horse didnt pass manure - colic

Question
QUESTION: hello ma'am, lets suppose you went to your stable around 3:30pm to see whether all horses ate their feed when fed around 9am. suddenly you found one horse haven't passed out the manure since 6 1/2 hours. what would you do? would you consider it as colic? would it be a mild or higher degree colic?

ANSWER: Hi Rohit,

Thank you for your question.  I would consider this circumstance an early warning sign (very mild degree) of colic, and this is where I would get the horse out of their stall and get them walking.  This is the kind of sign you are looking for to take action and prevent a severe colic.  The horse's digestive system relies on movement, in part, to move food through the digestive system.  It's a built in mechanism for the rate of passage of feed.  Stalled horses don't always get the movement they need to help with food passage and can be more prone to impaction colic.  A very astute horseman catches this sort of thing, good job.

Thanks, Corlena  

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: ma'am, do horses eat up the feed completely the moment i hang the feed tub in the stall? if yes, then after they have finished eating their feed, can i take them out and hand walk for few minutes so that digestion would improve in them?

Answer
Hi Rohit,

Thank you for the follow up.  Generally horses eat all of their grain as soon as you feed it, although there is the occasional horse who takes their time.  For the horse, the motion of walking increases the rate of passage and is a built in digestive mechanism.  But keep in mind that you don't want the digestive system to move at the maximum rate of passage...you want optimum rate of passage.  In fact you want the grain (especially if it contains a lot of starch) to stay longer in the horse's stomach so that it is properly digested, and you don't want to rush it through the GI tract.  Impaction colics result from undigested forages become trapped at the end of the digestive system, not the beginning where the stomach is.  You are better off letting the horse rest more immediately following grain feeding, and walk them after they've had their hay feeding.  Remember that it takes many hours for the forages to reach the hindgut where impactions occur so you have a large time lapse to deal with.  Better yet, plan your hand walking to break up the long periods that your horse is stalled, providing intermittent periods of light movement.

Thanks, Corlena