colt with chronic diarrhea? any suggestions???

[MakNat]

I should not have put 'chronic' I can give him peptol and he will be fine for a few days. Then his tail and legs are super nasty and I shampoo him. It appears just 'loose'. He eats just fine. I'm going to get some bran mash and cut the sweet feed. Right now I just have mixed grass hay... Orchard, timothy, a little clover and fescue. They are on about 30 acres of wooded pasture. Its by far the greenest Oct we've had in Ky forever. Hes holding weight and keeping up growth with his half sister. I'll change his diet up, and as soon as I get his gelding bill paid I will call the Vet back. He acts fine. Just is getting tired of his but being shampooed. And yes he has been wormed... Maybe too much at this point.

 

[zzGypsy]

so if the pepto works, that's a clue to what's happening. here's what wikipedia says on why pepto works:

Bismuth subsalicylate (the active ingredient in Pepto-Bismol) is used as an antidiarrheal and to treat some other gastro-intestinal diseases (oligodynamic effect).
The means by which this appears to work is still not well documented. It is thought to be some combination of:
- Retarding the expulsion of fluids into the digestive system by irritated tissues, by "coating" them.
- Reducing inflammation/irritation of stomach and intestinal lining
- Killing some bacteria that cause diarrhea

does the poop smell acidic? if it does, it may be he's producing too much acid and that's what's irritating his gut. or it may be that he's moving feed through his gut too fast, so it's out before it processes through the normal pattern that causes the acid to be neutralized. in either case, too much acid where it doesn't belong in the gut can be a constant irritant and cause an enduring cycle of inflamation and I'd worry about long-term damage to the gut lining. a steady use of pepto to neutralize some acid and coat the digestive system to allow it to heal and settle down might help. based on my own experience with hyper acidity, I'm guessing it'd take 3 weeks or more of keeping the system calm with pepto to help reset and stabilize things.

if the cause is bacterial the oligodynamic effect may be useful even without a specific diagnosis, several weeks of pepto, followed by a couple of weeks of probiotics might help normalize his gut flora. I recall reading that pepto is a specific treatment for the bacteria implicated in the formation of ulsers as well.

anyway, it might be a useful conversation to have with your vet, and if there's no reason to *not* use pepto for 3 weeks continuously, I'd probably try it, along with the feed changes and probiotics, and see if his gut stabilizes. I'm not sure if the pepto's anti-bacterial effect would inhibit the probiotics, so I'd want the vet's opinion on that - it might be better to do pepto followed by probiotics, rather than both together.​