Any ideas for a good Iron Tonic

Gilbey

Gilbey

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I have spoken to my vet today after a routine blood test on my Grand Prix dressage horse and the red blood cell count is low. Everything else fine. He has recommended a good Iron Tonic and Haemolytan (which I have and use on another horse). He has also advised that the horse takes a holiday with light work only (which is fine) and we retest in 6 weeks time. My question is can anyone recommend a tried and tested Iron Tonic? The horse is a bit faddy about his food if it tastes 'odd'!! Thanks for reading this. :)
 
I understand that anaemia in horses can also be caused by low copper, which is made even worse by adding iron to the diet. Has your vet considered this and ruled it out?

It not, it might be wise to test your forage/grazing for low copper levels or inflated iron, manganese and/or molybdenum levels, which can all affect copper absorption, before you supplement iron. Or perhaps take advice on supplementing high levels of copper as well as iron.
 
yes our grazing has been checked also the horse has had a hair sample tested too for above level minerals and heavy metals. All are fine :) and our vet also has the results. Also this horse only has hand grazing so doesn't eat much grass at all. Thanks for your interest and comments.
 
Gilbey said:
yes our grazing has been checked also the horse has had a hair sample tested too for above level minerals and heavy metals. All are fine :) and our vet also has the results. Also this horse only has hand grazing so doesn't eat much grass at all. Thanks for your interest and comments.
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That's good :) For our interest, has your vet given you any clues as to why your horse might have got anaemia?
 
I'd echo the suggestion of checking copper levels in the diet as a possible cause of the anaemia.

Iron is apparently a very oversupplemented mineral, and on a hay/grass diet is usually present in higher quantities than needed.

Did you have the horse's forage tested as well as the grazing? It may be that the hay/haylage has different mineral levels to the (restricted) grazing, so well worth checking out if you've not done that already.

What were the iron and copper concentrations in the grazing? For a 500kg horse in moderate exercise, the National Research Council recommends a total of 112.5mg per day copper, and 450mg per day of iron.

It's easy enough to work out approximately what your horse will be receiving is he's on almost a totally hay (or haylage) ration. If you don't weigh his forage, then work on the basis of him eating 2.5% of body weight in dry matter per day, so all you have to do is multiply the mg/kg value for each mineral on the forage analysis by 10 (to take account of the fact the hay will be about 80% dry matter, and he'll be eating about 12.5kg hay per day), and that will tell you whether your horse is getting enough copper and iron from the forage alone.

That's a wordy way of saying just do:

(mg/kg on forage analysis) X 10 = total amount of mineral per day from forage.

Of course, you'll also need to add in whatever levels he's getting from vit/min supplements etc, but at least this should give you a reasonable idea of whether either is likely to be deficient.

The problem with oversupplementing iron is that the horse has no way to excrete unwanted iron, so it just accumulates in the liver over the horse's life and can become toxic.

Sarah
 
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