Is there a certain age or point when you start to use more advanced supplements?

[Sugar_And_Spice_Horses]

I have a 15-year-old Welsh X mare and while she isn’t quite considered “old” in my book, she is getting up there. I was wondering, is there a certain age or specific signs that you typically look for before using joint supplements, etc? I don’t know if I should wait until she gets older and starts showing “old age problems” or if I should get ahead of the problem and start using supplements now/in a few years. She is currently on your typical sweet feed from TSC and an Alfalfa/Timothy mix

(By supplements, I mean special grain for older aged horses and/or actual supplements such as the ones from SmartPak)

[Scribbler]

Well, my choice for horse of any age would be good hay (which you have), and either a good ration balancer (which I can’t get in Canada) or a beet pulp mash with a vitamin mineral supplement plus flax. Very low NSC.

I fed sweet feed as a kid in the 1970s but with what I know now, I wouldn’t pump that much sugar into a horse.

[Sugar_And_Spice_Horses]

Thanks for the suggestion! Honestly, she doesn’t even get the daily requirements of sweet feed, just a scoop a day or every other day depending on if she gets extra hay or not. It’s basically just an extra little something since there is no grass this time of year in DE. I’ve been thinking of using flax. Where do you buy it? And do you feed it whole or ground?

[Scribbler]

Then you should be getting a ration balancer or VMS into her, for sure.

I just get whole flax at the feed store and feed a cup a day, I don’t bother grinding it. It does go best in a wet mash, dry it can stick to the mouth in an unpleasant way

[Sugar_And_Spice_Horses]

Do you feed ration balancers as stand alone feeds or as a top dressing? Sorry for getting a bit off topic, but I made this post as I am trying to get her “winter feedings” together and properly give her the right stuff.

[Amy3996]

You can either feed it as a stand alone or top dress it depending on the rest of your feeding program and your horse’s needs. If your horse is a super easy keeper and not getting any other concentrate, a RB can be fed alone with hay.

If your horse is what I call a moderate keeper (can’t get by on hay alone, but also doesn’t need 5-6lbs of a commercial feed), you can top dress 1/4 to 1/2 a pound of most ration balancers to make up the difference in nutrition from feeding less than the recommended amount of a commercial feed like TC Senior.

[Scribbler]

A ration balancer is typically a pelleted feed fed at a ratio of one or two pounds a day. It’s formulated so that you get the full dose of vitamins and minerals in this amount with lower calories.

A fortified feed is typically formulated so you need to feed 4 or 5 lbs to get all the nutrients, so that’s much higher calories total. You can get fortified feeds with low NSC (carb and sugar) levels made on a base of things like beet pulp, alfalfa meal, or soy.

IME, sweet feeds are not fortified and are quite high in calories and sugar.

A VMS added to a beet pulp mash is similar to a ration balancer. VMS are typically fed at one or two ounces a day and need to be mixed in a mash or top dressed.

[joiedevie99]

Yes - as others said, I’d start by getting the current diet fixed. Ration balancer is like diet grain. It makes sure they get their vitamins, minerals, and protein without eating any more calories than necessary. If you are feeding less than the daily recommended minimum of your grain, your horse is likely not getting the nutrition they should from it.

Beyond that, my horses work hard. They get 10,000 mg of MSM daily to help knock down any inflammation, natural Vitamin E because they aren’t on good pasture 24/7, and a loading dose of Adequan twice a year starting by age 7 or so (around when they start schooling FEI level work). At various times for older horses with known issues, I’ve also used other supplements like Grand Premium Plus, Equithrive, and Cosequin ASU.

[RedHorses]

When my older horse was sixteen I wondered if he would benefit from a joint supplement. So I tried one. He’d been on MSM for years and I added glucosamine.

A couple of weeks later I was wondering why he was feeling ready to trot (loose, powerful, forward) in 5-6 minutes instead of the usual 10-12 minutes. I noticed because I had a warm up routine and he was feeling ready to trot before we finished it. I had forgotten about the glucosamine. I figured it out a day or two later.

I had asked a vet about joint supplements for a previous horse and was told to try one, double dose for two weeks, and if I didn’t see a change I should try a different one. Which is what I had done with my older horse - start him on it and see if I noticed a difference.

[Obsidian_Fire]

Others have mentioned getting her off the sweet feed and I agree, sugar is known to be inflammatory.

To answer your question: Adequan, twice a year. Yes, it’s a spendy up front cost, but if you break the price down per month, it’s not any more expensive than feed-thru supplements. And a whole lot more likely to actually work.

Diet - flax, vitamin E. MSM if your mare tolerates it (some don’t). You are shopping TSC, so I would switch to Triple Crown products. I personally use Senior (on all ages) and the VM supp I add is Uckele Equi VM.

And then, good old fashioned exercise. ‘Motion is lotion’ as they say.