PurBee
Well-Known Member
That is very interesting, lots of considerations and weighing up. Well done for obtaining the chart!
Firstly, i think the amounts theyre giving for this table are elemental values, as the whole lot adds up to 86g (ish) - not 100g as stated. Usually that means elemental values are being given - and roughly figuring out what the whole mineral values would therefore be, means it would add up to about 100g.
I’ve been looking what dose of tryptophan horses generally receive for effect. Studies are mixed, one showed no effect, theres citation of small doses like 25mg actually causing excitement, and doses of 2g are needed for calming. Other tryptophan products offer it in 1g+ doses, many offer 2g - in calmer mixes.
So blue chip are being very reserved with their 25mg dose as use for calming based on all the dose talk in the equine world online. And if it was having any effect, you should find him more excitable.
BUT - one nutritionist source said that it needed ideally to be fed on its own outside of other food, as it being an amino acid, will compete with other amino acids in feeds to cross the blood brain barrier. When we consider that, the 25mg tryptophan in blue chip also has 19.5g of protein in the same feed, offering much competition for that measly 25mg to have affect.
So weighing that up, im not sure its the tryptophan alone causing a marked change in his behaviour.
The chamomile is a weeny amount considering its a horse weight we’re considering - 1.3g would calm a child, but a 500kg horse would need more of a punchy dose to have any effect - im not convinced the chamomile dose is affective enough to cause such a change.
The protein amount is negligible considering hundreds of grams per day are required for an adult horse.
The cal/mag additions, elemental values, do make a difference. Although 2.2g of mag isnt on its own usually helpful, considering the need is around 7-10g (others suggest more, but lets take that as baseline minimal) IF that’s all the mag he’s getting from his diet, it will be effective. BUT i’d need to know the nutritional breakdown of the other balancer youre giving to assess the cal/mag imput he’s getting. (I couldnt find the nutritional breakdown on the companies website, and thst would also need a request email…annoying isnt it!)
The calcium is about a third of what a 500kg horse would need - so if that’s removed and the mag, at the same time - despite not being the RDA of those minerals, are a significant portion of the RDA, especially if there’s no other significant sources of cal/mag in the diet.
Your hay values of cal/mag/phos/potassium are extremely difficult to guess, but the ratios are usually similar with potassium usually being much higher than all of them, and calcium being much higher than mag. Hence why mag is a favoured balancing mineral.
At a very rough guess of 1g calcium per kilo hay, he could be getting 10g-15g at least from the hay…needing 20g per day, the 5.8g in blue chip offers a chunk of a dose.
The values of most of everything else are humble amounts - not completely useless, but also many not RDA for a horse, yet the combo of the b vits and micro-minerals all have a ‘micro-dosing’ effect.
This is when i get to the point of needing to know the other balancers specific values of ingredients, because most balancers have these micro-minerals in these amounts, so i cant believe the taking away of blue chips dose of these, with him also getting them from another source, would cause marked behavioural change.
Thats why im discounting these as being ‘culprits’.
As you said youre also feeding him double dose of the other balancer, that is key to know specific ingredient amounts.
One major question - are you feeding 100g of blue chip or 50g per day?