Trailer/Stall Stress

If horses have nightmares, a recurring theme must be traveling by trailer or horse van. Virtually every condition encountered during transport goes against their instinctive needs. It’s no wonder traveling horses feel stressed and develop digestive upsets.

Natural Plan Stomach Soother™, taken before and after a trailer experience, helps relieve stomach upsets and increases appetite.

Think of it from the horse’s perspective; as an animal that’s preyed upon, horses do not like being trapped in a dark place with no visible route of escape. Often they are put in a trailer slot next to a horse they do not know, or worse, one they do know who is aggressive towards them.

The swaying of the trailer and the weight shifts required of a horse when the van stops and starts are, even for the most travel-experienced horse, equivalent to steady walking. Therefore, if you trailer for eight hours, your horse feels as if he has walked for eight hours.

Under duress, many horses will eat very little of the hay that’s in front of them, and will refuse water, even when they are thirsty.

Fear, fatigue and lack of appetite, along with insufficient roughage in the gut, stress-induced acid production and decreased peristalsis, create the perfect conditions for a digestive system upset.

The diarrhea so many horses develop during trailer rides can be due, in part, to anxiety-induced, increased peristalsis, which forces food along the digestive path too quickly for the cecum to adsorb sufficient water. This leads to the presence of incompletely digested large molecule carbohydrates, which have high moisture levels that cause a loose stool. Stress brings on a surge in acid production, which irritates the stomach lining and gives a horse a belly ache.

Natural Plan Stomach Soother helps resolve these problems:

• It triggers increased mucus production in the horse’s mouth, esophagus and stomach.
• The mucous coats and soothes delicate tissues in the digestive tract.
• The papain enzyme in Stomach Soother helps break down large molecule carbohydrates, allowing them to discharge their moisture and reduce loose stools.
• And because horses consider Stomach Soother to be a delicious treat, they relax a little.