Mare is on Quiessence already, but am looking for another option - vet suggested Heiro - which I’ve been using, but is there another supplement that’s a bit less expensive?
What reasons do you have for looking for another option? Instead of, or in addition to the Quiessence?
Have you used Remission? Any additional straight magnesium supplementation?
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In addition to the Quiessence - vet recommended Heiro so I was just wondering whether there were other effective options that were not as pricey, have not tried Remission.
What’s actually in that supplement?
When I lived in the land of Cobs (UK) a lot of people managed diet properly and fed straight MagOx. Some used Vit E too.
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Smartpak’s Leg Up Metabolic pellets: https://www.smartpakequine.com/ps/leg-up-metabolic-pellets--15020
Animed’s Remission: https://www.statelinetack.com/item/animed-remission-founder-support/BWA63/
Thanks, guys – will look at the above! She’s already getting vitamin E, plus the Quiessence.
But WHY. Heiro has it’s “stuff”, Quiessence has its “stuff”, Remission has its own, and so on. What about Heiro does your vet like? What is s/he hoping to accomplish? Or does s/he not even know what’s in it, just heard it can do good things?
That will effect whether there’s an alternative.
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Ah yes.
The latter, I believe 
Haha! So, what exactly are the symptoms your vet is looking to help? How much Quiessence are you feeding? Sometimes you can double it. Sometimes you simply need to use Remission.
Heiro is something that, on paper, doesn’t seem like much of anything. But I’ve heard enough anecdotes of improvements that Q and R did not provide, to not dismiss it out of hand. I also know stories of it doing nothing, so I definitely don’t “advertise” it as a great product.
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What are you hoping to accomplish by giving the horse something to eat? In detail. Because most IR horses are managed best by muzzling them and controlling what they eat and the rate at which they eat it. If your horse is even a little bit overweight, giving it more to eat is really not addressing the core problem which is weight.
Don’t think op is looking to so call feed horse more feed. She’s looking for a less pricey supplement then heiro.
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Quiessence and Heiro are both supplements, fed at the 1-2oz range, aimed at the IR/metabolic horse to help mitigate the issues. These aren’t feeds, not even along the lines of a ration balancer.
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Who is calling it a feed? Giving the horse something to eat is not going to fix the problem if the horse is overweight. If the horse is overweight, then getting the weight where it needs to be will do way more than eating something.
“Something to eat” made it sound like you were assuming any of this was about feeding the stuff.
And you are wrong about “something to eat is not going to fix the problem if the horse is overweight” because it absolutely CAN help. Not will, can.
When horses are overweight due to metabolic imbalances, such as insulin resistance, sometimes the right nutritional supplement DOES help reduce the weight by helping get the IR issue under (more) control. There are any number of studies supporting the use of things like magnesium to help IR horses manage this disease, and when you mitigate the issues caused by the disease, the weight can come off, at least to come degree.
You seem to think that fat horses are helped just by reducing calories and/or increasing exercise, but that is not true. Of course the IR horse who is fat should be managed properly from a caloric perspective, but there’s only so much reduction to be done, and that does not always get the weight off.
These horses aren’t metabolic because they’re fat. They’re fat (to some degree) because they’re metabolic. And many times, that “fat” is not actual fat, it’s edema (inflammation) due to the metabolic condition, and when that’s the case, it is absolutely fact that when adding the rights supplementation, that inflammation can be reduced and the weight come off quickly.
Ever seen an IR horse blow up almost literally overnight? That’s not fat, that’s inflammation. And likewise, when the cause is removed, they can “deflate” almost literally overnight a well. Becoming overweight due to fat accumulation doesn’t move that fast.
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@Palm Beach here are some studies that demonstrate how “something to eat” can aid in insulin resistance.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18234131/
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/26/4/1147
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5610395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3156603/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5872768/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4073986/
Has this been studied in horses? I have no idea. But it is not at all unreasonable to attempt to bring this to equines. That’s what the IR supplements are all about.
There’s a lot more out there in this vein. Google will help if you’d like to learn more.
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@Palm Beach more studies in the specific ingredients in the supplement in question. That’s over a dozen published studies demonstrating how “something to eat” can aid insulin resistance treatment. Again, there’s a whole hell of a lot out there if you’d care to learn anything about this.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/11868855/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2815322/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4805148/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24559810/
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs13340-014-0177-8
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@JB - I asked the OP what he or she was trying to accomplish by feeding the horse a supplement. Maybe that question should be answered first, then you can get preachy. You need to look at the picture of the horse as a whole, not just a small piece. If the horse is on pasture without a muzzle, or free choice hay without a slow feed net, then maybe taking steps to reduce intake is going to be the least expensive way to help the horse. Which is what the original question was about. You can get a muzzle for $40 and a slow feed net for $10-$20. The topic is “Less Spendy Alternatives…” Reducing intake is much less expensive than purchasing supplements.
Notice that I asked the OP a couple times what the end goal was, because that is absolutely a piece of missing information. I also did not recommend another or additional supplement since I don’t know the current management.
You stated as fact that you can’t control weight with “feeding something” and that you should get the weight off first. I stated that is not a fact, and gave you situations where “feeding something” is absolutely at least part of managing weight. That is what I was addressing - your statements of fact, not the OP’s specific situation (since we don’t know all of that situation).
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The OP never responded to WHY the vet encouraged the addition of Heiro.
My old guy is IR. His weight is maintained with a ration balancer, high quality and not-so-great quality grass hay and controlled grazing. He’s not thin. He’s not fat. He’s perfect. But he’s not starved either. The help control IR weight issues a horse has to be fed, something.
He still suffers from sore feet as a side effect of being IR (and having foundered in the past). The Heiro is the ONLY supplement that has worked presumably control lamina inflammation to keep him comfortable… very, very comfortable.
I have tried many other supplements, with the hope to save money while eliminating or reducing his foot tenderness to no avail.
I was able to reduce his weight without the help of supplements, grain reduction, reduced grass, increased hay (swapping sources while cutting calories and sugar). The Heiro is simply added for his comfort. There are more severe cases that quite possibly need to assistance of supplements to help with weight loss. He was not one.
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Thinking about the ingredients to this (I have another post hung up in the queue with links to studies supporting them) it might be worth a shot to try cinnamon, aspirin, and omega 3. Those are all pretty well supported in people literature. Maybe kelp and or spirulina, too? (Heiro had both.)
Dunno about quantity or ratio, though. But all those things should be fairly inexpensive, and you can play around?
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