Don’t be fooled into to thinking that a horse with gastric ulcers are easily identifiable without your veterinarian performing a gastroscope, as horses can have ulcers without showing outward signs. In surveys done on racehorses, researchers have found over 90% of the horses have ulcers, but less than half of them actually show the classic outward signs.
The high incidence of ulcers in performance horses results, in part, from the way these horses are fed and managed. Large grain meals and extended periods of fasting lead to excessive gastric acid output without adequate saliva protection, paving the way for ulcer formation.
This article was written in conjunction with Barastoc.
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