Horse Health Care: Natural Horse Feed Supplements for the Nervous Horse

Does your horse get nervous before a competition, trailering, or learning something new? I have a couple of horses who are strung kind of tight, and I've found that there are a number of natural horse feed supplements that really help calm them down.

Not all of these are legal for all competitive events, so if you do consider using any of these, be sure to check with your discipline's governing body to see what's legal and what isn't.

Horse Feed Supplement #1: Homeopathic Chamomile
Homeopathic chamomile is a wonderfully simple solution for many nervous horses. This vibrational remedy will not make a horse calmer than his normal temperament, but can restore a horse's mental balance so that he can think clearly. For instance, if your horse is normally calm but gets bouts of diarrhea before trailering, giving him a dose of Chamomile 30x before he try loading him might help him stay calm. You can purchase this homeopathic remedy at most health food stores.

Horse Feed Supplement #2: Eleviv
Eleviv is relatively new on the market and is a potent combination of four herbs that really seems to help horses remain calm. I've used this supplement on my mustang mare, who gets the heaves (or COPD) when she gets nervous. When she starts getting that distinctive rattle in her chest, I empty two capsules of Eleviv into spring water, mix with a juice mixer, and then put it in a syringe. I syringe the mixture into her mouth, and then wait 30-45 minutes. Within that time, the rattle in her chest goes away and she is restored to her normal relaxed state.

Being a Metal horse personality, she loves routine and gets nervous whenever she thinks we are going to do something totally new (read more about horse personalities here). She then flips into the sympathetic nervous system, which for horses is the equivalent of "fight or flight," and heaves are the result. Eleviv has the effect of restoring her to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the one associated with rest and relaxation. The beauty of Eleviv is that it can be fed daily or only as needed. The effects are also fairly immediate, making Eleviv a crucial part of any first-aid kit.

Horse Feed Supplement #3: Probiotics of Acidophilus and Bifidus
Probiotics like acidophilus and bifidus are the beneficial bacteria that live in your horse's gut. The reason probiotics help to calm a nervous horse is because the beneficial bacteria produce B12. The B vitamins, especially B12, produce a natural calming effect on the body. If your horse has diarrhea when he gets nervous, bifidus is especially useful since it tends to soak up excess fluid in the bowel and restore normal stool consistency. I've found the best probiotics are made by Simplexity Health, although you can also get good quality probiotics at most feed stores in the form of Fasttrack Paste. Adding probiotics to your regular horse feed regimen will help in general, and giving oral probiotics before any event that might make your horse nervous will help in the moment.

Horse Feed Supplement #4: Equilite Relax and Relax Her Blend
Relax Blend and RelaxHer Blend, two horse feed supplements from Equilite are also excellent for calming the nervous horse. These supplements are made from a combination of natural herbs, and can be added to your horse feed regimen on a daily basis. Best of all, these supplements come in a Valerian-free formula, which makes them legal to feed to most show horses.

Horse Feed Supplement #5: Omega Sun Blue Green Algae
Omega Sun blue-green algae is what I call "brain food." It is blue-green algae (from Simplexity Health) that has been processed in way that removes the cell wall, leaving only the "heart" of the algae. This form of algae contains vitamins, minerals, and trace minerals in particles that are small enough to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. The blood brain barrier, as the name implies, is a barrier in the brain that separates the cerebral spinal fluid from the circulating blood. This barrier prevents foreign invaders like bacteria from entering the brain, but also prevents most vitamins and minerals from entering the brain as well.

Many nervous horses suffer from under-nourished brains, and many a nervous thoroughbred or flighty horse has been calmed when Omega Sun blue-green algae is added to their horse feed. It's definitely worth checking out, especially as it is also useful for building strong hoof walls and is legal for show horses.

Well, this is just a short list of horse feed supplements that can help the nervous horse become calm again. If you have any other supplements that you have found useful, please leave me a comment or drop me a line. I love learning about horse nutrition, and sharing what I know!

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Horse Feed: Feed a Thin Horse This Winter without Going Broke

Do you have a skinny horse? If so, then the approaching cold weather probably has you fretting over the most economical kind of horse feed to offer your horse this winter. Thin horses, often called "hard keepers" are always a challenge to feed, even in good weather, but when the weather turns cold, feeding a thin horse can rack up the feed bills fast. Here are some options you can consider to put and keep weight on your horse this winter.

Factors That Affect a Horse's Weight
There are multiple physical and emotional factors that affect a horse's weight, and this is especially true of the thin horse. Most horse owners probably already know about many of these factors, but I'll cover them quickly anyway.

Teeth: If you horse has not had a float within the last year, it may be time to take him to the veterinarian or equine dentist for a checkup and float. While this will cost you a bit up front, having your horse's teeth in good working order (without sharp points or hooks or ramps) ensures that you get the most out of every bit of feed this winter.

Calorie Needs: Be sure that your horse's basic calorie needs are met. We'll get into the details of what the feed later in this article, but double check that your horse is getting enough calories in his diet. A horse not in work who lives in a stall and wears a blanket during the winter obviously needs fewer calories than a horse in heavy training who lives outdoors in a run or pasture. Your horse also uses more calories in cold than in balmy weather (shivering eats up a lot of calories!).

Parasites: Check your horse's parasite load with a fecal test. If your horse comes up negative for parasites, you may still want to consider giving a double dose of Strongid-type wormer to eliminate tapeworms, which do not appear on fecal analysis.

Stress: Stress can easily cause a horse to lose weight, and horses feel stress in a number of ways. Physical stress can appear in the form of an injury, hard training, or extreme weather conditions (such as extreme cold). Horses can feel emotional stress if their living conditions don't match their personality. For instance, if your horse is low in the pecking order and is constantly being terrorized by his herd mates, he is bound to feel stressed. Also, if your horse is one who needs lots of room to move, keeping him in a stall or run will cause physical and emotional stress, and can even lead to nasty vices like cribbing or weaving. Horses not suited to their occupations will also feel stressed.

Horse Feed for the Thin Horse
If you have checked all of the factors above and your horse passes with flying colors, then it's time to take a deeper look at what you are feeding him. Thin horses come in two categories: low-energy and high energy.

Horse Feed for the Low-Energy Thin Horse
If your horse is thin and has low energy, then adding calories to his diet and improving his ability to digest food will help him gain weight. You can increase his grain content by up to one pound per 100 pounds of body weight per day. Corn and barley provide more energy than oats. Pelleted senior feeds also tend to work well for thin horses. You can also add up to a cup of corn oil per day to his feed, along with alfalfa to provide extra energy and calories. If you horse is picky about eating grain but likes to eat hay, he may have ulcers that need to be addressed.

To improve your horse's ability to digest his food, consider adding high-quality acidophilus and bifudus to his food, along with high-powered enzymes. Blue-green algae also provides a wide-spectrum of vitamins, minerals, and trace minerals to cover any nutritional gaps that may be present in his diet. I find that a packet or two of Simplexity Health's Essentials is a good "all in one" source for acidophilus, bifidus, enzymes, and blue-green algae.

Horse Feed for the High-Energy Thin Horse
If your horse is thin and has high energy, then chances are that he loses weight through sheer nervous tension and continuous movement. To help this kind horse retain weight, the goal is to keep him calm and relaxed. This kind of horse gains weight more quickly with increased grass hay and some alfalfa. Increased grain does not seem to work as well. In addition to feeding him more calories, adding higher doses of probiotics like acidophilus and bifidus can help a lot. A healthy population of probiotics in the gut helps your horse produce B-vitamins, which results in a calmer and more relaxed horse. Simplexity Health's Omega Sun Algae also helps many high-strung horses calm down because it positively affects the horse's nervous system and brainwaves.

Horse Feed and the Thin Horse
Obviously no "cookie cutter" recipe of horse feed is going to work perfectly on every thin horse, but hopefully this gets you started on thinking about economical ways to feed your thin horse this winter. I have one thin horse (the low-energy kind) to feed this winter and he is already gaining weight from increased hay, alfalfa, senior feed, plus probiotics, algae, enzymes, and mangosteen juice (get the recipe for this "horse goo" HERE). He's living high on the hog ... and loving every minute of it!

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Horse Health Care: Time for a Gut Check

Horse health care really begins in the gut, so if you're not sure how strong your horse health care program is, it's time for a gut check.

While I was doling out feed to my horses this morning, I was reflecting on the number of horse health issues related to the gut.

For instance, did you know that:

- the beneficial bacteria in your horse's gut are responsible for producing the biotin necessary for healthy hooves, mane, and tail?

- the beneficial bacteria in your horse's gut are his first line of immune defense?

- poor functioning of your horse's stomach, small intestine, or large intestine can lead to ulcers, colic, weight loss, leaky gut, food allergies, skin conditions, and more?

In other words, a healthy gut equals a healthy horse. An unhealthy gut equals an unhealthy horse. Pretty simple, right?

Taking Care of Your Horse's Gut
The basics of horse health care when it comes to your horse's gut boil down to keeping the populations of friendly bacteria that live in your horse's gut alive and healthy. There's a lot of science behind it and you can learn more by visiting the Holistic Horsekeeping website (look under Resources and go to the Articles section). But for a basic no-frills approach that works well for a zen cowgirl like me, I think about feeding:

- plenty of hay or beet pulp (keeps stomach acid from causing ulcers)
- daily acidophilus and bifidus to keep the friendly bacteria population high
- enzymes to horses who have difficulty with digestion and assimilation
- vitamins, minerals, trace minerals from blue-green algae and antioxidants from this special antioxidant juice to heal any ulceration in the gut

And whoa! Before you go screaming off into the night thinking this is too complicated, consider my simple formula for "horse goo" that takes care of all of these requirements (aside from hay, of course). Get the recipe here.

Keep it simple and always ride your horse in the direction it's going, as they say!

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Hay for Horses is Entertainment Not Nutrition

You may think the stuff you throw over the fence, the hay for horses, offers your horses the nutrition they need to stay totally health, but you would probably be wrong. Being a zen cowgirl inquisitive science-type, and having hung around with a major hay producer in my area who actually tests hay for its nutritional value, I'm realizing that hay for horses is basically entertainment, not nutrition.

In other words, the hay I'm throwing, while better quality than the hay in some places, is pretty empty of the vitamins, minerals, and trace minerals that my performance horses need to both perform and stay healthy. If you look around at the performance horse barns in your area, you'll see what I mean.

An Example to Chew On
For instance, around here we have a top cutting horse barn. The horses get fed either straight grass hay or a grass/alfalfa mix. Nothing else. The horses get top-quality care, are glossy and well-groomed, and look good. They perform well. However, the average age at which a horse in that barn is retired because he's used-up or injured is six years old. Does it make sense to you that a six-year-old horse should be "retired" because it's too old, injured, or tired to keep going? Does it make sense that three-year-old horses need hock injections to keep going?

Why Hay Alone Isn't Enough for Performance Horses
The fact that most of these horses need hock injections or are retired at such an early age tells me that their bodies are not getting the nutrition they need from hay alone to stay healthy.

Nutritionist Carol Bennett says, "Aging is the process in which the body loses the ability to defend itself." When performances horses age prematurely and have to be retired at such a young age, I get the message that their bodies are unable to defend themselves against the stresses of training. Add to that this statement from the Surgeon General and you get a more complete picture: "67% of all human diseases are diet-related." Now I know we're talking about horses here, but I interpret this to mean that a poor diet leads to disease, whether in humans or horses.

So if hay for horses doesn't cover the basic nutritional needs, what is it good for? Why, for entertainment, of course. Horses need be walking and eating about 23 out of 24 hours in the day, so having hay constantly in front of them is fairly essential. In fact, if you really want to reproduce the conditions of wild horses, you would not only have to have hay in front of horses all the time (or have them out in pasture), but you would have to keep them walking and chewing. Pete Ramey has discovered a wonderful way to do this with his Pasture Paradise concept (just Google it for more info).

The Good News Hay for Horses
So the bad news is that the hay you throw over the fence for your horses probably isn't enough to meet their full nutritional needs, especially if they are in training or heavy work. The good news is that it doesn't take all that much nutrition to fill in the gaps that feeding hay alone creates. This is because horses are used to eating foods that are low in caloric and nutritional value, so adding just small quantities of high-quality nutrition to their diet will create a big effect.

For instance, I feed my horses 1-2 ounces daily of a special nutritional "goo" that I whip up at my kitchen table. It amazes me that 1-2 ounces of nutrition does the job on a 1,000 pound horse, but the results can't be denied. Adding this small amount of power-packed nutrition results in healthy hooves and coat, no allergies, no colic, and a generally happy outlook on life. In case you want to know, the goo consists of 1 packet of Simplexity Health Essentials (blue green algae, probiotoics, and enzymes) plus 1-2 ounces of a specific antioxidant juice. It works a treat.

So do I grow hay for my horses? Yes. Do I feed plenty of it? Yes. Do I count on its nutritional value? Never. I cover the bases with algae, probiotoics, enzymes, and mangosteen juice. I enjoy watching my horses eat hay, though, because I know it entertains them thoroughly and satisfies their instinctive need to chew continuously on long-stem, low-content food. And when they're happy, I'm happy.

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