Well, Mojo has been through the ringer this year. He’s struggled with some arthritis, a possible locking stifle, as well as chronic Lyme and now this week was diagnosed with severe ulcers!
After the Pine tree endurance ride where he was pulled for lameness, we had our vet out and pulled some blood, because in addition to the resolving lameness we were seeing some neurological signs. He tested high positive for chronic Lyme, negative for EPM, had a high selenium and normal vitamin E. We treated him for the lyme with minocycline, and he got a month off of work. He put on muscle and looked great and sound after that. In early October he went to a limited distance ride and finished the ride with flying colors.
Well, fast forward to last week, we added MSM back to the horses ration (it’s banned for distance riding and we feed it only in the off season) and Mojo went off feed completely and was standing around looking miserable. I gave him ulcerguard and changed his ration to senior and outlast only and he was eating some of that. But I was concerned and this morning we had Dr. Cara Kneser out to scope Mojo. Below are some of the images of his stomach. Besides the refusal to eat last week, he was not showing any signs of ulcers, no misbehaving, no sensitivity, maybe a tad bit of weight loss, but nothing major. Mojo is such a saint.
As you can see in the pictures, Mojo has ulcers in the squamous part of his stomach where acid splashes up during exercise and bad pyloric ulcers where the stomach empties. The bright red line is where the glandular part of the stomach begins.
Mojo is getting gastroguard and sucralfate, and a diet of senior feed and outlast with unlimited 24/7 hay (which our horses always have). We always buffer our electrolytes, feed outlast when going to rides and the horses get stress free forage, which is alfalfa based. Good alfalfa hay is hard to come by around here, we have yet to find some without hay mites present. We may add alfalfa pellets and beet pulp, but the senior feed is essentially that. I think we will be more diligent and add a few more preventative measures, at home and when going to rides.
We are going to take Mojo off his balancer, to see if that makes his selenium level come down. He was restested this week and his level is still high. The balancer is the only thing we feed that has a signicant source of selenium in it and we are in a selenium deficient area. Mojo is getting rescoped Thanksgiving week to see if his ulcers are resolving or if we need to change up the treatment plan.