Copper deficiency

[BBP]

After my last few posts I have been wondering whether my pony may be copper deficient. I have sent away forage samples for analysis and am waiting for the results, and have decided to try a tub of the Forage Plus winter balancer anyway as it is ultra low in iron and my pony has liver trouble. I wondered how quickly you would expect to see changes in the coat if the animal was in fact copper deficient and is moved on to a better balanced diet? Its hard to know if you are doing the right thing with all these products on the market, so the coat would be an obvious indicator if I knew to expect a change in a matter of weeks or months, or whether a change would take until next year. Thanks!

The pony 4 years ago when he moved to this yard:

The pony this summer:

(to be fair he did wear a fly rug a lot more that first year so there was less sun bleaching)

 

[amandap]

One to two coat changes should see improvements but I was still seeing improvements up to 18 months. I don't have forage analysis I feed a pre made one based on average deficiencies in forages.

 

[CinnamonChristmasCookie]

The vet told me to look for lighter patches around the eye rim as a possible sign. I would suggest that sun bleaching is your biggest issue there, possibly.

 

[Goldenstar]

Get a blood test that will give you the answer.
I had one horse injected with copper the improvements where seen with days .
He could not absorb it properly himself so supplements where useless for him.

 

[cundlegreen]

I would say def deficient. I have horses of this colour and apparently dark brown, black and liver chestnuts are more likely to lack copper. It certainly shows in the coat. Also, are his teeth black? Thats another sign. I get mine urine tested by a homeopathic practice. They tell you exactly what the horse is deficient in and then make up a supplement to suit. I usually see a difference in about a week. I had a light grey last year (TB) that looked awful in his coat. He was still growing a winter coat in April, and I thought he'd got cushings. It turned out he was very copper deficient, and is now back to a pearly sheen.

 

[Janovich]

If your results turn out to be of the normal range and not deficient in copper,...a little Linseed will perhaps be a good addition to coat improvement in my experience.

 

[Dry Rot]

I had my soil tested years ago and it is deficient in copper and cobalt. Lambs would sometimes fail to thrive and have a reddish tinge to their wool. They had free access minerals available at all times but some lambs obviously didn't help themselves. The problem was solved by administering copper by way of individual capsules and mixing minerals into the feed.

I have never had a problem with the ponies (currently 13 Highlands of various ages) as they help themselves to Red Rocky mineral blocks in the field. Even very young foals will help themselves.

Good advice re-blood tests. That should identify the problem, if there is one. Some of my foals start out as pitch black at birth and will go through various colour changes until they finally end up grey dun (white) in middle/old age. So I do not pay a lot of attention to their colours as they will inevitably change!