Palatable hoof supplement

jojo5

jojo5

Well-Known Member
Joined
5 May 2008
Messages
850
Visit site
Hi, I know there are hundreds of posts on here about best hoof supplements and have tried to read most (???) but what I am asking is about an effective one that is palatable on its own. I have a big youngster with huge but poor feet - i want to get started on improving these now but he def does not need any feed so hopefully there is something out there that he could have on its own? I have heard so far that farriers Formula is not good on its own, but that Formula 4 Feet might be ok. A knowledgable person has also said it is better value to feed the necessary elements ‘straight’ rather tha paying for products with a lot of filler but amguessing that these would be powder form and therefore only possible in a feed.
All info gratefully received and rewarded with a slice of as yet untouched Christmas cake!
 
I also feed Formula4feet and my horse loves it. He's a good doer, and finds this quite palatable. I swear his hooves have grown faster while on it. He was already getting biotin, zinc, copper, etc. in his pelleted mineral supplement, and on paper it looked like it was enough, but feeding Formula4feet seems to have really given his hooves a boost.
 
my ridiculously fussy horse finds equimins the most palatable. Quality and ingredients wise its streets ahead of farriers formula and similar. The only ones that are really worth feeding are Equimins, Forage Plus, Equivita and Progressive Earth. Equimins is the cheapest and most palatable. Mine prefers the powder and gets it in pink mash with a tablespoon of oats. Without the oats pink mash is a no go apparently, but she is a nightmare generally with food.
 
Thanks loads for all the replies so far! Will look into Equimins reviews etc - I see that they do pellets which might make it easier to feed than powder. My boy is easily convinced that anything in that sort of shape is a treat. ? Really wanting to get this right and start with a product I am going to stick with - am def looking for one that has the best percentage of active ingredients.
 
I give the Kevin Bacon one straight by itself, its a pellet so mine thinks she is getting grown up food. It has also changed my horses feet dramatically, even my farrier has mentioned it.
 
Farriers formula for horses gets J's vote. She loves it as an evening treat, so much so that I now use her daily ration for baited stretches and clicker training as she'll put the extra effort in for a couple of FFpellets rather than a standard horse treat. It seems to work on the feet (and coat!) well too!
 
F is notoriously quite fussy and apart from one spell when he went off the pellets has always eaten equimins adv. complete well and it is one I rate.
I did actually use to supplement straight but he was fussier about that and the equimins fits my forage analysis fairly well apart from adding some extra magnesium.

I wouldnt feed FF or F4F these days, mostly due to their iron content. Historically they used to be the same I think.
 
Thanks again to everyone who has posted. Its a minefield. I realise i could try different ones, but i have always thought that wastes a lot of money because chopping and changing between supplements means you never really know if anything has worked. And because i am going to need a fairly large dose by horse weight, i need to buy in bulk so its a big outlay. Though when i have decided, I am hoping to get hold of a sample to ensure he will eat it although I don’t think that will be a problem as long as it the pellets/nuts look like treats!!! I have seen that there is only a certain amount of biotin that can be properly metabolised daily by a horse so am hoping the dose will not vary too much.
 
Biotin gets mentioned all the time, but its not biotin thats an issue. You need no or very low iron and balanced high copper and zinc. I find a decent dose of salt helps as well, 10gms per 100kgs of body weight. You also need to have a reasonably low sugar and starch diet. All the supplements in the world wont do much good if you pump them full of competition mix etc
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top