Advice on whether I should feed lysine please?

[lucymay9701]

Hi everyone, I would be grateful if anyone could advise me on this please. I have a 15.3hh thoroughbred mare who is 25 years old and retired. I have been looking into her diet and eventually decided to take the advice of the top spec nutritionist. I like the fact that they don’t have any vitamins or minerals added to their feeds so that I can add my own and if her hard feed needs adjusting it won’t affect the amount of added vitamins and minerals she’s getting.

So the advice for her winter diet was to start off on:

2kg top spec cool condition cubes (she has 3 feeds a day so this is divided) and to increase or decrease as necessary with her weight.
Top chop lite (although she’ll be on the dengie hi-fi molasses free as she preferred that one!)
Speedibeet
All in one multi supplement.

In the summer she won’t be on the cool condition cubes, but she will still be on 2 feeds a day of the dengie hi fi molasses free and the top spec fibre plus cubes. This won’t be a significant amount in comparison to her winter feeds though.

I have looked into different vitamin and mineral supplements that would be best for her as she has slight anaemia and the spec of the top spec all in one supplement did seem one of the best. However she didn’t like the powder so instead is on the red cell pellets.
However the red cell has no methionine or lysine in it.

Does anyone know if I would need to add these? I am thinking in the winter whilst my horse is on the cool condition cubes she will get plenty of lysine and other proteins from the soya in those but am wondering if I should add lysine (and/or methionine) in the summer? I would be grateful for anyone’s thoughts on this and what amount would be the usual to feed her if I was to add it in the summer? Alternatively does anyone think she wouldn’t need lysine added even in the summer? Previously I have always thought that if I feed a vitamin and mineral supplement this would be fine but it seems some contain lysine/methionine and other don’t so now I’m not sure.

She is on Timothy horsehage all year round and will go through about half the amount in the summer. (she eats about 7kg timothy horsehage a day in the winter) This has 8-9 % protein. I’m getting a bit confused as don’t want to over feed protein but thinking her requirements will be higher now she’s older. She also has borderline cushings disease.

Thank you for any help
Lucy x

 

[lucymay9701]

BUMP

 

[sbloom]

A couple of things srping to mind that I'm afraid dont' answer your question but...I'm no fan of Red Cell, are the pellets any better than the tonic? Search on here for negative thoughts about Red Cell. And do you know why she's anaemic? There is usually a cause and it's not normally what you think - there is lots of iron in forage, and the cause is often a copper deficiency or other imbalance related to iron but not iron, or could even be worms etc. The risk of iron toxicity is real (I have a customer with a liver damaged horse from a batch of hay that was off the scale in terms of its iron content) so you may be better avoiding high iron feeds?

 

[lucymay9701]

A couple of things srping to mind that I'm afraid dont' answer your question but...I'm no fan of Red Cell, are the pellets any better than the tonic? Search on here for negative thoughts about Red Cell. And do you know why she's anaemic? There is usually a cause and it's not normally what you think - there is lots of iron in forage, and the cause is often a copper deficiency or other imbalance related to iron but not iron, or could even be worms etc. The risk of iron toxicity is real (I have a customer with a liver damaged horse from a batch of hay that was off the scale in terms of its iron content) so you may be better avoiding high iron feeds?

Hi, My horse was just found to be slightly anaemic when the vet was last here and the vet recommended pink powder or red cell. I wasn't impressed with the ingredients in the liquid as it was full of rubbish and the pellets look better but are the same spec. I've gone round and round in circles with her vitamin and mineral supplement. I read about making sure copper and zinc are good and b vitamins with anaemia but I compared so many and couldn't find anything 100% perfect. She used to be on the baileys top line conditioning cubes and mollichaff veteran which both had iron added but now her diet is changed there is no iron in her hard feed. She'd only be on half red cell as she's not in work so that is 300mg iron, the full amount of 600mg iron did seem really high but I have been wondering if 300mg is too high for her. She is also not so keen on powder and the only other pellet I could find was equimins but when I last bought equimins the ingredients weren't printed on the tub which I wasn't keen on. Also thy're lower in copper and zinc and B vitamins compared to red cell but do have less iron (150mg)if fed at half the amount but if I gave her the equimins pellets at full amount to increase the copper etc the iron would be the same amount as the red cell pellets anyway. Its all so confusing but I figured half the amount of red cell (with her not being in work) and no iron added to her hard feed may be OK. I don't know if its the right decision but running out of options! When I was comparing specs of different supps its amazing the differences - you'd think they'd be similar. Some seem too high in selenium to me and others too hig in vitamin A, its allseems very complicated! x

 

[lucymay9701]

Change of plan - the previous post got me thinking about the iron, copper content again and about the possibility of red cell being too high in iron. So I'm going to try different ways of making the top spec supplement more appetising for her eg adding fenugreek! If this works then the problem of lysine etc wiil be solved as its added anyway!x

 

[criso]

Have you looked at either the Progressive Horse (ebay) or Forageplus balancers. They have good levels of copper and zinc, no iron and depending on the formulation contain lysine.

You might have to build up to the full dosage very slowly to get her to eat it but worth doing in the long run.

 

[lucymay9701]

Have you looked at either the Progressive Horse (ebay) or Forageplus balancers. They have good levels of copper and zinc, no iron and depending on the formulation contain lysine.

You might have to build up to the full dosage very slowly to get her to eat it but worth doing in the long run.

Thankyou - i'll take a look at those x

 

[CBFan]

Hi everyone, I would be grateful if anyone could advise me on this please. I have a 15.3hh thoroughbred mare who is 25 years old and retired. I have been looking into her diet and eventually decided to take the advice of the top spec nutritionist. I like the fact that they don’t have any vitamins or minerals added to their feeds so that I can add my own and if her hard feed needs adjusting it won’t affect the amount of added vitamins and minerals she’s getting.

I find this quite worrying!! Of course if you change the ammounts you are feeding, it will change the amount of vits and mins she is recieving.... All feeds contain vits and mins of varying levels, so adjusting the quantity of feed means adjusting the levels of vits and mins..

If you want to be sure about the levels of vits and mins she is getting I would consider getting a forage analysis done and diet plan written. It will save you a whole heap of headache in the longrun and will answer all your worries with regards to the anaemia.

Also consider feeding some natural tonics like hawthorn to help the anaemia.

 

[lucymay9701]

I find this quite worrying!! Of course if you change the ammounts you are feeding, it will change the amount of vits and mins she is recieving.... All feeds contain vits and mins of varying levels, so adjusting the quantity of feed means adjusting the levels of vits and mins..

If you want to be sure about the levels of vits and mins she is getting I would consider getting a forage analysis done and diet plan written. It will save you a whole heap of headache in the longrun and will answer all your worries with regards to the anaemia.

Also consider feeding some natural tonics like hawthorn to help the anaemia.

Hi, Thanks for your reply. What I was meaning with the vitamins and minerals is that they aren't added to the top spec feeds - therefore if her amount needs increasing or decreasing due to her weight the added vitamins wouldn't be affected. She would have a stable amount of her supplement for this. For example baileys top line cubes have iron etc added so if she needed her amount increased or decreased the added iron and other things would be also be increased or decreased but this is not the case with the top spec feeds which was one of my reasons for choosing them. The top spec lady was really helpful and she would have the full amount of the top spec supplement for her vitamins and minerals (if I can tempt her to eat it in some way!) She is on a stable amount of 2kg cool condition cubes (split into 3 feeds a day) but if she lost weight she would need more and it would at least mean by giving her more there was no extra added iron, although I realise things occur naturally in feeds but if she needed it for her weight it would be increased and she would still be on the same amount of the supplement.

Yes the forage analysis would be a good idea - I'll have a look at that and the hawthorn.

Thanks again x