Feed supplement for horse with muscle damage?

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HorseLove!

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My mare has been lame recently on her right fore leg. She has had x-rays and bone scans which came back clear. Her physio discovered that she had bad lower back pain. The pain has nearly completely gone and her lameness has decreased dramatically thankfully. We have started long reining her to build up her muscle again, however i am wondering whether anyone recommends any feed supplements for muscle repair and growth as she has muscle wastage. I have heard opti muscle is good by feed mark? Any advice would be highly appreciated. :)
 
Keep her off grains and feed her a vitamin e supplement. When I was building up my youngsters muscle, I found that this combination addressed energy, weight and muscle development.

Linseed meal (3 mugs a day (15.2 hunter)
Alfa oil (2 scoops a day)
Speedie beet (1 1/2 scoops a day)
Additional soya oil
Vitamin e supplement


This was split into two feeds a day and he was worked for about 5 days a week, being a youngster this obviously included a lot of walking and hill work for muscle development. As you probably know, equal attention must be paid to both the correct feed and exercise when developing muscle, I'd also chat to your vet or a physio about a reccomended varied work programme bearing in mind your horses specific issue. I think if I recall correctly a reccomended work pattern is 3 days on 2 days off as REST is equally important for correct muscle development.

Sorry, just seen you're working with a physio already.
 
Definitely worth adding extra vitamin E (the D-alpha form) if she is not getting plenty of fresh grass on a daily basis.

Having said that, hopefully you have got her on a full ration of a good balancer like Blue Chip or Dengie Alpha A balancer, both of which contain around 1mg/day/500kg horse of organic selenium. Selenium is just as vital as vitamin E to muscle health, and is deficient in around 70% of the UK, so well worth making sure there is a good level of it.

I wouldn't bother with Equitop Myoplast. When you work out what's in it, the amounts of key amino acids like lysine and methionine are much lower than reputable balancers, and it also works out very expensive. As it's a supplement, they have no data to confirm any positive results from using it.

Sarah
 
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