This is an excellent point! Focus training like TRT is great!
I do think I have a training issue and we’re working on that. I just feel like a horrible horsey mom because I was thinking maybe there’s something management-wise I could be doing to make him feel his best that I’m not doing.
No Red Cell. If you want to see if the B vitamins in it help, then just do a B complex, don’t throw additional iron at the issue, it’s not needed at all
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This was going to be my two cents too. My fjord is a chill guy, and likes to conserve energy. As soon as we have something extra to do in the ring, he’s all about it.
Look into Working Equitation and the ease of handling obstacles for ideas, that’s what really gave my guy some purpose to dressage.
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I had the same experience with my last horse.
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I would proceed with extreme caution. My old trainer was having a similar issue with her horse, and while trying to amp him up, ended up with him foundering from what she was experimenting with, as far as different feed. This wasn’t some backyard yahoo, either. She’s a well-known Grand Prix trainer, who should have known better. It turned out the reason for low energy is her horse has an underlying metabolic issue, which wasn’t discovered until he foundered at age 10. It has taken him almost 7 years to get back up to Grand Prix, and it was a completely avoidable situation.
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Having a blood panel done would be helpful in this regard.
In this particular regard, not really. Almost no horse is primarily anemic. If he is, he likely doesn’t feel good at all because he’s got severe ulcers, or a major parasite infection, or acute blood loss due to an injury (obviously not the case here)
You can’t see Mg or B vites or really anything other than E and Se, in blood work.
A thorough blood panel isn’t a terrible idea, as it could show some issues, but they won’t be related to nutrition, barring the above.
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As luck would have it, the horse I mentioned above tends towards anemia. He’s been on Red Cell for years. No ulcers, parasitic infestation or injury.
I’m not a vet, but am pretty sure there are blood panels that can detect more than E and Se but they are, not surprisingly, pricier.
Of course, a blood panel is just another tool.
Does he have front shoes?
Do you ride with spurs? It might be a play around with different spur type for show days only.
And how long did you warm up for?
“tends towards anemia” in what way? A normal range is just an average. A given horse’s average may be slightly below normal - that’s not anemic. Horses store a relatively large % of RBCs in their spleen, not released until needed - exercise. So, drawing blood from a rested horse may easily show just below normal, which is normal for him, and not anemic
Even if he’s regularly mildly anemic for some weird reason, as I said above, the fix is rarely, if ever, to add more iron. There’s an excess of Fe in nearly every horse’s diet. The fix is nearly always to add copper and zinc
My comments on this were about detecting nutritional issues. It’s Se and E, that’s pretty much it. Copper is iffy.
Yes, other nutrients like protein and calcium and phosphorous and potassium and magnesium and others, do show on blood work, but their issues are about disease, not diet. You may have to alter the diet to account for the disease, but abnormalities in those nutrients aren’t caused by diet, they’re caused by a disease.
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Not clear if you are a vet; however since you asked, my horse’s iron levels were low. The vet recommended putting him on Red Cell which I have done and his levels are now in the normal range.
It is my understanding that sometimes nutrient deficiencies are just that, lack of something in the diet. It’s not always disease or diet which is why each thing is one tool.
YMMV.
I’m not a vet, no. But read the article above written by a VMD, and who has studied far more about nutrition than any vet gets in school, and more than most any other vet has studied
It’s not a website that I can copy any section from, but if you don’t care to read it, at least scroll to the bottom “To Summarize”
Essentially:
“iron deficiency as a cause of equine anaemia is virtually non-existent in horses”
2 main causes are iron overload and Copper deficiency
Adding iron does not fix primary anemia if it even existed. It’s not like people where we often struggle to get enough iron, especially women
I think you’re not understanding my comments on this
Yes, nutritional deficiencies can cause diseases. Too much P and too little Ca can cause “big head disease”. Too little copper can cause low iron. Too little E or Se cause muscle issues, and worse
But you cannot determine a dietary deficiency of Ca or protein in an otherwise healthy horse by looking at blood. If you see one of those out of whack, there is a disease in progress, whether it’s cancer or kidney failure
So no, you can’t do even a comprehensive blood panel to evaluate the diet. You evaluate the diet, to evaluate the diet. Selenium and Vit E are the exceptions
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I’m with those that suggest dabbling in mixing up the training. One example: horse hated flat / dressage work. If I warmed him up over small jumps it made his day and turned him into a different horse every time. Another needed large doses of trail rides. Not a fan of adding spurs. Was at a barn where people would do that as well as get after a horse under saddle with the lunge whip. That only created worse issues. …And I can not stand horses that have to be ridden with spurs because they’re “lazy”, that’s a band aide not a fix. Slow and steady seemed to win the race and prevent further behavioral issues. Transition work and a load of patience helped with those cases.
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