Hay or is it her cushings????

Oh bless him. Jess is normally a pig year round, she is worse normally in early winter around November/December but that probably because for the last 14 years she has been on a diet so I have always avoided upping feed for the winter until I really had to. She will go off hay a bit when the grass starts, and if she had gone off it just this last week since the snow I would say it was that, but this started probably 7-8 weeks ago and the grass wasn't growing then.

 

No its a fair thought, if one hay is softer than the other, which actually the one she liked is much softer/finer. But her teeth had a quick check from the vet last Wednesday and she didn't think there was anything pressing so we said we would leave it until Hanks are due later next month as the vets son got sick at nursery and she had picked him up and brought him with her as my vaccination was on its last day before expiring. Perhaps that is my next port of call if a few days off the drugs doesn't work.

 

That's a good point, I already dose to symptoms, I just upped her from half to 1 last year, I'm sure my vet would have no issue with me trying a higher dose tho. I'm going to take her off it for a few days and see what we get first.

 

I say it every time I adjust her drugs, surely it can't change things that quickly....very possibly a coincidence but we had an empty hay box this morning and she went into her reserves in the barn.......
Yesterday she had left 1/3 of the hay in the box, I didn't remove it, just added more but even that was gone today. so this morning I have put out some of the stuff that she was eating and then refused to, there's a test!

 

When she first went back on it, I was shocked at how quickly we saw changes, the mud fever I'd battled for months cleared up completely by day 5!

She was on half a tab for the first year, I upped it for the seasonal rise and then dropped it off again and had niggles, so decided last year to keep her on the higher dose and she did great on it. I won't be stopping it completely for sure, I want it controlled, this is more of a test. I wondered if it has a cumulative effect and she just needed a 'reboot', we shall see or perhaps I need to switch to feeding her half a tab twice a day so the level of it in her system stays more consistent.

 

She ate with more gusto last night, but still only managed 95% of her tiny little feed (500g balancer and 1 handful of chaff), her hay wasn't gone but what was left was a mix of the different types, she is picking the new stuff out if given the chance so I'm picking more of that up on Friday

 

I only started adding the chaff as she used to inhale the balancer then go and bully Hank and pinch his little handful of grub, the chaff just made her chew a bit That is their only feed of the day

I can see my grass growing massively now, the bald bit Jess is in has 1-2" wisps of new grass coming up rapidly, its making me twitchy but I can't juggle them around until Dan can go with Hank, then she can go back on the track. I stood there this morning debating, given there was a good frost last night, if she would be better be eating the wisps or if I should give her a new strip of the long old, ungrazed in 10+ years, grass instead

 

Just thought I would update this, I took her off the drugs for almost a week, then put her back on 2 weeks ago and didn't really notice any difference.

BUT this past weekend I noticed the huge pile of hay (the stuff she stopped eating after 4 months of eating it fine) in the barn was shrinking, so I started adding a little to the other hay I got her. She is now back to preferring the stuff she went off and throwing the other stuff all over the floor she is still only eating 90% of her little bucket feed most days, she might eat it all 1 day a week, no clue why.

 

well Jess had some little hooks taken off her teeth on Tuesday, unusually placed ones (according to the vet) right up the back on the inside and touch wood and crossing everything, she is now eating every scrap of any type of hay in front of her