So you think your horse has stringhalt?
Stringhalt is a nervous system disorder caused by either a lack of magnesium or a lack of other minerals or trace elements that are necessary to absorbing the magnesium. Flatweeds and capeweed growing well after a dry period are a common cause of this lack of magnesium. It seems to me that every autumn after a dry summer with really short grass, our horses are particularly vulnerable and we get a rash of cases like we’re hearing about this year.
And of course, the drought and then our beautiful rain and the follow up rains that some of us have been lucky enough to get, have produced conditions that have these weeds growing fiercely in our paddocks.
The symptoms of stringhalt are an unusual “goosestepping” kind of an action by the horse’s back legs. They have trouble backing up and if forced can actually buckle down.
If this is your horse and stringhalt has been diagnosed, do not despair. Bobby (the horse in the photo) had an extreme case of sudden onset stringhalt about 8 years ago. He was striking his belly he was goosestepping so hard. With the following treatment, he was over 98 % OK within days and the residue went away with the relationship work that I describe further down.
Use a four pronged attack:
- Lime and dolomite your horse’s paddock. It doesn’t matter if it’s not your property, it’s still worth doing – cheap on small horse paddocks, non toxic (in fact it suits organic places too!) This is the best long term cure/ prevention and you can spread it by hand over a smallish area if you have to. Some machinery hire places have small hand spreaders. So if you change agistment farms, someone else gets the benefit – big deal - spend another $20 or so and do it again on the new paddock!
- In the meantime, remove your horse from the pasture he was on and/or give him as much grass hay as he can eat. Do not feed him Lucerne neither as hay nor as chaff (it throws the calcium to magnesium ratio out of balance when the pressure is on the pasture as it is now
- In my area of Australia, in Victoria, if I didn’t have access to kinesiology testing or hair analysis, I would be using the following minerals for my horse if my horse had stringhalt :
• Ad lib (as much or as little as they want) seaweed meal ( the powder) and a lump of rock salt with it. (My horses get this even though my land is balanced)
• Copper pipe in a second source of water (I’ve used a bucket next to the normal water trough) (My horses get this even though my land is balanced)
• A tablespoon of yellow sulphur powder per day
• A dessertspoon of Coopers dolomite per day
• I would probably think about 3,500 mg of magnesium orotate TWICE daily for a week to 10 days and then drop back to about 2000 mg ONCE daily
• A small dessertspoon of Vitamin C – sodium ascorbate or ascorbic acid once daily for a week or so and maybe even a small amount of Vam paste for Vitamin B (dosage on the packet). It only comes up occasionally in testing, but it can’t do any harm! - It probably wouldn’t hurt to give him a couple of tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, but it’s probably not essential.
- I would be giving my horse some GENTLE massage, going with the way the hair grows or I would get some Bowen muscle treatment or shiatsu, or an advanced kinesiologist or an acupuncturist if he was not showing big improvement within a week to 10 days. Go with the gentle massage is nice anyway!
I wouldn’t ride until the symptoms were well and truly gone, you can usually see a very anxious look in their eyes – you wouldn’t want to be adding to that fear.
I would expect with all of the above for a FRESH case of stringhalt to recover within days. An old case of stringhalt almost always needs good muscle work to get completely better.
AND I WOULD NEVER INCREASE QUANTITIES OF MINERALS THINKING THAT MORE IS BETTER – BECAUSE IT’S NOT!
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