Atlantic Canada Equine Symposium

Reduce the risk of colic for your horse this month. Take the Colic Risk Rater and look for ways to alter the horse’s environment to support gut health.
Your colic Risk Rater results are for you only to aid in making your management better.

🐴💕 Did you know small management changes can reduce your horse’s colic risk?

🐴✨February’s Tool of the Month is the Colic Risk Rater! Support gut health with fibre‑rich nutrition, fresh water, and regular movement—and assess your horse’s risk using this FREE tool from , sponsored by Acera Insurance.

https://thehorseportal.ca/healthcare-tools/colic-tool/

Water!

Horses often drink less in winter ❄️🐴

The archived article - Winter Water Woes from .ca explains why winter water intake matters—and how it relates to colic risk.

https://thehorseportal.ca/2021/01/winter-water-woes-and-colic-prevention/

Colic Prevention Month with Equine Guelph begins in a few days with plenty of great tips to reduce colic risk.

Good information.

Horses often drink less in winter ❄️🐴

The archived article - Winter Water Woes from .ca explains why winter water intake matters—and how it relates to colic risk.

https://thehorseportal.ca/2021/01/winter-water-woes-and-colic-prevention/

Colic Prevention Month with Equine Guelph begins in a few days with plenty of great tips to reduce colic risk.

There is a role for ACES in this situation.

Provincial veterinarians are spread thin! Initiatives are underway to support horse owners. Please read the open letter from the registrar of the New Brunswick Veterinary Medical Association outlining ideas and plans from its equine practitioners. Click the link below...

https://nbea.ca/Downloads/2025%20Documents/Veterinary%20Services%20Letter%20-%20Nov%202025.pdf

Good nutrition advise.

Most horse owners know they should make feed changes slowly, but not everyone understands why.

A horse’s digestive system relies on billions of specialised bacteria in the hindgut to break down fibre and turn it into energy. When a new feed is introduced too quickly, those bacteria don’t have time to adapt. This can lead to acidity, toxins and serious issues like colic, acidosis or laminitis.

Even small changes, such as a different type of hay, pellet or new pasture, can upset the balance if introduced too fast. Allowing ten to fourteen days for the transition helps the gut microbes adjust and keeps your horse’s digestion healthy.

Read more about what happens inside your horse’s gut and how to make safe feed changes in our latest education article.

👉 Link in the comments.

Some good points here.

“My horse won’t stop – I need a stronger bit.”

“My horse drags me on the halter – I need a chain/knotted rope halter/control halter.”

“My horse won’t move away from me – I need a training stick.”

When we come up against a training issue we often think we need to be stronger than our horse, to make them do what we want. We think we have to win.

But we’re completely wrong.

It isn’t a battle at all, it’s a conversation, and if it’s not going well, then shouting isn’t going to make it better.

Imagine you’re talking to someone who doesn’t understand. Maybe they don’t speak the same language as you do, or maybe they just don’t have the context required to follow what you’re saying. If they have no idea what you’re asking them, saying it louder isn’t going to make any difference. Now they’re worried because you’re yelling, and still don’t have any idea what you’re asking them.

If your horse doesn’t stop from your rein cues, then chances are they don’t understand that the cue means they are supposed to stop. Instead of switching to a more severe bit, you need to go back to an earlier stage of training, and explain it to them.

If your horse drags you around on a halter, instead of switching to a halter or device that causes them pain when they try to take off, figure out why they drag you and fix it. If they didn’t understand, find a way to explain it to them. If they’re frightened, take the time to show them what to do instead when they’re scared.

And if your horse won’t move away from you when you ask them to, probably they don’t understand the question. Ask them in another way, instead of using a stick to back up a request they didn’t understand in the first place.

Horses are born with something called an “opposition reflex” and in the wild this served them very well. What it means is that they naturally move into pressure, instead of away from it. If a wild horse was being chased by a wolf, and the wolf reached up and bit the soft part of their belly – as a wolf does – and the horse pulled away from the pressure and pain of the bite, their belly would likely be torn open, and they’d be lunch for the wolf. If, however, as their instinct tells them to do, they move TOWARDS the bite, not only would they minimize the damage caused by the teeth of the wolf, but they’d also have every chance of trampling the wolf and causing him to release, letting the horse get away. The size of a horse means that flinging their bulk into whatever it is that’s pressuring them gives them pretty good odds of coming out on top. And while a Miniature Horse is a whole lot smaller, they’re still a horse, with the same instincts, and they’re going to respond to pressure in exactly the same way.

If a horse feels pressure or pain, their instinct tells them to meet it and exceed it.

If they aren’t responding to the pull of the bit, switching to a more severe, potentially painful bit is likely to exacerbate the issue. Now instead of simply ignoring the bit pressure because they didn’t understand what it meant, they may feel they need to actively work against it. Your more severe bit, in an “into pressure” horse, could be the cause of your runaway.

If your horse is dragging you around, chances are their opposition reflex has suckered you into a pulling match. Stop pulling back. Maybe you could take off the leadrope, and work on your skills at liberty, and take the opposition reflex out of the equation. Or check your timing and be sure you’re releasing the second you get a response, to prevent the opposition reflex from activating. And remember, adding more pressure and pain by using a severe tool like a knotted rope halter may just result in a more dramatic response from your horse as they attempt to protect themselves from the pain.

If your horse won’t move away from your cues, chances are it’s because you are in direct conflict with the opposition reflex. More pressure will simply cause them to respond with more pressure. Instead of escalating or using a tool that can add pain to the equation, try minimizing your cues, watching for the smallest weight shift, and clearly letting the horse know that they’re on the right track.

If your horse is not responding in the way you think they should, it’s because they don’t understand. Escalating the pressure or inflicting pain isn’t going to make it clearer to them.

Pressure begets pressure. If we want to have a soft, responsive horse, we need to be a soft, responsive handler.

Need some help finding better ways to communicate with your Miniature Horse? Let me know what you're struggling with, and I'll link you to the right resource or course to help you and your horse achieve your goals together!

For centuries, the majority of equine studies and medical research have prioritised horses, leaving donkeys largely in the shadows.

This imbalance has resulted in a knowledge gap that forces veterinarians and caretakers to rely heavily on data and treatment protocols designed for horses, with limited validation for donkeys.

The scope of available studies on donkeys is also restricted by frequent use of small sample sizes, single populations, or research limited to particular regions, which means insights may not apply broadly to all donkey populations or management systems.

Comprehensive epidemiological data connecting management practices, nutrition, welfare, and disease in donkeys is also rare; so, there is little context-specific guidance for practitioners.

A recently published paper in the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science found that donkeys have distinct behavioural, anatomical, and physiological characteristics compared to horses, which critically affect their response to drug treatments.

Unlike horses, donkeys are highly efficient at conserving water and metabolising drugs, therefore veterinarians need to take special care when estimating dosages and liveweights.

For example, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and analgesics may clear from a donkey’s system much quicker, so a standard horse dose could be ineffective, leaving pain or disease undertreated.

Donkeys also show far subtler signs of pain or discomfort. This makes pain scale assessment much harder for veterinarians and owners.
Failure to recognise species-specific symptoms of pain can lead to late or missed welfare and medical diagnoses, especially in the case of chronic disease or post-operative pain.

Several validated scales, have been developed to help address the ongoing challenge of effective pain management in donkeys, however not all handlers are trained to use these assessment tools, and more education and field validation are needed before they can be implemented universally.

📑 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jevs.2025.105700.

Training techniques that has gone to extreme lengths to reach the podium

After the 1970s, horse trainers in some sports—particularly dressage, eventing and jumping, but now also in reining—placed increasing emphasis on head position under-saddle.

This steady march toward a very arched neck has led to the controversial and detrimental welfare concern of hyperflexing the horse's head and neck position, known as 'röllkur' in German.

The rewarding of roundness in horse sports resulted in judges penalising mouth opening as a ‘resistance’ or ‘evasion’.

This led to riders opting for nosebands in order to mask the horse’s signs of discomfort.

As time went on, increasing hyperflexion was accompanied by increasing tightness of nosebands, culminating in ‘crank’ nosebands which can deploy forces of up to 1400 mmHg, far higher than humans can withstand by a tourniquet and sufficient to cause permanent damage to the horse’s nasal bones.

Dr Andrew Mclean - Modern Horse Training: Equitation Science Principles & Practice, Volume 2

HEALTHflash Disease alerts from :

Strangles - Halton, ON. https://equinediseasecc.org/alerts?alertID=4304

Strangles - Wellington County, ON. https://equinediseasecc.org/alerts?alertID=4305

Equine Herpesvirus- Neurologic - Région de Gatineau, QC https://equinediseasecc.org/alerts?alertID=4306

Biosecurity resources available at https://thehorseportal.ca/biosecurity-risk-calculator-tool/ and Vaccination EquiPlanner tool . https://thehorseportal.ca/healthcare-tools/vaccine-guidelines-core/
Strangles information sheet: https://files.thehorseportal.ca/portal/uploads/2025/01/Strangles-FAQs.pdf

FREE for Youth.

Careers in the Horse World, a new short online course for teens, will be available for free until the end of April 2025 on TheHorsePortal.ca.


https://thehorseportal.ca/course/careers-in-the-horse-world/

An excellent article on deworming

🔬Breaking Down New Recommendations for Equine Deworming 🪱

Deworming horses is a practice that seems to constantly evolve – the more we learn, the more recommendations change to ensure we are making the best decisions for our horses and the industry as a whole, and sometimes it can feel hard to keep up! We used to recommend rotating dewormers every 2 to 3 months to combat parasites, however, I hope by now, the only thing you rotate are your pastures (sorry – a little equine science humor). Rather, you should be utilizing targeted deworming for your mature horses. This means you are performing f***l egg counts to (1) identify your high shedders and (2) performing f***l egg count reduction tests on your herd to determine which dewormers are still effective. So let’s dive into how targeted deworming would work with your horses.

I want to make sure everyone is aware that through deworming, you will NEVER get rid of all the parasites – and that is not one of the goals of deworming. Rather, we want to minimize the risk of parasitic disease and delay further development of anthelmintic (dewormer) resistance. To accomplish these goals, we want to target parasites that are often associated with parasitic disease (primarily strongyles and tapeworms), provide more frequent dewormings to high shedders which contribute to environmental contamination, and only use dewormers that are effective for our herd.

However, not all horses are created equal and some variables can impact deworming recommendations such as age (see my previous post about deworming young horses), geographical region/climate, shedding level, and access to green grass. This is because many of our concerning parasites are transmitted when horses are on pasture, and we want to target them during periods of high transmission when they are more readily spread.

All horses should receive one to two baseline treatments of a macrocyclic lactone (ivermectin or moxidectin). Current recommendations are to deworm in the spring and once horses are removed from pasture going into winter. If you do not remove your horse from pasture, you can just time these for the spring and fall.

For high strongyle shedders (>500 eggs per gram), additional dewormings can be done during periods of higher transmission. This varies by geographical region and a study predicted the successful development of strongyles eggs for six different locations (Leathwick et al., 2015). This model suggests colder northern climates have a short window of transmission during the summer months. This window becomes larger as we move south to warmer climates until we reach southern states where transmission can be observed throughout the entire year. An exception here is arid states in the southwest (which I will discuss in a moment). If you want to see the graphs detailing these transmission windows, take a look at the 2024 AAEP Internal Parasite Guidelines.

Based on these findings, I would choose to deworm high shedders in colder climates during the summer months when transmission is observed. In comparison, high shedders in southern states may also benefit from an additional deworming in the winter when it is more mild. These recommendations could change based on the weather conditions observed each year.

I do want to specifically address arid regions of the United States (primarily in the southwest (including Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico). When horses are located here and are not kept on green pastures, small strongyles and tapeworms are unlikely to require the primary attention in parasite control programs. As a result, the current recommendation for horses without pasture residing in these regions is to perform regular f***l egg counts to determine the necessary level of anthelmintic intervention required (Ramey and Nielsen, 2019).

So hopefully these recommendations help clear things up as to how to deworm! I still continuously see inaccurate and outdated information on this topic so it is important to stay educated for the sake of our horses!

Cheers!
Dr. DeBoer

Leathwick DM, Donecker JM, Nielsen MK. A model for the dynamics of the free-living stages of equine cyathostomins. Veterinary Parasitology. 2015 Apr 30;209(3-4):210-20.

Ramey DW, Nielsen MK. Limited strongyle parasite occurrence in horses kept in an arid environment. Equine Veterinary Education. 2020 Aug;32:37-40.