through simple diet changes that the ProVide It Plan outlines, plus help to reduce the amount of accidents and injuries inflicted on many riders by 'affected' horses.

 

Please take the time to email our website link to other horse owners so they may benefit from this information as well. I never tire of hearing peoples stories, such as 'It was this horse's last chance" or "He was going to be put down or retired but now he's back in full work and about to start competing again."

 

Keep riding and smiling.

 

Ms Lucy Prior.

 

 

 

 

The horse's diet and how it directly affects his health and behaviour has, in recent years, completely taken over my life! Fortunately it has been an exceptionally rewarding journey.

 

All my life I have ridden and owned horses, competing in both English and Western shows. Years ago nobody had any idea how much influence diet has on a horse's temperament. We put 'bad' behaviours down to the horse's nature. We were guilty of using certain adjectives to describe various types of horses: nutty, sensitive, has attitude, arrogant, bolshy, spooky, naughty...the list was endless.

 

Back in 1995 I attended a Parelli Natural Horsemanship Clinic with Ken Faulkner and became inspired by the approach. I arranged quite a few clinics for Ken and made the most out of extra private lessons whenever he was over. Soon I had passed Advanced Level 2 and then Level 3 and became an Instructor.

 

This is how I started on my teaching career but I have since moved on to learn from wonderful horsemen like Ray Hunt, Tom and Bill Dorrance, Buck Brannaman and Dr. Deb Bennett, the latter two having both been out to New Zealand multiple times to help us all to further our horsemanship skills.

 

I soon gained a wonderful clientele throughout New Zealand and would give lessons in various areas about every two months. For many years I was meeting ten to fifteen horses every weekend. Lots of people were regulars and I got to know them and their horses pretty well. Other people brought their horses along to solve various problems they were having at the time.

 

Consequently, I found myself 'at the coal face' of all the health and behaviour issues people were experiencing with their horses. During lessons people would learn good horsemanship skills and a lot of good work went into their horses. Yet in many cases the expected progress was not being made. Sometimes, horses which had been fabulous at the previous lessons, seemed to have undergone a personality change, becoming cranky or touchy or spooky for no apparent reason.

 

Some people brought along horses who were agitated, lathered, mental wrecks and we hadn't even started. Horses who screamed out for their friends who were only five yards away, horses who had spooked violently or bucked or become aggressive to their owner, horses who flinched when touched or couldn't bear to be touched at all, horses whose owners were on a never ending saddle-fitting mission, claustrophobic horses, horses that would be always 'running off', were difficult to bend in any way, who had started head-flicking, become ear-shy and so on. It was frustrating for lots of owners and at times hard to make any real progress.

 

Then there were the horses owned by my good friends and I. Beautiful, talented horses that would end up 'no good' for one reason or another. The more I came to understand horses the more I realised how innocent they were! They are no way 'nutty', 'pigs' or 'mongrels' by nature. All they really want, as Tom Dorrance said, "Is to just get along." How wrong of us to put the blame on them. And it used to constantly cross my mind that whilst a lot of people may not be that good with horses, they are nowhere near bad enough either, to cause the sorts of uncharacteristic behaviours their horses were presenting. There was a lot that just didn't make sense.

 

2004 turned out to be a tough year. I lost my younger sister, Tracey, to breast cancer and not long after, lost my best horse to 'out of the blue' colic. If there was a positive to come out of these sad events it is that they launched me off into the study of nutrients and the part that diet has to play in determining the health and behaviour of our precious horses.

 

Over the last five years my understanding of how grass, sugars, toxins and mineral imbalances affect our horses has come along in leaps and bounds. Being acquainted with a large number of horse owners and equally as many problem horses, I was able to do a lot of 'testing in the field' of various possible solutions and evaluate all the feedback.

 

I conducted my own 'Equine Health and Behaviour Survey', spent hundreds of hours reading and talking to horse people, nutritionists and scientists. It has been a 'one thing leads to another learning curve' and happily, to date, judging by the results, most of the puzzle is solved.

 

I have toured New Zealand several times over the last few years giving evening presentations which lay out this invaluable information so that horse owners can figure out what has been going on with their horses. They can then make the simple changes in management that we recommend which enable them to have calm, healthy horses they can enjoy.

 

Once the Horsemanship New Zealand website was launched, enquiries from Australia increased. One of these calls happened to come shortly before I was due to fly to Melbourne and I had a spare day. Lucy Prior was on a mission to solve the mysterious health issues she had been experiencing with her horses, so we met up.

 

We soon discovered that we were both on exactly the same wavelength. Since Lucy was looking for a new business challenge, it fitted perfectly for her to become the Australian distributor for ProVide It. This has turned out to be an excellent arrangement and we are now working together to help horsey people all over Australia to achieve the same goal: calm, healthy horses.