Barefoot advice - following on from "overcomplicated feeding"

Reacher

Reacher

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Following on from the "over complicating feeding " thread.....I had a grass analysis done (in October) which showed calcium, cobalt, copper, magnesium, molybedenum, potassium, selenium and zinc are average, iodine, iron, manganese, and sodium were high and phosphorus and sulphur were low.
Advice from the report was to supplement copper, magnesium, phosphorous, selenium, sulphur and zinc.
The reports are here
https://imgur.com/g8Jhtu0
https://imgur.com/Gyf2WO2

2 horses, one retired 16 y TB mare (ex racehorse) with ok horn quality but flat feet, collapsed heels and bars weedy frogs and a strange "fold" in the flare in back feet (bit hard to describe sorry). Been trimmed by a farrier for years, no improvement.

and 13 y welsh x gelding who had front shoes taken off just over 12 months ago then was briefly reshod in the summer (to give myself option of studs) . Shoes came off in September and hopefully staying off. Not bad feet, concavity, good frogs, though had a little white line disease which is growing out, and heels could do with a little more growth. Also is a bit allergic to fly bites, dust, itchy, and possibly mild head shaking (vet's comment - rubs nose a lot ). Horse works happily on grass / surface, I normally hack out in hoof boots.

I had previously had both horses on pure grass pellets (soaked), timothy chaff and equimins advance and salt.

I changed to a barefoot trimmer in November, so not had much time for hoof changes to become apparent. I showed the forage analysis results to the trimmer who recommended CalmHealthyHorse products
https://www.calmhealthyhorses.co.uk/

They recommended that the gelding would benefit from
Premium - https://i.imgur.com/MIqVo3T.png
plus Alleviate C - https://i.imgur.com/JWZSHHe.png
plus Grazeezy - https://i.imgur.com/o0lokTm.png

which they said would help his allergies and head shaking.
I was a bit sceptical that added minerals would help allergies / head shaking but decided to give it a trial. (Mare is still on equimins)

The "Over-complicated feeding" thread has made me a bit concerned in case I am over feeding anything - I have tried to work out the amounts feeding the recommended amount for a 400 kg horse to my welsh x (he is actually 480 kg) which is 60 g of premium + 40 g alleviate c + 20 g grazeezy and dont THINK I am over feeding (compared to recommended daily amounts given in Merk (though not found RDAs for some of the minerals)
So I guess I have 2 questions -

1) Can anyone confirm I am not over feeding minerals / vitamins using the above supplements (I can email a spreadsheet if anyone was kind enough to take a look!)
2) For the above forage analysis what would you recommend as being the best supplement (if I didn't carry on with the calm healthy horses)?

I should say that at present the mare is mainly on hay and the gelding is on haylage (its actually very dry and more like hay but the vet advised it for his dust allergy) plus some grass (we haven't got much). I don't have a hay analysis.

Thanks if you got this far.
I'll stick up some hoof pics in a bit on this thread
 
Mare
Front right
glwtASz.png

kCohElT.png

ZBLaaWw.png


(I can put up other feet if interested)
 
What was the advice on the report given based on? Did it say? For instance the NRC guideline is that Calcium: magnesium ratio is about 2:1 yours is currently 4:1 (I don't recognise the report layout so don't know who did it for you).

I do have a spreadsheet of my own where I worked ours out but it did take some time! That was when I switched from doing individuals which someone else had worked out for me and worked out the equimins pretty much covered it.
 
Hi Ester, I was hoping you might reply!
The forage report was done by Dodson and Horrell (never had one done before and picked them at random). It doesn't say whether it uses ratios or just guideline levels of each mineral (is that what you are asking?)
I'm struggling a bit to work out some of the ratios provided by the supplements as they have both the minerals and their chelates and i'm not sure how you combine the values (unfortunately I'm not much of a chemist!)
For the totals from the supplements I work out I get 6616 mg/day calcium + 4317 mg/d calcium chelate and 5800 mg /d magnesium and 560 mg/d magnesium chelate
 
This is a snapshot of my spreadsheet calculating the amounts from the 3 supplements if provided at the dosages I mention in my OP. Each colour block is a different supplement blue = Premium, pink = alleviate c, yellow = grazeezy. Changing the feed rate in row one recalculates the total amount
RVt1u86.png
 
Did D+H give you quantities to add? I was assuming they did and presumed they would reference what they used to give those.

Someone else did my first one for me (trimmer who had done the Dr Kellon course as part of her training) and then when I moved and had another I could work it out from that. I could email you my sheet if that would help as I'm sure it is somewhere. Ordinarily I would look through yours for you but the conveyancing solicitor has finally sent me some answers that I need to check through at the moment so it wouldn't be until the weekend at least! I think the easiest thing to do is usually to work out the 'ideal' quantities based on your results and then see how what is being suggested fits with that.

If you aren't sure I am sure someone more professional would check it through for you, maybe for a small cost, but I would think forageplus/pro_earth probably would work out what you might need individually on the basis that you might then buy individual minerals from them. I don't really know anything about calmhealthy horses as they are new over here, and they do seem to have minimal products ATM.
 
No D&H didn't give me quantities to add.
CHH recommend their products based on a health check questionnaire rather than balancing the forage I think.
Sounds like the best thing to do is contact forage plus.
Thanks very much and good luck with the conveyancing.
 
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