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Why Your Horse Needs a Balanced Vitamin/Mineral Mix
The science of equine nutrition recognizes that horses need a wide variety of vitamins and minerals to maintain overall health, performance levels, proper growth and reproductive health. The specific types and amounts of nutrients required can vary widely from horse to horse and breed to breed. Special needs factors must also be considered for horses that are pregnant, suffer from Cushing's syndrome, insulin resistance or founder.
A comprehensive vitamin/mineral supplement can provide key nutrients that are deficient or imbalanced in the horse's diet to help maintain health, vitality and reduce the risk of future health issues. There are a variety formulas for your horse's needs, whether they are maintenance horses, moderately worked, sport horses or have special nutritional needs. Product choice can also be based on various stages of life; foal, mare, adult and senior.
The amount of fortified grain fed to a horse may not provide enough nutrients to meet his/her needs, even though it is appropriate to his energy and workload. To meet minimal nutritional requirements, the type of hay, age, workload and the amount of fortified grain fed to the horse needs to be taken into account. Some horses may have increased nutritional needs based on stress and activity levels, such as horses under stress, competitive horses, those that travel and older horses.
In addition, no hay (either grass or alfalfa) or grain will provide the exact levels of optimal nutrition for horses. The mineral content can change markedly from hay to hay, and the vitamin content of grain and forages can decline rapidly during periods of transport and storage. Heat, humidity, and rainfall can also affect nutrient content of hay and pastures. With today's modern farming practices, the pastures and hay contain substantially different levels of any number of nutrients.
Even the highest quality grass or alfalfa hay has a wide variability in nutrient content. Diets high in grass hay, which is low in calcium, can lead to calcium deficiency if calcium is not supplemented. Alfalfa hay diets are high in calcium, but may cause imbalances in phosphorus and/or magnesium. Selenium should be supplemented in areas of the country where it is naturally low in the soil to prevent deficiency and those consequences.
Diets relying solely on pasture, hay and grain seldom, if ever, completely meet optimal equine nutritional requirements. Complete feeds attempt to supply adequate levels of nutrients for horses, but often only include the minimum amount to maintain the basic NRC (National Research Council) recommendations, and the levels of nutrients ingested are limited by the amount of grain fed. Any consumption above or below the recommended serving can lead to an over- or under-consumption of nutrients that can contribute to nutritional excesses, deficiencies or imbalances. Many horses on low-grain diets can become overweight if they consume enough vitamin/mineral fortified grain products to meet their supplement needs.
As equine nutritional science progresses, it is clear that all horses can benefit by sensible use of high quality vitamin/mineral/digestive aid supplements to support the health and structure of all the body's tissues, prevent deficiencies, compensate for stresses, and support life, health, growth, and reproduction in all horses. |
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