Balancer or vits and mins?

[Charlie007]

Tb 16.1hh 7 yo is currently on micronised linseed, dodson and horrell just grass chaff, emerald green grass nuts ( 0.5kg as bag recommends for horse in light work) ad lib hay 24/7. Do I need a bit or min supplement or balancer?? I don't want anything with fillers or magnesium.

 

[Tnavas]

A quality Balancer would be ideal.

 

[Charlie007]

A quality Balancer would be ideal.

Any recommendations??
Last week he was on TopSpec comprehensive balancer but it is Hugh in magnesium so trying to go back to basics. Need something that contains what he needs without all the extras.

 

[Tnavas]

Sorry Charlie007 I'm in NZ so have no knowledge of UK feeds

 

[LD&S]

If the minerals etc are out of balance in your forage a balancer will not change this.

 

[SEL]

Have a look at the Forage Plus range

 

[Tnavas]

If the minerals etc are out of balance in your forage a balancer will not change this.

It will - which is why it was invented - no forage will be 100% balanced - Unless you feed the absolute accurate amounts as advised. A Balancer which generally has additional Protien, vitamins and minerals will go a long way to reduce the inbalance.

 

[Goldenstar]

Have a look at the Forage Plus range

That's what I use .

 

[ycbm]

It will - which is why it was invented - no forage will be 100% balanced - Unless you feed the absolute accurate amounts as advised. A Balancer which generally has additional Protien, vitamins and minerals will go a long way to reduce the inbalance.

No, it won't.

I have land which is high in iron and manganese. If I fed a balancer which contained iron and manganese, I'd make the problems it causes even worse.

Most grazing in Britain seems to come out with analysis of high iron. For that reason, I would only ever recommend a balancer which has no iron and no manganese. But I think they all contain magnesium.

What's the problem with magnesium for your horse, OP?

 

[Tnavas]

No, it won't.

I have land which is high in iron and manganese. If I fed a balancer which contained iron and manganese, I'd make the problems it causes even worse.

Most grazing in Britain seems to come out with analysis of high iron. For that reason, I would only ever recommend a balancer which has no iron and no manganese. But I think they all contain magnesium.

What's the problem with magnesium for your horse, OP?

I'm sure that if the whole of the UK is high in Iron then I'm sure the manufacturers of the balancer will take that into account and ensure they don't overdose the horse on iron.

It is impossible to get the balance of minerals absolutely perfect you would have to be constantly having your feed analysed.

Horses got by very well in the past with a handful of salt and some Limestone flour, and some Epsom Salts in Spring.

 

[Exploding Chestnuts]

I'm sure that if the whole of the UK is high in Iron then I'm sure the manufacturers of the balancer will take that into account and ensure they don't overdose the horse on iron.

It is impossible to get the balance of minerals absolutely perfect you would have to be constantly having your feed analysed.

Horses got by very well in the past with a handful of salt and some Limestone flour, and some Epsom Salts in Spring.

Yes, but in the past my hunters got Equivite when in hard work, and all their food was organic, or grown with minimal fertiliser, they got broad bran from Cumbria, with lightly [freshly], rolled local oats, and chaff made from meadow hay. Racehorses got Australian oats! Heavy horses got sheaves of oats off the binder, they ground it all up in their massive mouths, and produced large quantities of nice clean droppings which were re-cycled.
In winter, we gave our hard worked RS horses molasses in their water buckets, which were galvanised steel, and probably high in iron. They had rock salt too.
In the past horses and ponies were grazed on old mixed pastures with herbs, farming practices were very different.
Magnesium is low in many UK soils, and I would always want to add it to the diet. I fed my itchy skin horse all year round after trying a mineral mix in winter, and it gave him a terrific dark coat all year round.

 

[JillA]

The term "Balancer" always makes me smile - what are you balancing??? Vitamins? Or minerals? Minerals need to be in the right ration to be useful, for example calcium and magnesium, too little of one inhibits the uptake of the other. Vitamins on the other hand you can buy by the bucketful and any surplus will be excreted..........if you want to waste your money
Shortage of vitamins will be indicated by physiological problems, such as poor horn quality (vitamin B - biotin) but minerals depend on what is available in grass or forage.
Forageplus do a generic supplement based on the average deficiencies found in forage samples across the UK - if testing isn't an option that would be the place to start.

 

[Tnavas]

The term "Balancer" always makes me smile - what are you balancing??? Vitamins? Or minerals? Minerals need to be in the right ration to be useful, for example calcium and magnesium, too little of one inhibits the uptake of the other. Vitamins on the other hand you can buy by the bucketful and any surplus will be excreted..........if you want to waste your money
Shortage of vitamins will be indicated by physiological problems, such as poor horn quality (vitamin B - biotin) but minerals depend on what is available in grass or forage.
Forageplus do a generic supplement based on the average deficiencies found in forage samples across the UK - if testing isn't an option that would be the place to start.

You cannot feed Vitamins by the bucket load, and not all are excreted, only the water soluble vitamins are excreted, the oil based vitamins are stored and can be overdosed.
A, D, E & K are oil based, so can be overdosed and dangerous

B group, C are water based and will be excreted.

 

[Charlie007]

Thanks for all your replies. I have sent forageplus an email to see what they suggest.

 

[ester]

I'm sure that if the whole of the UK is high in Iron then I'm sure the manufacturers of the balancer will take that into account and ensure they don't overdose the horse on iron.

It is impossible to get the balance of minerals absolutely perfect you would have to be constantly having your feed analysed.

Horses got by very well in the past with a handful of salt and some Limestone flour, and some Epsom Salts in Spring.

you'd think wouldn't you... they don't though! There is still a very small list of no iron supps.

I certainly wouldn't want to feed limestone flour here, our calcium is off the scale as it is!

I am always a bit confused by what constitutes a balancer as opposed to a vit/min supplement, it tends to be something that has been bulked up by other stuff so you feed it in cups rather than scoops so if you don't want bulking agents I'd go for the latter. What is the mag issue? They will all/should have mag in.

Fwiw my list of no iron vit/min supplements is currently:
forageplus, prohoof, equivita, equimins adv. complete - I feed the last one which also comes in pellet form.

 

[criso]

I'm sure that if the whole of the UK is high in Iron then I'm sure the manufacturers of the balancer will take that into account and ensure they don't overdose the horse on iron.

Except most of the major manufacturers don't - they include the RDA of the key minerals whether needed or not.

Then you have the companies like forageplus. progressive earth, healthy horse, equivita who take the approach that on most (though of course not all) forage in the UK comes back as low in magnesium, copper, zinc, so they include optimal levels of these and high in manganese, iron and calcium so skip these. Slightly more targetted but still an average as there will always be exceptions.

OP - I think you will struggle to find an off the shelf balancer that does not include magnesium as it's not common to be too high in Uk forage and you may have to mix your own. The companies I mentioned above also sell straight minerals.

 

[Leo Walker]

Equivita will make you a bespoke balancer. They make it up to your specifications then put it on the website so its easy to reorder. They dont charge extra for it either, its costed out the same as their others.

 

[ycbm]

I'm sure that if the whole of the UK is high in Iron then I'm sure the manufacturers of the balancer will take that into account and ensure they don't overdose the horse on iron.

So why don't they?

It is impossible to get the balance of minerals absolutely perfect you would have to be constantly having your feed analysed.

No it's not impossible. I blood tested the horses once a year until I got them perfect. If I'm in doubt about a change of forage, then I will blood test again.

I supplemented copper to the levels in Forageplus and Progressive Earth products to counteract iron and manganese. I also use three times as muchh zinc as copper, as recommended by nutritionists. In spite of this, I still had high manganese and iron levels in blood. I increased the copper and zinc and hey presto, the next tests were in the correct range.

Horses got by very well in the past with a handful of salt and some Limestone flour, and some Epsom Salts in Spring.

Except that they didn't get by, they were got rid. If horses had severe behavioural difficulties, got laminitis, tied up all the time, etc. nobody tried to work out if their diet was balanced, they were shot.

And they were fed straights and old meadow hay full of multiple grass and herb species. These days they are fed packaged feeds and hay/haylage often made out of a single species, usually rygrass which was designed to feed lactating cows with enormous energy needs. To make that safe for horses to eat, it often has to be soaked, promptly losing all the water soluble vits and mins.

It really isn't safe to give diet advice to people unless you've done your research Tnavas.

 

[popsdosh]

The best way of telling is to have a blood profile done and take it from there! All this send off here take advice here ,they are all trying to sell you something. Over the last 20yrs plus we have been over loaded with everybody trying to sell horse owners a supplement for this a supplement to counteract the imbalance in the one your feeding.
In those 20 yrs horses have also IMO become riddled with all sorts of intolerance's and digestive upsets make of that what you will.

 

[JillA]

The best way of telling is to have a blood profile done and take it from there!

Or test your forage if it all comes from the same source. As a major % of the diet that is the best place to look for deficiencies - that and the soil on which the grass your horses are grazing. I know mine is very low in Mg and selenium plus iodine, and I am lucky in that my forage comes off the same soil.

 

[Exploding Chestnuts]

Or test your forage if it all comes from the same source. As a major % of the diet that is the best place to look for deficiencies - that and the soil on which the grass your horses are grazing. I know mine is very low in Mg and selenium plus iodine, and I am lucky in that my forage comes off the same soil.

Low in selenium, Se, is OK, within limits, ditto manganese, Mn, but as far as I am aware excess magnesium, Mg, is excreted, so there is no issue with Mg in the feed. To me, it is essential to have plenty of magnesium in the feed when horses are in the UK, there may be some soils which are high in this mineral, but not many.
Not all minerals are the same, in that some sources are more bio available than others, eg limestone flour is not necessarily the best source of Ca, from that point of view.
There is a relationship between minerals so that it is a bit of a black art, unless you are going to monitor all intake and blood test regularly. I am not even sure just how precise the recommended blood levels are, how does one know the optimum?

 

[Tnavas]

So why don't they?



No it's not impossible. I blood tested the horses once a year until I got them perfect. If I'm in doubt about a change of forage, then I will blood test again.

I supplemented copper to the levels in Forageplus and Progressive Earth products to counteract iron and manganese. I also use three times as muchh zinc as copper, as recommended by nutritionists. In spite of this, I still had high manganese and iron levels in blood. I increased the copper and zinc and hey presto, the next tests were in the correct range.



Except that they didn't get by, they were got rid. If horses had severe behavioural difficulties, got laminitis, tied up all the time, etc. nobody tried to work out if their diet was balanced, they were shot.

And they were fed straights and old meadow hay full of multiple grass and herb species. These days they are fed packaged feeds and hay/haylage often made out of a single species, usually ryegrass which was designed to feed lactating cows with enormous energy needs. To make that safe for horses to eat, it often has to be soaked, promptly losing all the water soluble vits and mins.

It really isn't safe to give diet advice to people unless you've done your research Tnavas.

I have been feeding horses for several decades, not just my own but other peoples as well, in yards of over 100 or more. I know how to feed. I've not had to have a vet to my horses for well over 20years. You obviously have plenty of money to spend on analysing your horses! The majority don't. My school horses lived on rye grass paddocks, irrigated and fertilised so quality grazing - the key to preventing problems was exercise. Horses these days are not fed and exercised sensibly. Most fed commercial mixes, mine still have oats and meadow hay chaff, plus Lucerne.

And to be honest we rarely had problems with the horses, they stayed healthy and when the average age of my 32 riding school horses was in the 20's I can say that you are wrong horses were not just bumped off. True we didn't waste money on injured horses if they were likely to take years to recover or just be paddock mates.

 

[Tnavas]

Or test your forage if it all comes from the same source. As a major % of the diet that is the best place to look for deficiencies - that and the soil on which the grass your horses are grazing. I know mine is very low in Mg and selenium plus iodine, and I am lucky in that my forage comes off the same soil.

Here in NZ you would be needing to test every bale of hay if our local feed store is anything to go buy - Its the size or about 4 indoor school put together. One layer of hay in the massive stacks could be from a different farmer than the next layer. We all tend to know that the oat chaff comes from the South Island from off the Canterbury Plains, but each farmer who supplies it may have done different things to their soil. There fore every delivery is different

Having your feed analysed is a overkill. Blood testing your horse if you suspect a problem is sensible.

Selenium is a very essential mineral, acting as antioxidant, in horses it can easily be overdosed, leading to patchy sweating, Diarrhoea, and colic. Damage to heart and lungs, and splits in the hoof wall around the coronary band. For horses the required amount is minimal - it is one animal that cannot tolerate high levels of Selenium.

 

[Cortez]

Despite the best efforts of the feed manufacturers to make it seem like a dangerous minefield, feeding really isn't rocket science (nice mixed metaphors there....). If your horses look and perform well, then you are probably feeding adequately.

If the horse has a poor hair coat, bad hoof quality, pot belly, poor muscle tone, then there may be a nutritional cause. But how many horses really look like this? Really? It seems to me that OVER nutrition is a far more common problem, and that is definitely the cause of obesity and unruly behaviour, combined with lack of proper exercise and training.

If I was worried about the condition of my horses the very first thing I would do is analyse bloods, soil and forage. Only then, and after consultation with a vet (not a feed manufacturer, whose very existance depends on making you buy stuff) would I start tinkering with the min/vit levels of my horse's diet.

 

[Exploding Chestnuts]

I had a lifetime in horses and have a good eye for condition, my horses were always the best looking in the yard, ............. in my opinion!
But I only took the diet side seriously when I had no access to old meadow hay and good plain horse feed, then I moved on to micronised linseed, non molassed s/beet plus minerals.

 

[ycbm]

Tnavas, anyone who can't afford ten quid a year for each key mineral they want analysed in their horse's blood is in no position to own a horse.

And you say you know all about feeding but you can't keep your own horse working barefoot, yet you haven't considered mineral balancing for her, afaik.

Rye grass is not 'quality' grazing for horses. They were evolved to do much better on mixed, rougher, grazing. Ryegrass only became standard for grazing after being introduced to feed lactating cows which require enormous amounts of calories to produce commercial amounts of milk. This could well account in itself for why your mare has to be shod.

Every year that I let my previously ryegrass field go unfertilised and revert to an upland wild flower meadow my horses look better and are easier to keep without shoes or worrying about their weight.

 

[Buddy'sMum]

Last week he was on TopSpec comprehensive balancer but it is Hugh in magnesium so trying to go back to basics.

No, it's not - 0.6% Mg is not high at the feeding rate TopSpec recommend.

 

[Tnavas]

Rye grass is not 'quality' grazing for horses. They were evolved to do much better on mixed, rougher, grazing. Ryegrass only became standard for grazing after being introduced to feed lactating cows which require enormous amounts of calories to produce commercial amounts of milk. This could well account in itself for why your mare has to be shod.

My horse is 13 years old - I've owned her since a foal - she has had 1 set of shoes in her life! She wore them for a week, it was summer, the ground was dry and hard and she was in intense work - her foot growth wasn't matching the wear and tear.

She has awesome feet, the farrier often remarks on them. Its the one and only time in her life that she was sore, barely lame.

 

[ester]

You've not had a vet to any of your many horses in over 20 years, for anything? Wow!

The thing is this is where the 'here in NZ' mantra starts to break down, of course it isn't practical for everyone to have a consistent supply of forage worth testing - and JillA specifically says if it comes from one source! - a feed store is not one source is it, a field is. Plenty of people over here graze and make hay from the same source, myself included. Now you might think it is overkill I have found it quite interesting myself.

 

[ycbm]

My horse is 13 years old - I've owned her since a foal - she has had 1 set of shoes in her life! She wore them for a week, it was summer, the ground was dry and hard and she was in intense work - her foot growth wasn't matching the wear and tear.

She has awesome feet, the farrier often remarks on them. Its the one and only time in her life that she was sore, barely lame.

I apologise. I thought from previous posts you had written that the shoes went on and had stayed on. Since they were on for one cycle only, it would appear that she never needed them. Maybe she just needed you to increase the workload more slowly than you did.

Can we talk about why you consider rye grass to be quality grazing for horses when it causes so many problems in this country? Maybe your climate is better suited to it growing without excessive levels of sugar in it?