Confessions of a supplement addict

A year ago, if you'd asked me if I feed supplements, I'd've scoffed. With a barn full of relatively easy keepers, and one horse who was ultra-sensitve to sugar, what need did I have of supplements? I fed (and still do) a high-quality ration balancer for the hoovers, and a low-starch Senior feed for the others. Add in good-quality grass hay and free-choice salt (both loose and block-style) and there was no need to send SmartPak a large chunk of my paycheck every month. I did use a hoof supplement for Saga (Bioflax 20), but only after trying every other trick in the book to help him grow more sole.

Then I got Echo, and now food prep time has turned into a bad episode of Iron Chef.

Echo is your typical high-maintenance TB. He's got two related issues: he's rather on the thin side, and he very likely has ulcers.

When he arrived, you could see every rib in his body, despite being fed vast quantities of Senior feed and good hay at Adopted Horse Parent's farm. My goal in life became cramming more calories in, but Echo has a problem with this - he doesn't actually like to eat. Sure, he'll eat his grain, but hay is iffy. He'll eat it for a while, but then there are other things to do, like annoy Cash. Or stare off into space. Or watch the donkeys. Or the deer. Or the butterflies. And it doesn't matter what type of hay I give him either - alfalfa, T/A mix, and I've tried three different Coastal hay suppliers. He eats for a bit, and then he's just not into it. Cash helps some, in that Echo often eats when Cash does, but it's not enough. I feel like someone's Jewish grandmother, going "Eat, Liebschen, EAT!" every time I see Echo.

At the advice of my vet, I moved Echo from Senior feed to a Complete feed when he arrived, which has about 100 calories more per pound (roughly 1200 more calories/day for the same weight of feed). Unfortunately, it also has almost 2x as much NSCs, which is not good for his feet. In fact, he's been a little footsore of late, despite that nasty chunk of his hoof being almost grown out. If he's sensitive to sugar like Saga was, the feed could be contributing to him being footsore (it's also possible that the grass is contributing, but they are all limited to 2 hours per day of grazing, so that shouldn't be much of an issue). So we're switching him back to Senior (again on the advice of the vet, TC, and my farrier). But then we have to make up the calories somehow...

There are lots of ways you can do this. I've spent too much time researching options, and here's what I found and why I feed what I do:

• Rice bran - Lots of calories, but also high in NSCs (25-30%). I used to use it, and it works, but because of the NSCs I now stay away from it.
• Corn oil - Cheap, but extremely high Omega 6/Omega 3 ratio. Omega 6 causes joint inflammation and other issues, so you want to get as close to 1/1 as possible. Corn oil is like 46:1... YIKES!
• Cocosoya or soybean oil - I've heard really good things about cocosoya, and I know some blog readers have used it with excellent results. However, some horses are sensitive to soy (Saga was one) so I try not to feed it.  Good Omega 6:3 ratio, though, about 8:1, and readily available.
• Cool Calories or another weight builder supplement - The Smartpak reviews for these sorts of supplements are good, but check out the ingredients list. Partially hydrogenated vegetable fat is usually the #1 ingredient. We know that hydrogenated fat isn't good for us, why feed it to our horses? Besides, if it's really just a hydrogenated vegetable oil, I'd rather simply feed some sort of  oil. Rice bran is another popular ingredient.

I'm running out of options here, aren't I? Making horses fat is haaard! So here's what Echo DOES get to help him gain weight:

• Olive oil - Decent Omega 6/3 ratio (10:1). No NSCs. Roughly 1000 calories per cup. Horses do not seem to have a sensitivity to it like they do to soy. It's expensive compared to the other oils, so it's a good thing I can buy in bulk from Costco! Anyway, Echo gets 1/2 cup 2x/day.
• Ground flax - LOADS of Omega 3s, about 900 calories per cup. This stuff comes highly recommended not only for helping with weight, but clearing up skin conditions, putting on a good shine, and helping grow a better hoof. There's some argument as to whether it needs to be ground to feed it or if it can be fed whole - either one seems to be OK, but the ground stuff goes rancid quickly. I just started feeding it ground, and am grinding it myself in small batches and storing it in the fridge (I may switch to a stabilized version in the future). We're working up to 1/2 cup 2x/day for both Echo and Cash, who has been having trouble shedding out this spring. 

I get the people-grade version of this stuff in my breakfast cereal. Nomnomnom.

In addition to getting Senior and all the hay they can eat, Cash and Echo also get about 4 lbs of soaked, rinsed beet pulp each, 2x/day. Cash finds this easier to chew than hay, and Echo is more intent on finishing it than hay. Whatever it takes, right?

Of course, pouring all this feed into Echo won't do any good if he's got digestive issues. I have not had him scoped, but he shows some classic symptoms of ulcers. When I first got him, he would not let me groom or touch his belly, especially on the off side. He pawed constantly. He pinned his ears and nipped while being girthed. He wouldn't finish his feed. He was lethargic under saddle. And of course, despite all the food he was getting, he wasn't putting on any weight. I discussed these symptoms with my vet, and she suggested  trying some (relatively inexpensive) things to see if he improves, and he has. So to help with digestion, he gets:

• 1/2 cup aloe vera juice 2x/day

If you add a splash of lime juice to a cup of this, do you think it would make a margarita? Oh wait, that's AGAVE juice. Oops.

• 2 magnesium tablets 2x/day (same stuff people take for heartburn, lol!)

Now in the barn aisle as well as the health-food aisle.

• 3 packs of Omnezaprole ("blue pop rocks", same stuff as Ulcerguard but much less expensive) 1x/day (this is only for a month)

Blue pop rocks!

I am happy to say that today, I can groom him all over and he is comfortable. The pawing has stopped entirely. Being saddled and girthed is almost a non-event (he's even mostly stopped biting his lead rope). He eats his grain in good time, has much more energy under saddle, and I can only see about 4 of his ribs now. So all this stuff seems to be working - THANK GOODNESS!

 

He also currently gets SmartPak's Bug Off supplement, since the flies annoy him terribly despite his impressive anti-bug wardrobe. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be helping him, and it smells AWFUL (actually makes me gag, and I have a strong stomach!) so I will be discontinuing that when I run out.

I can't even tell you how vile this stuff smells. Echo eats it though, go figure!

For his delicate little thin-soled flat feetsies, he gets Bioflax 20. This stuff helped Saga grow almost 10 mm of sole depth in about 9 months, so I'm hoping it will work for Echo too.  And once a month, everyone gets a psyllium supplement to clear out any sand that has taken up residence in their guts.

So... come clean, y'all. Please tell me someone out there is a crazed supplement addict like myself?

The ongoing saga of feeding Saga

Saga has thin soles. Even after 5 months in shoes, which was supposed to help him grow sole (???), he’s got thin soles. Thin soles means that he bruises very easily – and thus, he’s been constantly lame-ish for… well, pretty much forever, it seems.

A little research on the Interwebs seems to indicate that thin soles caused by two things – genetics and/or diet. I can’t seem to find any research that shows there are specific lines where the horses have thin soles (diagnosed on x-ray), but genetics seems to be the most accepted reason for having thin soles. Whether or not genetics are playing a role in the ongoing lameness issue, I don’t know, but certainly improving a horse’s diet can’t hurt.

But the diet problem is extremely perplexing. I have three other horses that eat the same hay and get nearly the same diet (or used to get exactly the same diet), and they all have good soles and no ongoing lameness issues. So why is Saga having problems???

(I should note that last fall I figured out that changes in alfalfa every 2-3 weeks were causing growth rings in Saga’s feet, and that when the hay was changed every ~3 months there would be another event line. Since then I have stopped feeding alfalfa, switched to unmolassed beet pulp, and managed to secure about 450 bales of the same hay. The feed-related growth rings have all but disappeared, although he does have events lines where shoes were put on or he was trimmed.)

I recently decided to change feed, from his unmolassed beet pulp with a mineral supplement to a beet-pulp-based complete “senior” feed. The NSCs of the senior were only 2% higher than the beet pulp, and overall the feed provides a lot of extra stuff (probiotics, extra fat, and extra protein). Since Saga tends to a bit of a hard keeper, I figured it might help him keep weight on. Besides, Cash is on this feed and it somehow (mostly) cleared up his ongoing diarrhea. Still not clear on why, but it worked.

So I started transitioning Saga to the new senior feed over the course of last week. Since I’ve been turning the boys out for an hour or two each night/early morning on grass, I’ve been checking everyone’s digital pulse to make sure they’re not getting too much. Everything was fine… until I got up to about 3 lbs of the new feed. Saga’s digital pulse kept getting stronger with each feeding, despite being taken entirely off grass. Not surprisingly, he was lame for my jumping lesson. 

The change in feed clearly caused the increase in digital pulse, which may have caused a minor laminitic episode and increased sole sensitivity (NOTE: he’s got no rotation anywhere, I had him x-rayed).  It’s possible that he also bruised his soles out in the pasture stepping on a rock or whatever – without hoof testers, I don’t know if his soles are sore.  But the feed change may be related to the soundness issue.

So, I took him off the new feed and went back to beet pulp and the mineral supplement, which is actually a “light” feed that is fed at a rate of about 2 lbs/day. I’ve had a few folks suggest an alternative supplement with more protein (an actual ration balancer, as opposed to what I use now) to see if that helped his feet at all. I picked some up today, so we’ll see if that makes any difference. I also put him on Farrier’s Formula (yeah, I know, I’m DESPERATE) about two weeks ago. No obvious difference yet, but hope springs eternal, right?

Frankly, I’m running out of feed options. It’s pretty clear that he’s very sensitive to changes in feed. If sugar/starch is causing the thin soles and therefore the lameness, the only way I can get his total NSCs lower is to soak his hay. But his hay is only 8.8% NSCs, so I’m not sure how much of a benefit it would really be. Besides, I feed free-choice hay, and soaking hay for everyone is not terribly practical.

Does anyone else have any suggestions? About the only thing I haven’t done is to send off the hay and beet pulp analysis tags to an equine nutrition place and have them mix up a custom supplement. Hell, maybe I should try it?

The Plan for Saga's feet

Thank you everyone who commented about my last, rather depressed post about what Saga's foot looked like under the shoe. I appreciate all of your collective advice!

Yesterday evening I took Saga over to my neighbor-farrier and had him pull Saga's other shoe. There's no way my regular farrier could get out until next week to put the other shoe on anyway, so I figured, what the heck. We'll try barefoot again - with a few important changes - and monitor things carefully.

My vet comes out for annual stuff tomorrow, so we'll take new x-rays of his feet to see if there's been any change in sole depth. I'm guessing that there hasn't been, but it'll be good to know.

I'm changing Saga's feed from Triple Crown Light to Triple Crown 30% for Grass Hay. It's a 30% protein ration balancer that's specifically formulated for horses on mixed hay. I don't know if it'll help, but the TCL doesn't seem to be doing us any favors, so we'll try something different and see where that gets us. I'll continue on with his flax and MgO supplement, as well as the probiotics and the feed-through fly control. He also gets unmolassesed beet pulp 2x/day, which is doing a great job of helping him maintain weight without pouring a lot of grain into him.

I'm exploring another supplement option, but we'll try the TC 30% for a month and see how he's doing before tweaking anything else.

I'm also going to be MUCH more careful about booting him. He won't get boots for turnout, but the track is mostly dirt with a few small rocks here and there. I'm taking him for short walks (less than a mile) on the tarmac without boots, to help his feet wear a bit. I'm also hand-walking on soft ground. Anything longer than that, under saddle, and/or on rougher ground, and he'll get boots. I don't want to chance bruising his soles this early in the game.

 LF. Notice how much the toe has worn after just two short hand walks - less than a mile each on tarmac, plus about 1/2 mile on soft ground.

 The frog is starting to shed, and the toe callus is wearing a bit.

 RF. It's wearing more on the outside edge than on the inside, and you can see how the coronet band is pushed up more on that side too. I'm guessing that's related... interesting.

RF. It looks better overall than the LF, I think. When he was barefoot before, this foot had the better landing, although he tended to be consistently shorter on this foot on hard ground. This foot also has minor changes in the bone (de-ossification, maybe?) on the outside.

I realize from the pictures that his feet are far from ideal - long toes, bull nose, flared walls, high bars, false sole, coronet band pushed up (did I miss anything, haha?!). HOWEVER, I am not going to go crazy trimming him right now. Instead, I'm doing the hand walks, and I'm hoping to get some pea gravel for the track this weekend. I want to give his feet a chance to adjust themselves before going crazy. Right now that hoof wall is keeping his sole up off the ground, and the false sole is also affording him protection. I don't want to take that away from him all at once; I'd rather give nature a chance to figure things out a little before I help it along. I don't expect that he'll be self-trimming because I can't provide him with that sort of workload, but I do expect that his feet will adjust a little bit on their own.

So, there you have it. Fingers crossed that I can manage him better this time around. It may be he'll always need boots for anything other than the track or soft ground, or shoes for the hunting/jousting season - and I'm OK with that. I just want him comfortable without compromising his feet.

Hay analysis

The hay analysis for my 420 (now closer to 380) bales of hay, imported from Canada, is in. YAY!

Below are the percent of total (%) and grams/pound (g/lb) values of the hay, from Equi-Analytical. The values in the Recommended Daily Dose column also come from Equi-Analytical, and are based on a 1100 lb horse in light work.

The final column, Daily Intake (High/Low), shows how much of each nutrient each horse gets per day, based on roughly 20 lbs of forage per day. I've also noted whether or not they're getting enough of each nutrient by using HIGH (meaning yes, they're getting plenty), or LOW (meaning they might need a supplement).

Nutrient	%	g/lb	Recommended Daily Dose	Daily Intake (High/Low)
Crude Protein	13.4	60.7	820 g	1214 g/ day HIGH
Estimated Lysine	.52	2.4	29 g	48 g/day HIGH
Water Soluable Carbs	7.2	32.8		GOOD
ESC (simple sugars)	4.8	21.6		GOOD
Starch	1.6	7.0		GOOD
Non Fiber Carb. (NFC)	13.3	60.1		Unk
Crude Fat	1.9	8.8		GOOD
Calcium	1.02	4.63	25 g	92 g/day VERY HIGH
Phosphorus	.28	1.29	17.8 g	25.8 g/day HIGH
Magnesium	.17	.79	17.8 g	15.8 g/day LOW
Potassium	1.94	8.81	31 g	176.2 g/day VERY HIGH
Sodium	.027	.122	25.1 g	Not reported

A couple of things to note here:

• NSC (which is what I'm so concerned about for Saga's feet) is equal to WSC + Starch. In the case of my hay, that's 8.8%, well below the 10% I was hoping for. Hurrah! (Please, please tell me I did that math right.)
• Nobody's hurting for protein around here!
• Magnesium is a tad bit low, but they are already getting a magnesium oxide supplement. I've decreased that to 1 tbsp/day, so they're probably getting a bit extra, but not much.
• Although Sodium is not reported, I'm not terribly concerned. The boys have free access to loose salt, and since I have to refill it regularly, I know they're making use of it. :) 
• They are getting a LOT of Calcium. Worse, the Calcium:Phosphorous ratio, which should be roughly 1:1 or even 2:1, is more like 3.5:1. Supposedly horses are OK up to 6:1, so maybe I shouldn't panic? The literature seems to agree that as long as the ratio does not fall BELOW 1:1, I'm OK. Well then, I won't panic. Yet.
• They are also getting a lot of Potassium. However, the literature says that most forage is between 1-2% dry matter in K (at 1.94, we're right in there), so horses generally get way more than they need with no adverse effects. Well OK then, I guess we're fine.

Here's the rest of the nutrients (separated out since they are reported in ppm):

Nutrient	ppm	mg/lb	Recommended Daily Dose	Daily Intake (High/Low)
Iron	203	92	335 mg	1840 mg/day VERY HIGH
Zinc	20	9	335 mg	180 mg/day LOW
Copper	13	6	84 mg	120 mg/day HIGH
Manganese	91	41	335 mg	820 mg/day VERY HIGH
Molybdenum	1.2	.5	Unk 5-8 ppm	10 mg/day HIGH

More thoughts:

• I should probably look into a zinc supplement.
• HOLY CRAP they are getting a LOT of Iron. Fortunately it doesn't appear that it's toxic; so I'm not going to panic.
• They are also getting a lot of Manganese, but it's supposedly one of the least toxic minerals. Again, no need for panic.

I wish I knew how much Selenium was in this, but it wasn't reported for some reason.

So, overall, the hay looks pretty good! I can supplement a little for Mg and Z and get them where they should be, but otherwise they don't really need anything extra in their diets.

The question is, should I continue to give them the tiny bit of vitamin/mineral supplement they are currently receiving? I think I might, since it has some extra stuff (namely vitamins A, E, and D) in it. I'll continue to give beet pulp to Cash and Saga since it's doing a good job of keeping the weight on them, and of course the ground flax. Otherwise, the feeding program around here seems pretty reasonable!

What do you think? Any suggestions on things I should change up?