Using Meadow Lite with Herbs to replace long stem forage after gastric impaction

Toffee is a 20-year-old ex-police horse who now lives at ARU Writtle where she is used as a school horse for both ridden and practical sessions for the students. Toffee had always been a good doer but dropped a lot of weight and started displaying ulcer type symptoms last winter as well as having loose droppings. She was scoped by the vets and was found to have a gastric impaction. The vets suggested removing long stem forage completely and to feed a forage replacer instead due to the gastric impaction and scarring at the pylorus.

Performance Horse Nutritionist Claire Akers works closely with all of the horses at Writtle, regularly monitoring their weight and diets. She advised a combination of Dengie Meadow Lite with Herbs and Alfa-Beet for Toffee to totally replace her hay.

Over the winter, Toffee went out in the field overnight and had 6 forage replacer meals throughout the day whilst she was stabled made up of 2-3 Stubbs scoops of Meadow Lite with Herbs and 1 soaked scoop of Alfa-Beet per meal.

Toffee’s weight is now back to normal, and her loose droppings have also improved. Alfa-Beet has been removed from her ration now that she is back to maintaining her weight easily, but she still has Dengie Meadow Lite with Herbs to replace any long stem forage. Throughout the summer, toffee has been having 2 ½ scoops of Meadow Lite with Herbs 4 times a day alongside restricted grazing.