Balancers, are they essential?

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Horsekaren

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I am thinking of introducing a balancer to my boys diet.
Is there any point? I keep reading the ingredients and think to myself they didn't have that in the wild why do they need it now.

I currently feed - grazing in the day 6-6 / night - Hay, 2 handfuls of hifi and a mag calmer.

I am questioning his diet because when moving field for new pasture he really struggles to settle down and suffers with belly aches ect.

Would a balancer help?
 
Not essential, no.

J has a balancer because our fields aren't rested and so we don't have the best grazing and I'm sure it's deficient. I haven't had an analysis but he gets a general supplement.

ETA: May I ask why he's moving fields so much?
If you're worried you could start on a supplement, or just a gut balancer and see if this makes a difference, if it doesn't then you don't have to continue feeding.
 
Lindylouanne said:
There's no point adding a balancer unless you know what the horse is deficient in. We had our grass/forage analysed by Forage Plus and I know we are high in iron because of the soil and now feed accordingly.
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Forage Plus and Progressive Earth etc all do balancers that balance to average UK grazing, which is nearly always high in iron. For a lot of people its not feasible to have grass and or hay analysed
 
I give my 38 year old Topspec Senior lite Balancer and at the time his tail was falling out, after being on the balancer it stopped and started to regrow. He is on Topspec fibre plus cubes which is just fibre nothing and the supplement at the time I didn't know didn't have everything in he needed, my vet thinks its the protein in the balancer that has helped.

Equivite vit and min supplement is a good thing to start with but if he has tummy problems perhaps pink powder or I've heard protexin recommended
 
I started feeding TopSpec balancer a year or so ago (for my 19yo IDx). I found it has completely changed his shape, colour, coat, mane, etc. He now has a much better confirmation (presumably related to Protein levels, and the ability to build muscle when worked), he shines silver not grey, his mane is thicker and grows more quickly.

Is it essential? Perhaps not. But from my experience I wouldn't stop feeding it now. :)

(Prior to Topspec he was fed cool mix, hifi, oil, salt and an all-round powdered vitamin supplement).
 
Unless you hose is getting the exact amount of hard food for his size, which we all know rarely happens then id say yes a balancer is essential.

Yes a specific one for you horse after tests would be ideal.

But i use progressive earth supplements, they do a few all round balancers, so which one you need depending on your horse.

Id also say the magnesium calmer wouldnt be needed if the diet was balanced.
 
No it isn't neccesary. There's no point giving something unless you know it's needed. If a horse was truly deficient in vitamins or minerals it would be showing symptoms of illness.
I don't know why his stomach gets unsettled when moving pasture but I wouldn't treat something without knowing what may or may not be wrong.
 
Of course balancers arent essential., just the marketeers wish you to think you are a bad person for not fulfilling your horses perceived neeeds !

Its a wonder the horse has ever survived the evolutionary steps without them!

I feed balancers just to give a minimal amount of concentrated nutrition so my horses make best use of their grazing and forage certainly feeding it on top of anything else is a total waste.
 
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Leo Walker said:
Forage Plus and Progressive Earth etc all do balancers that balance to average UK grazing, which is nearly always high in iron. For a lot of people its not feasible to have grass and or hay analysed
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No the soil in your part of the world may be higher in iron however the forage is not . It is certainly not the norm across the UK .
Not sure how they explain what detrimental effect this may have on your horse.
 
popsdosh said:
No the soil in your part of the world may be higher in iron however the forage is not . It is certainly not the norm across the UK .
Not sure how they explain what detrimental effect this may have on your horse.
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PD Forageplus have tested forage for years and found that most forage grown for British grazing is high in iron. The iron is taken up by receptors in the gut which should be taking up copper. That causes copper deficiency problems like coat bleaching at the harmless end, and insulin regulation problems leading to poor foot quality in many horses, and laminitis at worst. This research has been done by a world expert on equine nutrition, Dr Eleanor Kellen. Its online if you want to read it.

My grazing and water supply is sky high in iron and manganese (which does the same to copper as iron does). If I did not supplement copper (and zinc to balance with the copper) most of my horses would be unable to work barefoot. For years I had been masking low grade laminitis with shoes, and I suspect that's true of much of the UK.
 
ycbm said:
PD Forageplus have tested forage for years and found that most forage grown for British grazing is high in iron. The iron is taken up by receptors in the gut which should be taking up copper. That causes copper deficiency problems like coat bleaching at the harmless end, and insulin regulation problems leading to poor foot quality in many horses, and laminitis at worst. This research has been done by a world expert on equine nutrition, Dr Eleanor Kellen. Its online if you want to read it.

My grazing and water supply is sky high in iron and manganese (which does the same to copper as iron does). If I did not supplement copper (and zinc to balance with the copper) most of my horses would be unable to work barefoot. For years I had been masking low grade laminitis with shoes, and I suspect that's true of much of the UK.
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I find that strange as looking at soil maps and my understanding of where you live you would be in an area that has low topsoil iron concentrations.
 
Roughly 5 mile radius of where my horse is kept and where most of the forage comes from:

http://mapapps2.bgs.ac.uk/ukso/home.html?

EDITED as it wont link, but its in the 90th percentile.

Interestingly we have soil high in magnesium, which may partly explain why every single horse moves onto the yard and the owners comment on how relaxed and chilled out they are.
 
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Leo Walker said:
You can find it as strange as you like :lol: The research is readily available if you would like to read it.
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I wasnt talking about yours as I am fully aware of the iron levels in Northamptonshire as we have land there .but you can hardly state that most land in Britain is as its about 30% at most more suffer from low levels possibly.
 
Its what the research says though, so unless its proved wrong then you can say it.

All I know is any land I've been on, and thats from North Yorkshire to Wales to Milton Keynes to Northampton and a few in between, has been high in iron,
 
popsdosh said:
I find that strange as looking at soil maps and my understanding of where you live you would be in an area that has low topsoil iron concentrations.
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You can find it as strange as you like. PD, but they had to install a huge compressor into the local reservoir to stir up the manganese before they take water into the treatment works, my own spring water supply turns orange with iron unless we have a filter on it, and local authority testing produces clear results of high iron and sky high manganese in the surface water springs and therefore also in the soil. The borehole readings for the Cat and Fiddle pub up the road were off the scale before they installed filtration plant.

And Forageplus report that the majority of forage samples they are sent return high levels of iron, which is why you will find people with barefoot horses recommending supplements which contain no iron and no manganese.
 
Just out of curiosity, I've just had a look at some areas I know, one in particular where I used to do a lot of walking. The water runs orange due to the high concentration of iron ore and the soil is stained a weird orange colour. Its an area that was used for iron ore mining. The map shows that in the 30th percentile so I'm a bit dubious as to how reliable it is now. In reality it looks like this:

909241_10151417128248667_1137321544_n.jpg
 
Leo Walker said:
Just out of curiosity, I've just had a look at some areas I know, one in particular where I used to do a lot of walking. The water runs orange due to the high concentration of iron ore and the soil is stained a weird orange colour. Its an area that was used for iron ore mining. The map shows that in the 30th percentile so I'm a bit dubious as to how reliable it is now. In reality it looks like this:

909241_10151417128248667_1137321544_n.jpg
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So the national geographical survey has it wrong we are talking Top soil concentration to be fair on 1km grids http://www.ukso.org/nsi/Iron.html ,Forage picks up its levels from the roots in top soil . I am just saying it is not the problem it is made out to be by some peddling their products and the only way to supplement properly is to test what your feeding and dont go on a hunch. The analysis is going to cost about the same as one bag of some balancers. I often think my education was wasted or maybe ive forgotten .
What do forageplus sell please enlighten me! I would rather go by independent analysis which by the way are a lot cheaper. All I can say is we farm over into Northants and area that is red on the map in Cambridgeshire and none of the leaf tissue samples we have done routinely on growing crops indicate any issues with iron ,we would not be able to sell them into the food chain if they did.
 
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We've had our grass tested by D&H... our area is high in iron and molybdenum. We use Cu and Mg as supplements. Works for us. I'd rather test than buy from "generalists" so PE and FP are the only ones I know that tailor to match your soil and grass.

Also, different types of grass favour different soils and absorb different levels. Better to test your forage than soil.
 
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