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I have a 26-year-old (this coming Sept) TWH who has rather suddenly become a salt fanatic, it seems, and champion pee-er. Nothing has changed about his diet, in any significant way. He eats a little hay, but drops most of it due to loss of teeth and what teeth he has being fairly worn down (he has a dental coming up in October). So his diet for the past several months has been mostly a pelleted diet plus supplements. He is not in work, and is quite sedentary. Currently his total ration per day (divided into three feedings) is:
~7-8 lbs Dumor Senior pelleted feed
~3-4 lbs Dumor alfalfa pellets
~1 lb Nutrena Empower Boost (extruded high fat rice bran nuggets)
~1 cup Dumor Ultrashine stabilized ground flaxseed supplement
~3 Tbsp Brewer’s yeastThis is all soaked to a mushy porridge, because he will choke on dry pelleted feed.
He gets a bit of hay morning and evening that he shares with his buddy, and as I said, drops a lot of chewed up wads, but he enjoys it nonetheless.
Last vet visit in June the vet put him at about a 4 for BCS. I think he’s gained a bit since then, so he might be at a 4.5 now. He has always been a lean horse, and I don’t want him to gain too much and put stress on his joints. His coat is healthy and shiny, and he seems quite normal in himself.
But lately, he has been going for the plain salt block as soon as I let him out after each feeding (I have to separate him so that our Icelandic doesn’t “help” him eat his meals). He heads straight for the salt block, then after a few minutes goes for a drink, and then more often than not, back to the salt. I keep both a plain white salt block and a red mineral block available, and this has always seemed to work well for them as they can choose which one they want.
After partaking of lots of salt and water, he steps out of the run-in and pees a river. To my eye, it seems like the color is fairly light and the quantity more than normal, which has me a bit worried.
Since he seems to be craving salt, I have just started adding a tablespoon of loose plain livestock salt to each feeding to see if that makes a difference to his use of the salt block. I mean, I can buy salt blocks as often as I need them, but his tongue may start to get a bit sore with the excessive licking.
Oh, and he has also started eating his own droppings, again I assume looking for salt or minerals.
I will probably have the vet out for some bloodwork, but I’m wondering if there is something specific we should be looking for?
Thank you.
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Hello dh,
A horse this age and this condition almost certainly has PPID which causes excessive peeing and drinking. Kidney failure should also be ruled out. It sometime occurs that you get a condition called medullary wash out where the kidneys lose their ability to concentrate urine exacerbating the PPID PU/PD. There are other possibilities, so back up one link to the article on this subject which explains these and other possibilities and how to diagnose them and treatment based on diagnosis. Let us know how this works out. Quantifying the amount of water, the amount of salt, and what the lab results are would all be interesting and useful to others in the future.
DrO -
I had the vet out in September. I collected a urine sample that morning in a clean bucket, and he took blood samples (from both horses, as I figured I might as well get a baseline on my 17-year-old Icelandic as long as the vet was there).
He came out on a Friday, and called me the next week with the results. Everything was normal, except that potassium was slightly high for both horses, which he attributed to the blood samples having sat over the weekend before being analyzed. He said the urinalysis was also normal.
By the time he came out, I had already started to note that Louis seemed to have slightly tapered off on his salt usage and wasn’t peeing quite the rivers he had previously. Since the vet was here (about a month now), he has continued to taper off until he’s back to what I would say is normal.
My vet suggested I find some loose minerals and just provide a daily ration of salt and minerals in the horses’ feed and take the blocks away. Basic loose minerals for equines are remarkably hard to find locally. I will have to ask the feed stores if they can order them.
Anyway, it was a strange little interlude. I will keep monitoring and probably have bloodwork done once/year to keep track, but for now he seems pretty good for an old guy.
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He seems fine in himself. He’s his usual “big dog” personality (he really is like having a very large friendly dog). His appetite is good, as usual. He’s growing in his winter hair coat, and in every way seems quite himself.
One thing the vet noted when he was here, which I had not noticed at the time, was a slight sheath swelling. This morning, however, I saw that it was quite swollen. It’s not impairing him in any way, but it does look rather alarming. It’s a very firm rather than spongy-feeling edema. We took the horses for a walk at lunch, just under a mile, and that did help reduce the edema somewhat, but not completely. He was eager to go as he seemed to think we were taking him to the “long field” – a hayfield up the road that the horses managed to get out and run to back in August. He was moving right along and giving my husband a bit of a workout. 🙂 Usually Louis is a bit of a slowpoke, but Dreki and I had trouble keeping up!
Having done a bit of reading, it seems that kidney disease is one possible cause, but his bloodwork just came back as normal.
One thing I wondered is whether too much protein might be causing an issue? The week before the vet came, I upped the amount of alfalfa pellets in his ration, so he’s now getting about the same amount of alfalfa pellets as senior feed.
Thank you.
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Healthy horses handle a little extra protein without trouble and many horses benefit from it. Swelling in the sheath can represent trauma, a dirty sheath, or a more systemic issue. I can say that it is a common problem that is often transient if the sheath is clean. I still am wondering is the horse continuing to put weight on.
DrO -
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