eating shavings

Question
My 40 yr old pony is eating her shavings. I cannot give her grass or hay as she has no back teeth. She had colic surgery in May and eats soupy mash 4x/day. She has senior, hay stretcher and Low starch feed. help

Answer
Hi Pam,

Thank you for your question and congratulations on helping your pony make it to the age of 40!  

Feeding older horses is always challenging, and feeding a pony with serious teeth problems is the biggest challenge.  Advances in the formulation of high fiber, low starch feeds over the past 20 years certainly has helped.  You are doing all of the right things for your mare because she can't chew, by feeding high fiber feeds, soaked in water and low in starch.  But feeding 'effective fiber' (long stem fiber) and the act of chewing that effective fiber is important for horses in that it stimulates saliva production.  Saliva helps bind food into a bolus (ball of food that is easy to swallow) and it helps neutralize the acid that exists in the horse's stomach.  This is of particular importance to horses because they secrete acidic digestive enzymes into their stomachs continuously (24/7) regardless of how much or what they eat.  If these enzymes can't be neutralized, they can erode the stomach lining and create ulcers.  Because your pony is not really chewing, she is not producing a lot of natural buffer...and because the fiber that she is eating is soaked in water, it can't soak up a lot of the digestive enzymes. Your pony is most likely eating the shavings to give her something to chew on and something to soak up the stomach acid.

There is nothing you can do to change the feeding management because your program accommodates your pony's missing teeth.  I would suggest that you feed something that will help neutralize the stomach acid.  Sodium bicarbonate is the simplest and most effective neutralizer for your mare.  It is safe to feed to horses and for your purposes you will need to feed 0.2grams per kg of your pony's body weight (ex. 65g for a 700 pound pony) daily, ideally split amongst all 4 feedings to help continually buffer.  This will help keep the acid neutralized and her stomach feeling a little better.  

The shavings consumption may (or already has) become a habit to a certain extent.  It creates a foraging routine that returns her to a more natural routine.  The only problem is that those shavings are not feremtable and could possibly create impaction issues.  You mentioned that your mare had colic surgery, and I'm not sure if it was for this type of colic but it would make sense.  If this is the case, you may want to think about changing bedding type.  If you try and use straw, you could run into the same problems so I would suggest peat moss...it is very absorbent, doesn't have the same dangerous dust content of shavings and composts amazingly.

I hope these suggestions help and if there is anything else I can help with please let me know.

Thanks, Corlena