We started in Sept and my guy darkened immediately . He is a bay. So we will see how the summer goes.
That’s because that’s about when the Winter coat starts to become really visible. Healthy, new, unbleached. You cannot change the color of the hair once it’s out there, with internal anything.
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One of my friends has a Dun coloured quarter horse.The Ferrier had recommended putting him on biotin. The owner told me since being on biotin shredded out much darker more of a dapple bay now. I have never tried biotin so I have no experience.
Don’t discount the effect that sweat and fly spray can have on a coat as well.
I’d tried paprika, and a hoof supplement with higher levels of Cu and Zn and the only thing that ever kept my old guy from bleaching from mahogany bay to a dingy beach-bum blonde was keeping him in from 9-4 in the summer.
How palatable are the copper and zinc supplements from Uckele? Do your horses eat them right up or do you have to mask them?
All 4 of mine couldn’t care less. I know others who never eat it no matter how small a pinch they are started with. So it’s a total toss of the coin.
Night turnout is free.
STalling during the day isn’t always available, and not always in the horse’s best interest.
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I don’t like my horses out when everyone is sleeping. Horses are stolen at night.
And supplementing is ?
When you are supplementing for optimal health, to make up for what the basic diet isn’t providing - yes.
It’s a fact that pigment comes from melanin, and melanin requires copper. The darker the coat, the more pigment and melanin required, therefore the more copper required. Is it better to add some copper to get the horse where he should be, or stick him in a stall all day to avoid sunlight? Or spend money on sprays that contain sunscreen and mostly don’t work anyway?
Add to that that so many forages are high in iron, and low in cu/zn to begin with, and that can also lead to hoof quality problems even if they don’t cause huge coat issues. You’d be amazed how many diets are so unbalanced because of too much iron.
So yeah, aiming for optimal health, which is sometimes more than what the NRC recommends for “not sick” healthy, is a better choice than confining an horse for aesthetic reasons,
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Do you have any evidence to support that ?
I think feeding a horse properly, keeping him in the cool during the day, whilst keeping the flies off him, is a much healthier solution than stuffing him with substances that could do him harm. A healthy looking coat is a welcome by-product.
Paprika is made of varieties of dried peppers, which contain capsaisin. Capsaisin is an analgesic and on the FEI list of banned substances.Your horse would be at risk for ulcers, his pain response would be masked, he would test positive in competition, but his coat would be REALLY pretty.
The copper-pigment connection? Any simple search brings up all anyone needs to know at a basic level
https://thehorse.com/16846/coppers-impact-on-equine-coat-color/
Lots of good stuff including how the depigmentation (ie fading) indicate low copper or zinc. It also speaks to what I also mentioned - forages tend to be low in copper.
I think feeding a horse properly,
Well exactly. That’s the entire point I’m making.
keeping him in the cool during the day, whilst keeping the flies off him, is a much healthier solution than stuffing him with substances that could do him harm. A healthy looking coat is a welcome by-product.
A healthy looking coat should NEVER be considered icing on the cake. It should be an integral part of looking at the internal health of the horse. Maybe there’s enough nutrition to keep the insides working properly because let’s face it, internal organ health takes precedence over external hair health. But that doesn’t mean there’s enough for a healthy coat, and why shouldn’t they have OPTIMAL health?
Paprika is made of varieties of dried peppers, which contain capsaisin. Capsaisin is an analgesic and on the FEI list of banned substances.Your horse would be at risk for ulcers, his pain response would be masked, he would test positive in competition, but his coat would be REALLY pretty.
who said anything about paprika? Nobody. I even tried that - didn’t do squat for my black horse who wanted to be a buckskin. What did? Adding copper and zinc. And at the levels of even labeled doses of straight copper/zinc complexes, you’re not going to OD the horse.
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Magazine articles are not evidence. (Try reading the whole thread.)
Claire Thunes is one of the few truly qualified nutritionists in the US.
But hey, if you need more
https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/minerals/copper
https://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/forum/discussion-forums/horse-care/18457-how-does-paprika-actually-work-to-darken-coats?p=1588869#post1588869
I’m not sure why you’re so resistant to the idea that minerals play a role in coat health.
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I am not. It’s what else they could do that is worrisome.
So, let’s talk about that. What are you worried about? It’s not like we’re throwing 10,000mg of either of those minerals as a supplement. There are upper limits of known safety, and while I don’t recall offhand what those levels are, I know they are quite a bit above any reasonable supplementation.
It’s well-documented the roles that copper and zinc play in hoof and skin and coat health. The NRC lists what’s needed for “not sick” health, and admits that a lot of their numbers are only based on “this is what it take to not be sick/diseased”, and not necessarily what it takes for optimal health
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@Toblersmom I started it my bay mare on copper and zinc in like April last year for hoof health, and she did not bleach out at all over the Florida summer out 24/7. As compared to the year before where she turned basically dun.
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Quoting to reach you a little more directly without PMing in case my questions have been going through anyone else’s mind too 
So, a horse that lives in an area with a ton of iron in the water - how would we figure out how to balance an addition of copper and zinc? My horse has faded in the summers since moving to an area that has high iron. The iron content seems to have risen even more after another water change. Buckets will discolor within a couple of days as opposed to a week or more previously. Does one need to get some sort of analysis done to get the supplementation levels right, or wing it based on “too much” iron in the water?
That’s really hard to deal with. I know quite a few people now who have attached RV filters to their water source because of high iron. Water can definitely be tested. At some point you can’t keep adding cu/zn, since as I mentioned above there is a limit on safety. So sometimes you just can’t add X amount to balance sky-high Fe, you have to get the Fe reduced as well. And usually it’s both, as it can be really hard to get the Fe level down to a reasonable level.
