A huge variety of horse supplements is available, and that variety appears to be developing regularly. Knowing which are appropriate and best for your horse can seem impossible. The following information is designed to provide all the statistics you need to determine whether your horse needs extra nutritional vitamins and minerals and, if so, which is the best choice for your horse.
Does Your Horse Need A Supplement?
Your horse may be getting everything it needs from its diet. It’s necessary to make certain that any dietary supplements you feed your horse benefit their health, and there are a few useful questions to ask yourself: Does my horse have a condition I need to treat? Is my horse getting old? Is my horse on a limited eating routine and lacking vital nutrients? Is my horse being exercised heavily?
If your reply to these questions is yes, it may be worth considering supplementation for your horse. Before including or altering the supplement, we recommend speaking to your vet or an equine nutritionist to ensure you’re feeding the best alternative for your horse. All horses are different, and what works for one horse may not work for another.
It can take some time to discover the best answer for your horse. Whether your horse requires calming supplements, something to resource digestion, assist in retaining healthful hooves, or help with ageing joints, monitoring your horse to see how they respond to their supplemented diet is essential. It’s best not to change your horse’s food regimen regularly; however, at the same time, there is no point continuing to feed a supplement that is having no beneficial effect.
A wide variety of horse dietary supplements are on the market, available in several varieties, including powders, liquids, pills, and pellets. Some provide an instant improvement, while others are designed to build up in the horse’s system over time.
What Can Dietary Supplements Help With?
Horse dietary supplements can help with a wide variety of health issues and overall performance needs and promote a healthful, balanced diet. Here is a complete variety of dietary supplements, joint health solutions, digestive health supplements, alternatives to help overall performance, and vitamins for healthful hooves.
- Joint Supplements For Horses
You may need to feed horse joint supplements for several reasons, including particular health conditions, to help an ageing horse or to preserve comfort and overall performance in a sports horse.
Joint dietary supplements for horses incorporate vitamins tested to help joint flexibility and decrease inflammation. For performance horses, these focus on restoring tendons and ligaments to ensure the horse is comfortable after strenuous exercise and to limit any long-term harm to the joints.
Supplements for the joints can additionally be used to keep horses at ease as they age and address their unique health concerns in older horses. Joint dietary supplements for horses with arthritis, for instance, focus on soothing the joints, ensuring comfort and reduced pain while supporting the restoration of tendons and ligaments so that your horse can move more freely again. A joint supplement is generally a part of the wider management of an arthritic horse to maintain them comfortable and happy.
- Hoof Supplements
Keeping your horse’s hooves healthful is vital. The high quality of a horse’s hoof is closely influenced by genetics and diet, while local weather and hoof care can also have an impact. Your horse’s eating regimen can substantially impact the high quality of their hooves, and both farriers and nutritionists agree that supplementation can assist in enhancing hoof quality.
Poor quality horn, cracking in the hooves, and gradual growth can all be symptoms of a dietary deficiency in your horse’s diet. The good news is that feeding targeted horse hoof dietary supplements can assist in tackling this, and enhancements in the hoof quality will be evident. Addressing the issue from the inside first and then supporting this with external hoof care, using lotions or oils will ensure your horse’s hooves are healthy in the long run.
- Digestive Health
Good digestive health is the key to a happy, healthy horse. Digestion supplements aid with various needs, including providing a full spectrum of nutritional vitamins and minerals for a healthy gut and probiotics for intestine stability. They also ensure proper do-ers have all the nutrition required and keep senior horses in the best condition.
Your horse’s digestion system affects everything else in the body, so horse gut supplements are the best place to begin to enhance your horse’s overall well-being. Balancing the good and bad bacteria in the intestine will support digestive function and efficiency, and many digestion supplements can be fed alongside more targeted supplements for different areas of the horse’s body.
Digestive supplements are usually prebiotics and probiotics or more focused support for ongoing digestive issues such as Equine Gastric Ulcer Syndrome; many on the market mix both. They typically are powders or pellets but can also be liquids.
- Performance
Horses that perform at excessive degrees or have heavy workout regimes can require extra dietary support to keep them performing at their best. Horse performance supplements give the dietary guide needed by equine athletes, whether that’s an energy boost or horse electrolytes, to aid healing and replenish lost salts.
Vitamin E is a popular supplement for horses in excessive stages of work to aid with muscle soreness and the immune system; it is a principal antioxidant in horses, particularly during exercise without the correct levels of free radicals, which can damage your horse’s cells.
Vitamin E is best sourced from green pastures. Horses that can benefit from Vitamin E dietary supplements include those in heavy work, those kept stable without access to grazing (green pasture is the fine source), and horses on limited grazing or poor grazing.
Electrolytes for horses are a way to help replenish body salts lost by the horse in heavy exercise or on hot days; they can also be mixed with energy sources to act like a horse sports drink. Electrolytes can be bought as powders, liquids or gels. Powders can be mixed in horse feed, while liquids can be mixed into feed or syringed into the horse’s mouth.
What To Consider When Buying Horse Supplements
The main thing to consider before adding anything to your horse’s diet is whether your horse requires additional vitamins and minerals in the first place. If your horse already receives everything it needs from its diet, adding anything else is unnecessary. If your horse has a particular health condition or a specific area that you believe requires targeted support, supplements may be the ideal choice.
We recommend speaking to an equine nutritionist to find the best solution for your horse. Many feed providers and horse supplement brands offer free helplines that you can call to discuss your horse’s individual needs. These are a great place to start. It can be greatly useful as this will give you a better idea of the products and the specific, targeted support they offer.
To Sum Up:
Always choose a reputable brand when feeding a new supplement. This ensures full traceability of all the ingredients used and guarantees everything in the supplement is of the highest quality. Not all horse supplements are legal for competition use, so if this is a concern, always ensure you check the regulations and ingredients you are using carefully to be sure you are compliant.
If you are interested in buying horse supplements, contact us today at 0330 058 1960, info@winged.horse, or simply visit our website: https://winged.horse/.