cause unknown. Some
bespectacled old tart at a show says "Feed him 2 kgs of oats per day, it
sorted out my horse's hives". And yes, 2 KGS of oats, not 2 scoops, 2
kilograms. A Lot Of Oats. Does my friend, who is otherwise
relatively bright, question this advice (apart from discussing with vet, who
in typical fashion says "well, try it and see")? Nope, she just adds the
2 kgs of oats. Needless to say, little obvious effect on
hives.
Well, there's a pretty common misconception that
vets are also formally trained in nutrition. They aren't---at CSU, large
and food animal nutrition takes up about three hours of lecture total, and
equine nutrition specifically took up a whole 25 minutes. There's an
elective course in Feeds and Feeding (that was the one I helped teach, which
really drove some of my classmates nuts)<eg>, but even that just barely
brushes the surface and (being an elective), relatively few students took
it. This is fairly typical at the other vet schools as well---even if
they have a formal course in nutrition, one semester doesn't even begin to do
more than cover the very basics.
I don't mean this as a criticism of vets
(although I do criticize the vet schools for not including more nutrition,
but, hey, I'm biased)---the vet schools have four years to cram you full of
anatomy, diagnostics and therapeutics, and nutrition is considered
"preventative medicine" or "management" and there just aint enough time for
everything.
But the point to be made is that unless your vet
has either done an undergrad degree in animal science of some sort, or sought
out a Continuing Education course, or has done ALOT of extra reading from
solid sources on his/her own, unless you suggest something totally
off-the-wall like hey, let's feed him trout chow, pipe tobacco and jet
fuel to kill them darn parasites, the odds are pretty good you'll get, "well,
try it and see". It's just VetSpeak for "I didn't take any of the
elective nutrition courses but what you're suggesting will probably not kill
the animal outright."
There are exceptions, of course---alot of vets
really *do* know their stuff about nutrition, and of course, Sarah is the
final word about equine clinical nutrition no matter who you are. But
there's a world of difference between someone like Sarah that's spent years
doing the residency and PhD, and the "try it and see" approach. Not a
bad idea to keep looking for better answers if "try it and see" doesn't do it
for you.
(And BTW, my suggestion for the hives wouldn't
have been 4-5 pounds of oats---I would have taken the horse off everything
except grass hay, and added back in one additional feed at a time to find out
what was causing the hives. If that didn't do it, I'd see about getting
some allergy testing done.)
JMO
Susan G