It has long been known that there is a relationship between transportation and gastric stress in horses. Researchers in Italy and Australia now have some definitive answers—and some surprising results–between transportation, gastric pH and gastric ulcers in horses, reports The Horse.
Drs. Babara Padalino, Sharanne Raidal and Georgina Davis carried out a two-part study to find out if transportation would lead to an ulceration of the squamous cell mucosa in a horse's stomach and if it would be more severe in horses that were fasted beforehand.
In the first part of the study, the team fasted 12 confined horses overnight and placed nasogastric tubes to aspirate gastric fluid every two hours. They also collected blood before and after the horses were confined and completed a gastroscopy directly after confinement and again 60 hours after confinement.
The second part of the study evaluated the effects of transportation on 26 horses that were shipped 546 miles. The scientists collected blood and performed the same gastroscopy routine as with the horses that were confined.
The scientists found:
- Average gastric fluid pH was much higher during transport than during confinement
- Squamous ulcers were more prevalent in horses that were transported (and some of those horses had severe ulceration)
- Severity of squamous cell ulceration was inversely related to the amount of feed retained in the stomach during transport; the less feed in the stomach, the more severe ulcers the horses had
- The researchers were surprised that the pH of the stomach became higher during transport and that after 12 hours of fasting that some horses still had feed in their stomach
Read more at The Horse.
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