Nutrition woes

The Quarter's frogs look like CRAP again. This is so disheartening. Over the past year I've gotten the nutritional aspect of thrush hammered into me over and over and over again. Sometimes, if not most of the time, thrush is a side affect of what goes in the horse's mouth and not what goes on the horse's hooves.

Let me just say that again: Thrush is not only a product of the horse's environment, poor nutrition is a deciding factor

I put my horses on California Trace in April and started seeing results in May, it was working and I was happy. BUT my horses didn't like it and I had to mask the flavor with anise seed powder to get them to eat it. Since it's also pretty expensive and only available over the internet I decided to look for some other options.

I went looking for something local, found DuMor Hoof (which I chose over Farrier's Formula after looking at the ingredients), and they ate that for about two months.

I don't know if my horses are especially hard keepers or what, but all the frog growth they'd gained while eating California Trace was lost while they ate the DuMor- and that was with me spraying on oxine and dusting with No Thrush nearly every day. Basically the topical treatments just kept the thrush from eating the live frogs, it didn't helped the callused frog grow out at all. The only good thing about it was that the Quarters liked the taste. Basically it was a giant waste of money, time to move on.

While I was in Oregon somebody recommended the Figuerola products to me so I decided to try out Equinesaver.

They've had this for the past month, while their winter coats have started growing in nicely and they love the taste, I haven't seen any sign that their frogs are improving (still treating with topicals, mind you). Knowing that copper and zinc are super important for coat and hoof growth I took a closer look at the ingredients on the bucket. Holy crud! The amounts of copper and zinc in Equinesaver are miniscule at best, no wonder their feet haven't been improving!

So after kicking myself for taking them off something that was working, last night I bought some more California Trace and should have it by the end of the week.

The moral of the story is that I've decided I'm tired of taking wild guesses about my horses' nutritional needs and have signed up for Dr. Eleanor Kellon's NRC Plus course. The class runs from November 7 through January 9 if anyone is interested in taking it with me.

The grain-free experiment

Remember when I said that learning horse nutrition was going to be my next adventure? Well I've had a bit of a crash course in it since the Quarters moved last August.

The two horses that they moved in with, Butch and Rocky, don't get any grain- they eat grass in the summer and hay in the winter and that's it. When I moved the Quarters in they adopted the same diet, from August to April they didn't eat anything other than forage.

After I wrapped up my hoof series I began some preliminary nutrition research at safergrass.org and started learning about mineral deficiencies. As soon as I knew what to look for I started seeing signs of it all over the Quarters. Coriander's mane and tail showed drastic sun bleaching and his coat just didn't look right. Plus his frogs JUST WEREN'T GROWING despite repeated oxine soaks and No Thrush treatments. Gwen was even worse: her hoof walls were losing integrity and going SPLAT, she wasn't shedding and her hair coat had developed hooks at the end. Not good. Not good at all.

What I didn't realize when I stopped feeding them grain is how mineral deficient upstate NY is. The grass and  hay they were eating was markedly deficient in trace minerals like selenium, copper and zinc. Want to know what your area is like? You can check the average NGS geochemistry by county in the US here.

It was time to get some minerals into the Quarters, but what was the best way to do it? I'd been reading barefoot trimmers rhapsodize about the benefits of California Trace, and decided to give it a try. When it arrived I measured out a serving in my hands and fed it to the horses. "Oh, what's this?" They said. "Nom, nom, no... PHhhbbttt!" So much for the company's claim that horses love their product. I tried mixing in some anise seed powder to make it more palatable (they love licorice), but they weren't fooled. It appeared I needed to find something to mix the CA Trace with so they'd eat it.

I recalled that Gwen had done well on my Father-in-Law's "Cornell Mix," so I decided to get some of that. When I went to buy some we ended up talking about pellets and I ended up leaving with a bag of Nutrena Empower Balance too. I don't really understand how it works, but that "Cornell Mix" makes coats shine like mirrors and helps keep weight on hard keepers. The Nutrena feed is specifically designed to supplement grass diets and has pre/probiotics in it to support their digestive systems.

I've been feeding these three mixed together since the beginning of April and have noticed marked improvements in the Quarters. Coriander's frogs have FINALLY started growing and his coat looks better than ever (and feels like crushed velvet). Gwen finally shed out and her coat is looking good as well, even better, her hooves have improved immensely. You can actually see the line where her hoof wall has grown in better and tighter since I added the minerals to her diet (Amazingly she's been rock crushingly sound the entire time, I don't know how she does it.).

Gwen's left hind

Gwen's left fore

Here's a picture of Coriander looking awesome in his ungroomed shiny-ness.

Shiny!

It appears that genetics plays a part in this. Even though they're half-siblings, Gwen showed more acute symptoms of deficiency than her brother did. I wish I had a clue why that happened. Butch and Rocky haven't had grain in forever and neither of them shows the marked mineral deficiencies that mine did after only a few months. They may be helped by their breeding, Rocky is a mustang/morgan (I incorrectly called her a quarter horse a few months ago) so it's possible that her mustang heritage makes her hardier. BUT, her coat has barely any shine and her hair feels like straw. Butch shows a bit of shine in the picture with Coriander but he lacks the sheen that Coriander has and he still hasn't shed out completely. To help them out a little I bought a salt block with added selenium and other minerals for the pasture and hung up Gwen's old Himalayan salt block where they could get at it. They might get a bit more of what they need this way.

Obviously I still have a TON to learn about nutrition, right now I feel like I'm throwing everything at them but the kitchen sink hoping that they're getting what they need. To remedy that, I'll be taking Dr. Kellon's nutrition course over the winter and boning up on knowledge from Getty Equine Nutrition.

In short, the grain-free experiment failed completely. I feel awful that I did this to them and am keeping my fingers crossed that I didn't do them any lasting harm. My poor horses, they had no idea I'd turn them into guinea pigs...