winwillows - 2014-11-14 5:58 PM

These are two really different products. Forco provides a prebiotic. That means that it's ingredients are intended to provide a more positive environment for the beneficial bacteria in the hind gut. The goal of this is to provide a better environment for the good bacteria, so they can remain dominant in the system compared to the smaller population of bad bacteria. Equipride says that they provide probiotics. These are additional good bacteria to replenish those that are killed off by the change of ph caused by undigested starch and sugars getting into the hind gut. The issue here is how much of a benefit each can be. There is a real question about how successful probiotics are at getting to the hind gut intact. Many can be destroyed in the stomach and small intestine. Clearly, some do make it through, and personally, I think there is a place for the use of probiotics after surgery or anti-biotic treatments, and in some high stress situations. In these cases, any help that the horse can get from whatever amount of probiotics that get to the hind gut is a good thing. On a normal healthy horse, however, I prefer to use prebiotics on a daily basis to support the naturally occurring bacteria in a well managed diet. If you keep killing the bacteria with a poor diet and need to keep trying to add more, with questionable effectiveness, my opinion is that you would be ahead to fix the diet. If you keep that damaging excess starch and sugar from disrupting things in the first place, a probiotic would not provide much of a benefit. and a prebiotic would be a better choice.