Preventing colic — the lever lies in feeding and husbandry

Colic is no disease entity of its own, but a collective term for abdominal pain of the most varied cause. A considerable part of the episodes has its root in the digestive tract — and thus in the way a horse is fed and kept. It is exactly this that makes prevention so effective: many of the most important risk factors are management factors.

The horse is anatomically a continuous eater with a sensitive hindgut microbiome. This balance reacts sensitively to every disturbance — and the most common disturbances are home-made: feeding pauses that are too long, sudden feed changes, scarce water intake and an excess of concentrate over the forage.

The abrupt ration change as a classic

Studies on colic incidence name sudden feed changes again and again as one of the strongest influenceable risk factors — and that includes not only the change to a new concentrate. Even a new hay cut, a different hay batch or the fresh introduction of hay in the preceding two weeks raised the colic risk in surveys. The reason lies in the hindgut: after a harsh change from forage to concentrate the microbial colonisation changes drastically, and it takes three to four weeks until the fibre-degrading balance recovers.

The practical consequence is simple and yet often disregarded: every new component is introduced slowly over one to two weeks, old and new ration are mixed in an overlapping way. That applies to concentrate just as to the change from the winter hay batch to the first cut.

Water, forage and movement

A scarce water intake is a risk factor in its own right — water deprivation raises the colic risk, and in surveys more colic cases occurred in horses at automatic water dispensers than in horses watered from buckets, presumably because the amount actually taken up is harder to control. In winter, ice-cold water additionally lowers the drinking amount. Clean, frost-free, at-all-times available water is thus no comfort, but colic prevention.

The second load-bearing pillar is the continuous forage supply. Long feeding pauses, a too-high concentrate share and a forage-poor regime shift the ratio in the digestive tract unfavourably. A forage-focused ration with feeding pauses kept as short as possible holds the microbiome stable and the gut motility going. The change from pasture to box with reduced movement changes water intake and gut motility measurably — that too is a known risk moment.

Two further factors belong in every prevention: a good dental and deworming status as well as the avoidance of sand intake. Poorly chewed feed and a high parasite burden additionally load the gut; on sandy, short grazed-down paddocks ingested sand can become a burden. Both can be defused through regular dental checks, a needs-based deworming strategy and feeding from clean ground instead of from the sandy floor.

The honest balance reads: colic can never be fully ruled out, but the risk lies to a large part in the hands of the stable. Continuous forage, at-all-times available clean water, slow feed changes and regular movement are the most robust levers — and they cost no preparation, but attention.