Natural Horses Health
Natural Horse Care
This important subject depends on at least three important aspects.
I believe these three aspects are critical factors in keeping a horse happy and healthy naturally. Without a naturally happy and healthy horse, your riding will always be compromised, however good a rider you are. So let’s look at each one separately.
Companionship
The first most important aspect in natural horse care and health is their environment. Horses are herd animals. Keeping them in isolation can be done, but at a price. No herd animal will ever be content on their own, even if they appear to be adjusted to it. Even if they have companions in adjacent fields or stables, they will be unhappy and stressed. Part of the companionship is contact. Horses are very tactile animals. They need this contact.
A herd is ideal as this serves all their emotional needs, but this in rare in domestication. Two horses makes a small herd, but enough to keep at least a semblance of contentment.
This will mean that when you ride one, the other is likely to be stressed, but this is short lived.
Grazing
Horses need to graze all day, at will. They will suffer with stomach ulcers if they can’t do this. Stomach ulcers are very common in stabled or yarded horses who are fed just a few meals a day. If they can’t graze on grass all day, then they need free access to hay.
Overweight horses, or those inclined to laminitis/founder will need some restriction of their grass or hay. A sparse paddock, a small paddock or a specially designed hay net that makes it difficult to pull the hay out can be the answer to these problems.
Feeding
The feed needs to provide them with the energy that their work demands of them, as well as any nutrients that may be missing from their grazing or hay. This depends on your location as much as anything. So getting a soil analysis done is a good start.
The modern horse feeds are not all they are made out to be. Many contain suspect ingredients, often from slaughter house waste. Although veterinarians and the producers will tell you this is fine, common sense tells you otherwise. Horses are herbivores. They are not designed to eat animal protein. They can’t digest it and it can cause problems, not necessarily immediately.
The best horse feeds are the natural ones, the whole food ones, preferably organically grown. This is especially important in today’s climate with the uncontrolled and widely used GM foods, such as soy. The whole grains such as oats and barley are still excellent feeds for hard working horses.
In addition the wide use of synthetic fertiliser and weed killers (glyphosate) can cause health problems. These can include neurological issues and abortions in pregnant mares.
Many vets would not make the connection.
Supplements
If you purchase supplements that are called by the nutrient, such as calcium or vitamin B, you know they have been produced in a laboratory. As such they are virtually indigestible and unfit as a food. If you are lucky they will pass through as expensive poo/poop. If you are unlucky, they will hang up in parts of your horse, to cause mischief some time down the track.
All nutrients are co-dependent on other nutrients. They need to be in the perfect natural balance, that only Nature has developed. So supplements should be food based, not laboratory based.
The best nutrients come from good quality, organic grass. Next to that is the same for the hay. After that, whole food supplements such as kelp or spirulina provide a balanced, natural, all round, easily digestible range of essential nutrients. I give a heaped dessertspoonful of kelp (Tasmanian kelp is healthier than that from the heavily polluted North Sea in Europe) every day. Adjust according to the work and condition of the horse.
Diatomaceous earth is an excellent source of minerals, especially calcium. Make sure this is the food grade, rather than the garden grade! I use a heaped dessertspoonful per horse, three times a week. Adjust according to the work, age and condition of the horse.
Linseed/flaxseeds are also an excellent supplement for horses. I use about half a mug of dry brown linseed/flaxseed which I then soak for 24 hrs in about twice its volume of water. This is an excellent source of many essential nutrients as well as omega 3, so helps to keep the coat in good health. Adjust the amount according to the work, age and the condition of the horse.
Try to avoid lucerne unless it is organic, because it is one of the most toxic plants with heavy spraying. Don’t get sucked into the idea that horses need vitamin A. ALL sources of vitamin A are animal sources, something horses have not evolved on. Instead they convert betacarotene to vitamin A. Sources of betacarotene are green feed, or dark coloured vegetables such as carrots.
Join the tribe!
Sign up for our newsletter and receive regular emails on natural health for all the family
