Nutrients: Vitamins / Minerals / Protein / Supplements

Selenium is a mineral to embrace, not be scared of.  Deficiencies can cause your horse harm as well as toxicity.  Toxic range is 20mg per day.  Optimum levels for your horse can range from 3-5mg per day.  Sometimes more!

Save your money! Don't buy minerals your forage is already providing.

Vitamin E is an essential nutrient that can not be synthesized by the horse, therefore must be supplemented in the diet.

To Supplement or Not?

Whether you care for a pasture pet or a performance horse, Vitamin E is an essential nutrient in your horses diet. The key word here is “essential”, meaning it is required for the body to work properly. 

Between clever marketing and promises, well intentioned horse owners spend hundreds in supplements they hope will help their horse.  Then you look at the ingredients of this miracle powder and see: Proprietary Blend, a guaranteed analysis in ppm’s and percentages you can’t decipher, or worse yet…no guaranteed analysis at all.  What’s a horse owner to do??

Seeing a jug of vegetable oil in a feed room is pretty common.  Reasons may be for a shinny coat, weight gain or extra energy.  Here are some important highlights about feeding your horse oil.

How does your horse utilize protein and does he need protein or amino acids added to his diet?

When horse owners think about joint supplements, one popular ingredient they look for is HA (Hyaluronic Acid).  Unfortunately, finding the best product for your horse is not as cut and dry as seeing Hyaluronic Acid listed in the ingredients.

 

Trace minerals; the amount a horse needs to consume is so minimal it’s hard to imagine they have any effect over such a large animal.  Yet deficiencies in two trace minerals; copper and zinc can be very noticeable.

I was recently asked about sulfates in horses diet, I thought it would be a great topic for a new blog post!

Links to sources of individual supplements: Minerals, Joint Support, & Vitamins