Actually the owner wants the corn oil. The vet wants to up the grain which would cost the owner more than the corn oil. That's one of the hard things dealing as a barn owner. You can only do so much as not the owner of the horses.
Older horses don't react as much to sedatives, so the vet has to give more to get any effect. That means it takes longer to wear off. "One of the horses had an adverse reaction to the vet visit." AHAHAHAHAHAHAA, I gotta tell my vet this.
If the owner wants corn oil, do corn oil. If you don't see a difference, tell them they must get a vet's opinion (or follow the one they have) or remove the horses from your property. That's about all you can do.
This is a hard situation, because you dont want crappy looking horses on the property (which I totally get) and they want to do weird things. If you are willing to give the corn oil a shot, I guess that's something you can do, and after a few weeks with no differance you can discuss increasing the board to add extra grain + hay?
I spoke with one of the vets I work for, just kind of chit chatting about this situation and he had a few good suggestions that are pretty benign and pretty easy top implement so here they are: First is increase the feed slightly from where they are at (Makes sense, obv. the horses need more calories) Since they are a bit older ( i mean, not really, but we are just saying in general) He suggested soaking their feed ( reasoning behind it is adding water to the gut which overall will help with digestion at the time of digestion, and also it breaks down the feed into a larger overall surface area, so they stomach and intestines can absorb more nutrients with less work) Increase hay if possible Hes not a huge fan of adding oil, but i think we all agree on that one haha He does always suggest getting testing to cushings or other metabolic inefficiencies , but he said its a good place to start
