Post by flintfootfilly on Jul 19, 2013 15:41:17 GMT -1
For anyone else who is trying to find out why their horse/pony is reluctant to work and/or unable/unwilling to maintain a gait (especially trot or canter) for any length of time, I thought it might be helpful to share these two video links of two of my ponies:
Max: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73446118/never%20walk%20alone%20-%20don%27t%20stop%20me%20now%20-%20for%20computer.mp4 (shows two different session - first one is him at his worst; the second session was one of only two days earlier this year when he appeared a little closer to normal, and was definitely more forward going, but he has not had another day like that unfortunately and his muscle enzyme CK remains about 10X as high as it should be
Rock being led from Megz: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73446118/Rock%20walk%20movie%20-%20for%20email.mp4 (I think only part of this has uploaded, but it should give an idea)
Variety of possible signs of muscle disease in various ponies: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73446118/possible%20signs%20of%20muscle%20disease%20-%20for%20email%20V2.mp4
I've also uploaded 3 videos (I think it's the 3 above) to youtube under "Flintfoot dales ponies". They look very very poor quality on there but may at least give people an idea if the Dropbox ones aren't available any time.
As some of you already know, I have 5 ponies currently. All 5 show work intolerance to varying degrees and all show raised muscle enzymes. One other pony who lived with me until she was pts last year also showed work intolerance and raised muscle enzymes.
As this was all too much of a coincidence, and especially as I had accumulated a yardful of ponies unable to do a normal day's work, I have invested a lot of time and effort into getting to the bottom of their problems.
EPSM testing was a starting point, as the signs are pretty much the same. However, one key difference appears to be that my ponies are intolerant of work from the outset, whereas some EPSM horses only show a reluctance to work after about 20 minutes or so (which fits with EPSM horses not being able to switch to burn glycogen once the readily available sugars have been used up in exercise). All ponies were negative on the (cheap and easy) hair DNA test for type 1 EPSM. Max had a muscle biopsy too, which showed no abnormality.
So given that all ponies have been with me most/all of their lives, I decided to look at possible environmental factors.
Selenium deficiency in the diet came up as a distinct possibility.
I would urge anyone who thinks their horse may have EPSM, but whose horse is negative for type 1 EPSM to check out the following:
- carry out a forage analysis on grass/hay/haylage, specifically for minerals including selenium. Some analysis reports describe the levels of each mineral as low, average or high. Note that these labels do not reflect adequacy. NRC (the american equivalent of DEFRA) say that 0.1mg/kg DM of selenium is the minimum recommended amount in forage.
(My forage has only 0.04 to 0.05mg/kg DM selenium and so provides only around 40 to 50% of the minimum recommended amount. This level is widely associated with nutritional muscle disease across a variety of species worldwide).
About 70% of the UK is estimated to be deficient in selenium according to a study carried out around 2003, so it is a distinct possibility for many of us:
I have not found blood testing to be useful for checking the animals' selenium levels - all came back within normal reference, despite having been on a deficient diet for much/all of their lives, so personally I would not stop considering selenium deficiency just because bloods are apparently "normal" in that respect.
Blood tests for muscle enzymes have been very useful, especially creatine kinase (CK). Up until last year, none of my ponies had ever had a "normal" CK level - always been above to varying degrees. Some equine vets in USA use a value of 350 as their "high normal" - anything above that is indicative of a muscle disease. I've found that a useful reference.
I've still not resolved the ponies problems, but there was a significant improvement in muscle enzyme levels (and work tolerance) for several months last year before it lapsed again. The only thing that I can tie that in with is that the improvement happened 4 months after starting on a balancer containing selenium yeast (aka organic selenium) for 2 months. There was no further improvement when I switched to inorganic selenium (sodium selenite) for another 11 months.
We've recently switched back to organic selenium, and will see what happens in a few months. I hope that will be the answer, but will have to wait and see. Certainly there are no other good options to explore.
There was a very marked worsening in CK in one pony after one month on a high fat diet. He was seriously ill with colitis and colicky sypmptoms. I stayed up with him 2 nights waiting for him to die, but he pulled round. In hindsight, I suspect the fat induced muscle problems because of his selenium deficiency. I cannot prove this, but it is well known that oil can induce nutritional myopathy in nonruminant cattle who are already deficient in selenium. So my suggestion would be that anyone considering giving a high fat diet does at least do a forage analysis (and checks the rest of the diet) to be sure their horse is not selenium-deficient before going down that route.
The other thing I'd stress is how important it is to give a good balancer or vit/min powder at the recommended rate to avoid possible selenium deficiency. Some don't include selenium at all. So it's really worth checking what's in the balancer. I'm currently opting for Blue Chip Original which has 0.9mg selenium as yeast in a daily ration, as well as 0.9mg selenium as sodium selenite. This looked to be the one that best matched my needs based on the forage analysis.
Throughout all this my ponies have looked very well, but it's only been the bloods which have given a clue to what might be wrong.
Like I say, I cannot prove this at the moment, but if reading this helps anyone else decide which was to look into their own horse/pony's problems, and if it saves someone else from either exacerbating problems or worse, then that is great.
Sarah
Max: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73446118/never%20walk%20alone%20-%20don%27t%20stop%20me%20now%20-%20for%20computer.mp4 (shows two different session - first one is him at his worst; the second session was one of only two days earlier this year when he appeared a little closer to normal, and was definitely more forward going, but he has not had another day like that unfortunately and his muscle enzyme CK remains about 10X as high as it should be
Rock being led from Megz: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73446118/Rock%20walk%20movie%20-%20for%20email.mp4 (I think only part of this has uploaded, but it should give an idea)
Variety of possible signs of muscle disease in various ponies: dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/73446118/possible%20signs%20of%20muscle%20disease%20-%20for%20email%20V2.mp4
I've also uploaded 3 videos (I think it's the 3 above) to youtube under "Flintfoot dales ponies". They look very very poor quality on there but may at least give people an idea if the Dropbox ones aren't available any time.
As some of you already know, I have 5 ponies currently. All 5 show work intolerance to varying degrees and all show raised muscle enzymes. One other pony who lived with me until she was pts last year also showed work intolerance and raised muscle enzymes.
As this was all too much of a coincidence, and especially as I had accumulated a yardful of ponies unable to do a normal day's work, I have invested a lot of time and effort into getting to the bottom of their problems.
EPSM testing was a starting point, as the signs are pretty much the same. However, one key difference appears to be that my ponies are intolerant of work from the outset, whereas some EPSM horses only show a reluctance to work after about 20 minutes or so (which fits with EPSM horses not being able to switch to burn glycogen once the readily available sugars have been used up in exercise). All ponies were negative on the (cheap and easy) hair DNA test for type 1 EPSM. Max had a muscle biopsy too, which showed no abnormality.
So given that all ponies have been with me most/all of their lives, I decided to look at possible environmental factors.
Selenium deficiency in the diet came up as a distinct possibility.
I would urge anyone who thinks their horse may have EPSM, but whose horse is negative for type 1 EPSM to check out the following:
- carry out a forage analysis on grass/hay/haylage, specifically for minerals including selenium. Some analysis reports describe the levels of each mineral as low, average or high. Note that these labels do not reflect adequacy. NRC (the american equivalent of DEFRA) say that 0.1mg/kg DM of selenium is the minimum recommended amount in forage.
(My forage has only 0.04 to 0.05mg/kg DM selenium and so provides only around 40 to 50% of the minimum recommended amount. This level is widely associated with nutritional muscle disease across a variety of species worldwide).
About 70% of the UK is estimated to be deficient in selenium according to a study carried out around 2003, so it is a distinct possibility for many of us:
I have not found blood testing to be useful for checking the animals' selenium levels - all came back within normal reference, despite having been on a deficient diet for much/all of their lives, so personally I would not stop considering selenium deficiency just because bloods are apparently "normal" in that respect.
Blood tests for muscle enzymes have been very useful, especially creatine kinase (CK). Up until last year, none of my ponies had ever had a "normal" CK level - always been above to varying degrees. Some equine vets in USA use a value of 350 as their "high normal" - anything above that is indicative of a muscle disease. I've found that a useful reference.
I've still not resolved the ponies problems, but there was a significant improvement in muscle enzyme levels (and work tolerance) for several months last year before it lapsed again. The only thing that I can tie that in with is that the improvement happened 4 months after starting on a balancer containing selenium yeast (aka organic selenium) for 2 months. There was no further improvement when I switched to inorganic selenium (sodium selenite) for another 11 months.
We've recently switched back to organic selenium, and will see what happens in a few months. I hope that will be the answer, but will have to wait and see. Certainly there are no other good options to explore.
There was a very marked worsening in CK in one pony after one month on a high fat diet. He was seriously ill with colitis and colicky sypmptoms. I stayed up with him 2 nights waiting for him to die, but he pulled round. In hindsight, I suspect the fat induced muscle problems because of his selenium deficiency. I cannot prove this, but it is well known that oil can induce nutritional myopathy in nonruminant cattle who are already deficient in selenium. So my suggestion would be that anyone considering giving a high fat diet does at least do a forage analysis (and checks the rest of the diet) to be sure their horse is not selenium-deficient before going down that route.
The other thing I'd stress is how important it is to give a good balancer or vit/min powder at the recommended rate to avoid possible selenium deficiency. Some don't include selenium at all. So it's really worth checking what's in the balancer. I'm currently opting for Blue Chip Original which has 0.9mg selenium as yeast in a daily ration, as well as 0.9mg selenium as sodium selenite. This looked to be the one that best matched my needs based on the forage analysis.
Throughout all this my ponies have looked very well, but it's only been the bloods which have given a clue to what might be wrong.
Like I say, I cannot prove this at the moment, but if reading this helps anyone else decide which was to look into their own horse/pony's problems, and if it saves someone else from either exacerbating problems or worse, then that is great.
Sarah
he's going to be tested for muscle & liver enzymes, Insulin & have full profile. Will let you know the answers
