Harlequin's Story - our beginnings

For over 70 years, our family have kept horses and never once in that time had a problem with laminitis, or related metabolic problems - that was until recently.  Within the space of 2 years, two mares developed acute laminitis, then a couple of others developed foot soreness and had to be restricted when already on poor grazing.  Then Harlequin, our 16.2hh ex-eventer Welsh Cob gelding who had never been overweight, began to drastically lose condition and developed laminitis in all four feet, with pedal bone rotation.  This proved to be the beginning of a number of findings and life changing events that came our way over the following two years.....and led to the formation of a family run business - Thunderbrook Equestrian and Equine Pure Essential horse feeds. 

Please note:  This is the story of what happened to our horses and why we developed Equine Pure Essentials feeds.  It is not intended to replace veterinary advice.  If you are concerned about your horse's health, you should consult with your veterinary surgeon.  More and more vets are using herbal products, such as psyllium husk for sand removal, echinacea for the immune system, milkthistle seed for liver disease, etc.  We work alongside your veterinary professional to advise on nutrition - please contact us for more details - Dr Deborah Carley.

In 2001, following my move to a new research job in Cambridge, we moved our small family run stud from a Wiltshire farm surrounded by cattle and sheep farming, to Norfolk, on the edge of Thetford Forest, surrounded by arable farming.  In all the years we lived in Wiltshire, our horses were overall healthy with veterinary call-outs very few.  But all that was about to change.  Our first set-back occurred within a few months of moving to Norfolk.  Our Welsh Sec D mare Abi suffered from impaction colic and had to be rushed to Newmarket for surgery.  Once there, she was opened up and a full bucket (one of those black plastic buckets used to carry water) of SAND was removed from her large intestines.  It turned out that in our move from a clay-based soil in Wiltshire to a very sandy-based soil in Norfolk, Abi was unable to clear the sand building up in her gut each time she grazed in the paddocks, and eventually it led to impaction colic.  Back in 2001, that was my first introduction to using herbal products.  There were (and still are) no veterinary drugs available to treat or prevent sand colic.  Determined to save Abi suffering this fate again (and not wishing to have the expense of moving again) I researched and found out about Psyllium Husk, which is used in sandy places such as Australia and parts of America to help keep the horse's gut clear of sand.  From there, I researched with my own little herd of horses and found ways to enable the psyllium husk to work more effectively by including other herbs, botanicals and products from the beehive, to help soothe the inflammation from the irritating sand particles, protect the gut membranes and help with moving the sand particles out.  So was born 'Gut-Cleanse'.  Since then, its now 9 years later and despite grazing on sandy soils, Abi and our other horses have remained healthy.  However, the owners of many local horses have been referred by their vets to use Gut-Cleanse, as our area is particularly sandy light soil.

Over the next few years, other problems started to occur with our small herd of horses including persistent mane and tail rubbing, ventral midline dermatitis (itching under the belly), summer COPD, allergies, runny eyes and noses, infertility and then bang! We had major problems. 

In 2007 we had two mares develop acute laminitis requiring remedial farrier work.  A couple of other horses developed foot soreness, despite already being on poor grazing.  Feed and exercise regimes hadn't changed over the years, the horses carried 'summer condition' as usual but were not obese, so the sudden onslaught of lamintis was most peculiar.  Why had we gone from a position of never having had laminitis in over 70 years, to suddenly having 4 mares afflicted with it?

Now we come to Harlequin.  During 2007 Harlequin was not 'quite himself'.  We had x-rays carried out to try and solve the intermittent lameness he had, but they revealed nothing.  No arthritis, no navicular, ringbone, etc.  Harlequin was always the athletic type, never obese, but he seemed to be on the lighter side as we went into the winter.  Throughout the winter of 2007/08, Harlequin dramatically lost weight.  Blood tests revealed very little.  No obvious liver damage, and not diagnosed as ragwort poisoning or grass sickness as we had begun to worry about.  In the spring of 2008, we were faced with an emaciated horse, who despite having a good appetite was unable to keep condition on.  Following veterinary advice we increased him to 4 small meals per day with conditioning feeds.  Instead of putting on weight, Harlequin developed a stiff hind gait, and was unable to lift up his right hind leg for the farrier.  We followed up with specialist veterinary treatment, physio, chiropracters, etc trying to find out if he had a muscular-skeletal problem.  After months of veterinary treatment, the verdict was that Harlequin had laminitis in all four feet, with pedal bone rotation in both fronts.  It turned out that everytime we tried a different feed to gain condition, even those stamped by the Laminitis Trust, it was sending him straight into laminitis.  The veterinary verdict was that his stiff hind gait was most likely due to shivers caused by the metabolic disease called Equine Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy (although that was not confirmed by muscle biopsy).  The tests were negative for cushings.  He was sent home from Newmarket to be placed on months of box rest on a severely restricted daily diet of soaked hay, a handful of alfalfa, half a scoop of convalescence mix, 25ml corn oil and a carrier bag full of ACP tablets and bute.

Harlequin was on box rest and his restricted diet for about a week to ten days, but what little weight Harlequin had left just fell off him.  On the classic severely restricted diet for laminitics, it was obvious he was not getting sufficient nutrition to survive, yet giving him any commercially bagged hard feed just aggravated the laminitis.  Alfalfa, soya, non-molassed sugarbeet, and fibre-based feeds all sent him further into laminitis.  All he could eat was soaked hay and that was rationed.  In desperation, we asked our local vet to carry out one more set of blood tests to see if he could find anything.   They came back positive for insulin resistance and Harlequin was diagnosed with 'metabolic syndrome'.    My husband decided if Harlequin's quality of life could not be restored, then he should be euthanized - everything was booked ready to carry out the final act.  This was a major turning point.  As a research scientist with experience of genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, metabolic diseases and 16 years knowledge of the latest research breakthroughs in the human field, I decided to take things into my own hands and formulate my own feed. 

I had to find a way to remove the cause of his problem, and then feed Harlequin to support optimum health.  The cause?  That's difficult to prove, but all fingers pointed to chemical exposure such as pesticide, herbicide or fertiliser sprays.  Being on light sandy soil, ragwort is a problem and the grass is poor, so for the first time ever we had sprayed to kill the 'weeds' and feed the grass with nitrogen fertiliser (ammonium nitrate).  We followed instructions on the herbicide labels and no horses returned to the pasture until many weeks after sprays had been applied.  Being surrounded by arable farming, there are times when we can taste the chemicals in the air as they drift over from the adjacent fields being treated.  By keeping a diary, I noted that the times when our little herd of horses problems such as COPD, dermatitis, odd behaviour patterns and Harlequin's metabolic syndrome were all at their worst when land was being sprayed.  We began to take preventative measures by stabling horses when sprays were being applied, and emptying and cleaning water tanks in the paddocks afterwards.  I researched into pesticide, herbicide and fertiliser usage both for hay production and hardfeed production.  The results were very concerning.  More detailed information can be found here.  As a result of this, we changed all of our horses over to organic hay - one cut, late in the year.  No chemical sprays used whatsoever and any noxious weeds hand pulled. 

The hard feed? Well, to cut a long story short, nothing suitable was available commerically.  The cells in Harlequin's body needed clean natural ingredients to nutritionally support the healing process, aid clean metabolism and promote anti-inflammatory pathways.   We needed a low glycemic response (low sugar/starch), but with all of the essential amino acids, fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, metabolic cofactors, and phytonutrients in the correct ratios to support optimum health.  The last thing Harlequin's cells required when in a state of metabolic disease was waste byproducts from human wheat and oat milling, chemically treated straw, preservatives, mould inhibitors, artifical vitamins made from petroleum products, highly refined pro-inflammatory vegetable oils, etc.  Take a look at our information articles to learn about some of the ingredients in processed bagged horse feeds. Most hard feeds recommended for horses prone to laminitis are based on large amounts of fibre, using oatfeed, wheatfeed, soya hulls, alfalfa, chemically treated straw, etc to provide the fibre.  As Harlequin eats approximately 3 tonnes of hay/forage each year, I concluded that there's little justification in buying yet more expensive fibre based hard feeds - especially when there is no scientific evidence that feeding more fibre 'cures' laminitis.  When you are poorly, you eat highly digestible, high quality, nutritious food to help your body recover.  In the end, I used my nutritional and research knowledge and devised my own feed.  This was to become our Equine Pure Essentials Base Mix.

I formulated a dried herbal mix to feed Harlequin and the result is Gut-Balancer (Laminitis).   It was interesting to note that left to their own devices, horses are not just grass grazers, but are also herbage browsers.  Just like their close relations, the black rhino, horses have a prehensile top lip, which they use to carefully select and ingest a wide variety of plants, barks, seeds and roots.  I would estimate that horses with access to a wide variety of herbage will graze 85% and browse 15%, with a lot of grazing of mature seeded grasses rather than lush green short cropped (eg 'topped') grasses.  Horses grazing mature grasses as they do in the 'wild' are eating a greater proportion of grass heads and seeds.  It is therefore ironical that modern nutrition tells us to avoid cereals at all costs, because grass - the main bulk of a horses diet - is actually a cereal!  Wild oats are a close relation to grasses.  Cultivated oats are a close relation to wild oats.  Hence it made perfect sense to me why in the past oats have always been regarded as the optimum cereal feed for horses, and they did very well indeed on them until the mass production of bagged processed feeds in the last few decades.  So, I researched into oat nutrition, learned some interesting tips from very old horsemen, and despite having laminitis, Harlequin was fed germinating Mature Organic Oats.   Its also quite interesting to note that when black rhino (who are also grazer/browsers) are captured and kept in zoos, fed on commercial horse feeds and hay, but restricted from the natural herbage that they browse on, they often develop laminitis.

If Harlequin's problem had been caused by chemical damage as I believed, then the latest research into hyperpermeable membrane damage of the gut lining had me thinking that he probably needed some nutritional support for healthy intestinal membranes.  The cecum (main location for fibre digestion) sits on the right hand side of the horses abdomen, and this was where Harlequin was most sensitive and unable to lift his right hind leg.  The herbal mix Gut-Restore made a big difference to the amount of food Harlequin was actually absorbing into his body, as opposed to eating, passing straight through his gut and out the other end as copious amounts of manure.  Feeding Gut-Restore, he passed less manure and gained more weight.  He gradually became able to pick up and hold up his right hind leg for the farrier, and the sensitivity on his right side became less.

Amazingly, Harlequin's blood tests showed his insulin levels normalised, his laminitis resolved and he gained healthy weight.  As soon as pain was no longer an issue, we had him gently walking on soft surfaces to promote his circulation and relieve boredom.  (Look into the old literature and stagnant circulation caused by enforced 'box rest' was one of the main causes of laminitis - ie in horses shipped from England to India, etc and crated on board ships on long distance journeys).  We soon had all of our horses on the new Base Mix, organic hay, germinating mature organic oats, straight grass chaff diet and saw many improvements that we hadn't expected.  We stopped using fly sprays and other potions that informed us to 'wear gloves, wash hands after applying, do not inhale, or you must sign your horse out of the human food chain if you wash with this insecticidal shampoo', etc.  After all, if they have a warning on them to protect my health, it makes sense to protect my horses health too.  My COPD mare who had to have soaked hay and ventipulmin or otherwise degenerated into 'heaves' is now fed dry organic hay and requires no steroids for her respiration - her breathing is back to normal.  The mare with the ventral midline dermatitis?  It cleared up.  The stallion who paced and squealed and was generally uptight?  He calmed down.  The sarcoid?  It fell off.

The moral of the story?  A healthy horse is not maintained that way just through the bag of hard feed, or the small scoop of supplement that you put in his bowl - despite what the marketing on the front label is promoting.  You need to consider the wider environment, his hay, forage, pasture, drinking water, and regular exercise too.  Clean up each of these as much as you practically can, give your horse's body cells the optimum enironment and nutrition, and its quite likely your horse will surprise you. 

It is with regret that I update this article with the news that Harlequin passed away this year.  However, he enjoyed an extra 2 years of eating organic hay, oats, bran, Base Mix and herbs.  I will be forever in his debt as he taught me so much about naturalising a horse's diet and the huge benefits of doing so.  November 2010.