Content

Intro

1. Cut to 2021
2. Vitamin B6 - introducing P5P (Pyridoxal-5-Phosphate)
3. It’s one big knock-on effect
4. Is it KPU?
5. Supporting naturally ...
6. Latest updates 2024 - Mallenders musings from Dr Christina Fritz
7. Why the skin?
8. Why different breeds react differently
9. Looking ahead

Look up Mallenders/Sallenders online and you'll read that it's a tenacious, and very uncomfortable skin issue, presenting as an accumulation of thickened, crusted scale and scabs on the front and hind legs of horses.

A common ailment in Gypsy, Shire, Friesian - pretty much any hairy, heavy, draft-type horse ... mallenders/sallenders is thought to be caused by excessive keratin production, aka hyperkeratosis (we have news on this - see Latest updates 2024  below). However, going by what our clients say, I can definitely concur on the tenacious and very uncomfortable.

Managing it is extraordinarily challenging:

• Biotin in mineral balancers is said to promote the production of keratin (FYI we don't include biotin in our EquiVita/VitaComplete mineral balancers).
• Soothing ointments of various descriptions need to be applied to soften the scabs, which then seem to return with a vengeance and spread onwards and outwards, leading to secondary fungal and bacterial infections that may lead to lameness.
• Clipping the hair back to get to the scabs is an even worse nightmare - the horse is in constant self-preservation react mode, because ripping off scabs is incredibly painful.
• Worse still, harsh liver-damaging chemical treatments such as the (completely pointless) Deosect jab or Frontline are applied to kill off the alleged resident mites that vets say are in the feathers (it's not mites!) - they not only don't work, but the huge extra strain on an already overworked liver having to metabolise these toxic chemicals just adds to the burden of the syndrome.

So what to do? The general school of thought is to avoid biotin and keep applying the ointments. But surely, there has to be something at the root of it all? Surely if we knew what caused this nightmare for our horses, we'd could prevent this truly awful syndrome. Well, there's good news - there's new research and updates on Mallenders, which is now giving owners great hope as they're now seeing not just positive results - but a mallenders/sallenders and even mud-fever reversal for their horses.

Cut to 2021 ...

... and new science came out. It showed that mallenders/sallenders was thought to be connected to the now better understood multi-metabolic chronic detoxification disorder called Cryptopyrroluria, aka KPU. (See our separate KPU page for the full story).

KPU is specifically a dysfunction in the liver's detoxification process, but as always, it begins in the gut, specifically the hindgut, triggered by dysbiosis in the hindgut microbiome. And when there’s hindgut dysbiosis, the result is an overload of toxins for the liver to have to metabolise (correct name biotransform).

Now let's move to the kidneys, which are also very much involved because the liver shunts all the transformed toxins onwards to the kidneys for excretion via the urine. However, if there’s a huge queue of toxins the kidneys become overwhelmed as well, so those clever kidneys use the emergency excretion pathway – the skin. Great idea in theory, but in practice it means an excess of itchy toxic residue on the skin surface, very often bringing with it year-round incessant itching as well - this is why we see unexplained itchy horses in winter, well outside the sweet itch season.

Of course, as science would have it it’s a whole lot more complex than this. But at the very root of the problem lies a tiny, yet absolutely critical, micronutrient - vitamin B6. But - it's not a simple case of trotting down to your local feed merchant and buying a B6 supplement off the shelf to fix the problem. Why? Because there's good, activated B6 (Pyridoxal-5-Phosphate, aka P5P), and then there's synthetic B6 (Pyridoxine) the inactive (fake) type you see in every equine B6 supplement plus feeds which list a vitamin 'premix' in the ingredients.

P5P is the real deal, and here's why ...

Activated vitamin B6 - introducing P5P (Pyridoxal-5-Phospate)

Let's head back to the equine hindgut, because it's here where, courtesy of those fabulous friendly fibre-fermenting gut microbes, the hindgut produces a range of valuable byproducts which ensure our horse thrives. And one of these vital byproducts is vitamin B6 in its activated form - the form that the equine liver needs to perform its vital detoxification function.

How does it work? Imagine a landrover and a trailer. Without a towbar, the landrover can't pull the trailer. Same as the liver and a toxin. The activated B6 is the bit in the middle - the towbar, and without it, the liver can't transform that toxin into an excretable state and get it shifted out of the body.

The scientific name for this activated form of B6 is pyridoxal-5-phosphate, hence P5P for short. Feed a horse the synthetix pyridoxine and the equine liver neither recognises or knows what to do with it, so simply transforms it into an excretable form and shunts it straight on to the kidneys for excretion. As the saying goes, "An expensive way to make urine."  So, save your money, never mind mentioning the extra work involved by your horse's liver. NB - a little piece of P5P trivia for you; the human gut can convert pyridoxine to pyridoxal-5-phosphate, but the equine gut can't.

I digress. However, when the hindgut biome is in a state of dysbiosis, meaning unwelcome and unfriendly bacteria invaders have found their way in (usually via haylage) then gone on a killing rampage to overpower and destroy the beneficial fibre-fermenting microbes, the P5P production becomes deficient. No P5P? No 'normal' detoxification of toxins, meaning now-damaged toxins stay circulating in the body while the lymphatics desperately try to drain them out to the kidneys to excrete, and the immune sysetm goes into a manic panic trying to kill them off.

Worse, not only will there be a toxin overload, but these damaged toxins are also dangerous, putrefactive (relating to or causing decay) toxins, which is why the effect on our horse's health is so detrimental.

It’s one big knock-on effect

Let's simplify it - starting with what we see on the skin, let's work downstream. If the skin has a problem it's because ...

1. ... the kidneys have a problem (too many toxins to excrete), because ...
2. ... the liver has a problem (lack of P5P so unable to transform the toxins properly), because …
3. ... and here’s where it all starts – the hindgut has dysbiosis (faulty biome fermenting), becuase ...
4. ... we've not fed our horse how they're meant to be fed.

And the reason there's dysbiosis in the hindgut is two-fold:

1. Most of those shiny feedbags promising allsorts contain junk bulk-filler ingredients which are both pro-inflammatory and gut-damaging, and ...
2. We're starving the hindgut fibre-fermenting microbes of the very thing they need to ferment - the specific equine-appropriate fibre, namely cellulose/hemicellulose, which is only found in hay stems, and not the neon-green grass blades that we turn our horses out on.
3. We should also be mindful not to feed haylage as this introduces lactic-acid bacteria - the equine hindgut's worst enemy - into the hindgut. Cue dysbiosis.

In other words, unless a horse has access to long grass that's been allowed to grow a stem and seedhead, they should always have 24/7 access to quality meadow hay, with the various meadow grass species providing the hindgut microbes with a diverse range of prebiotics which feed the hindgut microbes, thus fuelling them to do their fibre-fermenting job.

If we don't feed the hindgut as it should be fed, in short this means the liver can’t do its job, so the whole natural detoxification process gets messed up. And ultimately, this is why horses get seriously unwell, not only with mallenders/sallenders, and even mud fever also thought of as part of the syndrome, but also numerous other autoimmune allergy and other chronic health syndromes. When toxins are involved, there's dis-ease in the body.

Is it KPU?

So the 2021 research has told us that a faulty hindgut/P5P/liver/kidneys production line is behind mallenders/sallenders (and a host of other issues). But – when it’s an ongoing, chronic, permanent condition, it’s actually a much bigger picture than this, as any M&S horse owner will tell you. Cue the now widespread multi-metabolic chronic detoxification disorder - Cryptopyrroluria, aka KPU.

And - M&S, just like all the other connected autoimmune syndromes, isn't something that a horse has simply picked up along the way; it's thought to have started from birth, and possibly how the horse was raised as a foal. Then us humans get involved, feed our horse wrong somewhere along the line (or a previous owner did), and basically we've just thrown fuel onto the fire.

Pulling this together

So what to do? Simple. We need to relook at how we're feeding our horse, changing to feeding our horse naturally, i.e. made from grass forage fibre and not a ton of bulk fillers and soya, and stabilise the hindgut, resetting the gut:liver pathway to restore the P5P production.

First up, the key is to repopulate and restore the natural biome colonies in the colon; only a healthy hindgut biome can produce P5P to achieve a normal liver biotransformation function. Hay is going to be your saviour here, 24/7/365, for the cellulose-fibre content in the hay stems to firstly restore the beneficial microbe population, then for the re-established fibre-fermenting colonies to do their job of fermenting the fibre. If you only turn your horse out on grass, forget it. If you feed a horse haylage, forget it. If you soak your hay for a long time, forget it. If you let your horse run out of hay, especially if stabled overnight, forget it.

Now to the feedbowl, and this should also only ever be a grass-forage fibre, i.e. a meadow-grass cob or a loose grass-forage chaff, as the base carrier for supplementing what's deficient in our UK forage, i.e. the mineral balancing nutrients, salt for the essential sodium, and micronized linseed for the all-important anti-inflammatory omega-3 EFA. (Or see our VitaComplete balancer which includes both the salt and linseed).

If haylage was fed, the gut also needs to deacidify, so feed Spirulina for a couple of weeks which is an excellent hindgut toxin-binder and mainly excreted via the liver-bile solid waste route, thus relieving the kidneys. Meanwhile ...

What not to feed!

No beet, no alfalfa, no sugars, no pectins (which you'll find in ACV), no muslis, no pellets glue'd together with molasses, no yeasts/brewers yeast, and definitely no feedbags with pro-inflammatory gut-damaging wheatfeed, oatfeed, soya, NIS, basically anything listed in our The Feedbowl page.

Here's the Top-Tip of the Day - always check the ingredients on your current feedbag - if it's not made from grass, don't feed it/ Simples! The sooner we start feeding our horses naturally again, getting cellulose fibre going through the hindgut again, the sooner the hindgut environment will be restored back to normal, and these disabling autoimmune detoxification disorders will reverse.

See our Advice Centre/Feeding our Horses Healthy section from the navigation bar above for more information.

Supporting naturally ...

Let's get to it and clean up the hindgut biome:liver pathway to re-establish the P5P production. Don't panic though! If the thought of trying to figure out how to supplement your horse needs suddenly seems like a minefield, we do the whole kit as one of our one-stop Wellness Programmes in our Mallenders shop page.

The programme is the same as our KPU Regeneration Programme, but with the addition of a trial bag of our VitaComplete mineral balancer to fortify the diet, in order to address what's nutritionally missing from your horse's forage:

1. First up, we alleviate the gut discomfort and inflammation with DuoBute, while introducing biotin-free VitaComplete forage-balanced nutrients into the diet.
2. We then stabilise the hindgut with a 1-month course of KPUCARE, which deacidifies the hindgut acidosis to improve the pH value, addresses the dysbiosis, and rebuilds the hindgut biome:liver pathway.
3. When the gut regeneration is finished, we then clean-up the detoxification organs - the liver/kidneys/lymphatics - with a 1-month course of LKLCARE.

Proactive support thereafter

• Look to be feeding the P5P for at least a year thereafter.
• We recommended feeding BiomeTonic, aka the well-known 'oily herbs' which stabilise the intestinal environment, creating a hostile environment for the pathogen microbes. Some horses seem to need it fed regularly; others (like our MacAttack) did well on it being fed every couple of weeks - it's very much horses for courses so your horse will no doubt tell you.
• Our WildFed is also beneficial to feed occasionally to add valuable prebiotic roughage diversity to the diet. You can either add to the feedbowl or sprinkle a handful over hay every other day or so.
• Finally, don't forget to continue fortifying the diet, switching the processed feeds for a grass forage-fibre feed, i..e a meadow cob/chaff, and getting as much quality hay going through the hindgut, while closing the nutrient gap with forage-balanced minerals - see our EquiVita/VitaComplete range.
  

Latest updates - 2024

Meanwhile ... The other day I was having a fascinating chat with a client about their horse’s mallenders. Our conversation started with the usual questions, so I steered it towards explaining how, since 2021, science has been leaning towards mallenders being a detoxification issue along the lines of KPU (Cryptopyrroluria). We continued discussing how equine KPU therapy could help reverse it by supporting the liver’s detox pathways.

Then came the curveball question:
“But WHY does a mallenders horse overproduce keratin? Where does it all come from? And why don’t Thoroughbreds get it?”

A great question! But I’ll admit I was stumped. I didn’t have an answer, but I knew someone who would: the ever-insightful Dr. Christina Fritz, one of my equine mentors who I studied with back in 2021 (as I know many of you have too), and continue to do so. So, I asked her, and we have fascinating new insights as to what's behind mallenders in horses - is it keratin production or toxin overload?

See our Blog - Mallenders Musings: shedding light on the links between genetics and the detox pathways

Meanwhile, here are the Mallenders/Sallenders SHOP links below for you.

See what our clients are saying