If you Google ‘supplements’, this is what you will find; ‘Food supplements are products in the form of pills, powders, drops, capsules or drinks and intended to supplement the daily diet. They contain vitamins, minerals or bioactive substances, both separately, such as in a vitamin C pill, or as a combination, such as in a multivitamin pill.’
There is an incredibly wide range of supplements on the market, but does my horse actually need them? If so, what and how much does my horse need? Can I also give too many Supplements?
I hope to be able to give you the answers to these questions here.
To meet your horse’s nutritional needs, suitable roughage is number one, of which a horse needs at least 1,5% of their body weight in dry matter.
Good, suitable roughage for horses contains:
Lots of fibre
Little energy
Little protein but all the essential amino acids
Sufficient vitamins and minerals, according to the horse’s needs
Is not dusty, mouldy or spoiled
Can you assume that if you feed this, the horse’s basic needs are covered?
Unfortunately not. The quality of the roughage is often not complete due to the depleted agricultural lands and our relatively one-sided cultivation of crops. We see that the roughage regularly has many deficiencies of minerals. Examples are sodium, selenium, zinc and magnesium.
A horse needs sufficient vitamins and minerals to keep their body healthy.
Yes, in most cases a horse needs extra vitamins and minerals.
Which and how many supplements does my horse need?
To find out how much your horse actually gets in vitamins and minerals, you should analyse the roughage, but given the relatively high costs in relation to the small batches of roughage, this is not always profitable. A Balancer could help you offer your horse the missing easily absorbable vitamins, minerals and probiotics. You feed relatively little Balancer compared to concentrates, but it does offer the right balance in vitamins and minerals in addition to your horse’s roughage needs. Now you have covered your horse’s basic needs.
But most horse owners expect more of their horse, for example dressage, jumping, endurance, driving and recreation. These horses therefore have an extra nutritional requirement to be able to perform well and to stay fit, happy and healthy. So you will first need to know how much energy your horse or pony uses to know how much extra suitable feed and supplements your horse needs.
In the Netherlands we have been using the EWpa system (Energy Value Horses) since 2005 to quantify the energy in horse feed. In addition, with this system you can determine how much energy your horse needs for the amount of work your horse does in a day. This allows you to calculate how much of each food your horse needs to meet their energy needs.
This is a complicated calculation and you will probably need many different jars of supplements to meet your horse’s nutritional needs. There are also Basics available on the market that provide your horse with the right nutrients in the right amounts and the right ratios.
Can I also give too many supplements?
The vitamins and minerals are supplementary feeds.
Many horses and ponies are fed too much concentrates (including mueslis). To get the necessary amount of vitamins (especially E) and minerals (zinc, copper, selenium) you have to feed many kilos of concentrates to meet these basic needs. This has a knock-on effect, if the horse or pony takes in more energy than they use there is an increased risk of many detrimental side effects that can lead to some very big problems.
There is also a lot of difference in quality in the range of supplements and it is not always clear why a particular supplement can claim to support a certain problem. It is understandable that you can no longer see the forest for the trees. Especially because the addition of supplements should be based on a thorough diet analysis. And in the case of health or behavioural problems, there should always be a diagnosis from the vet.
‘It doesn’t hurt to try’ is never a good mentality in giving your horse some supplements, and it certainly does not work that way. High concentrations of herbs or herbal tinctures do have an effect on the body. Horses should really only be given these under expert guidance. If you would like to know more about these risks, we recommend this book ‘The New Feeding Concept’.
Conclusion:
Feeding supplements is not a matter of buying and feeding a jar of supplements, but consciously knowing what your horse is getting and supplementing with vitamins, minerals and probiotics where necessary.
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