Looking at changing my horse’s supplement regimen. When I start adding stuff & feel it is getting complicated, I usually step back & try to simplify.
Looking at Smart Pak & Platinum. They both have comprehensive supplements that will cover the poly supplement situation I have now. Anyone have specific preferences between the 2 companies? Why?
(cost will be about the same)
What are you supplementing?
FWIW, I do more supplements than I’d like at the moment, but it’s getting us through 3 months of antibiotics for Lyme (along with a forage balancer/beet pulp). None come from either vendor.
We need to know the whole diet, and the supplements and why you have each one.
Platinum does have a lot of products, but a lot of them are very over-priced for what they are, and many of them don’t have enough of most things in them to make them worth using, much less worth their cost - the basic PP v/m is an excellent example of this
SP has a TON of products.
What is your definitely of “comprehensive”?
I’m in the same process as you, and have started threads much like this myself in times past. @JB is a lot of help in this area!
I seem to scale back or change things up and then slowly start letting things creep up, adding this and that for various reasons. My gelding is an easy keeper, has skin and allergy issues in the hot months and has anhidrosis. He’s also barefoot and needs support for his hooves, which aren’t bad, but that’s because I am so particular with his diet.
You need to start with the absolute best quality hay and enough of it. If you board, this may be somewhat out of your hands, but you can always “supplement” with bagged hay (chopped, cubed, pelleted) if needed. Get that 1-2% of their body weight covered with the best forage you can and the rest comes down to filling in the gaps and targeting any conditions the horse may have.
The easiest way to do this is via a ration balancer (fed in 1-2 pounds per day) or a forage balancer (fed in ounces with a carrier like hay pellets or beet pulp). Either of these options should cover the horse’s nutritional needs. If you board and have to go with the barn’s feed, that’s fine, just make sure the horse is getting the minimum requirement listed on the bag to fulfill its nutritional needs. If the horse can’t due to weight issues, etc. add a forage balancer or ration balancer and that should take care of everything.
If you’ve done the above, the horse has everything it needs nutritionally. The next area a lot of people look at is “condition” (weight and hair coat) which often can be improved with the addition of a fat sources. Flax products like Omega Horseshine and many others are popular as well as rice bran products and various oils. Easy-keepers won’t need as much fat, but adding a small amount can help with coat, etc.
With all of the above covered, all you’re really left with is any specific issue the particular horse may have. Joint supplement, digestive supplement, respiratory supplement, etc. These will be things you may want to discuss with your vet to decide if it’s a matter of adding a supplement or treating some other way.
As for the company? It doesn’t really matter. SmartPak is a retail company that sells all sorts of things including supplements. They have their own brand as well as many other brands. Platinum Performance is overpriced, IMO. That said, I’ve just ordered some of their Platinum Refresh in a desperate attempt to get my horse sweating (I’ve done literally everything). I’ve used it in years past with some success, so fingers crossed. None of their other stuff is all that great to me.
I like Mad Barn a lot as a company. Their Omneity gets great reviews.
It’s going to come down to what you already feed and what you feel your horse needs in addition to that. Make sure the foundation of the feeding program is good first. 1-2% of high-quality hay, hard feed (whether a fortified feed, ration balancer, or carrier with forage balancer) to fill in the gaps of the hay. If those things are in order, your horse shouldn’t need many (or any) supplements.
Thanks - she gets 24/7 free choice grass on turn out, some alfalfa pm & a ration balancer. Basic diet & living situation is better than average by alot (I think). Want to cover joints particularly as she is a jumping horse, & gut because we do show, so ulcers/colic/stress diarrhea I would prefer to avoid.
Thank you for the input, I don’t think I’ve looked into Mad Barn yet.
A horse prone to diarrhea can sometimes benefits from probiotics. I like Herbs for Horses, another evidence based Canadian company like Mad Barn.
Maybe 
If the forage is all/mostly hay, then not all ration balancers provide enough Vit E to provide more than the very bare bones minimum of 500IU/1000lb, and truthfully, even an out of work horse really should be getting at least 1000IU/1000lb (1IU/lb body weight) for basic health. Personally, I prefer 2IU/lb, and then go up to 3, even 4IU/lb if they’re working hard enough
Same for copper and zinc. So much forage in the US has so little, and while a good ration balancer will get them over their min of around 100mg for an average 500kg horse, so many horses benefit from 2-3x that much, and the same goes for zinc.
But yes, for a lot of horses, a ration balancer gets them at least to, and to some degree beyond, bare minimum requirements
Joint issue prevention is something you just put in a hope and a prayer for, because none of it has proven to be effective at prevention. Some have shown to reduce stress markers post-exercise, but that’s not the same as saying it prevents arthritis. Most likely, the best prevention for arthritis is proper warmup/cooldown/work, work suitable for the conformation, proper saddle fit, excellent hoof balance, a well-fortified diet, proper conditioning, and as much turnout as possible.
There are several feeds which have some built-in gut support. Triple Crown Balancer Gold has gastric and hind gut support, but the Purina Outlast, Tribute Constant Comfort, and Triple Crown’s newer one whose name I forget, are all decent gastric support products. Hind gut is a different story if you’re looking to target that, in terms of supplements. There are several out there
I like to run my horses diet through FeedXL. It is enlightening how much extra we give unknowingly, and shows where the particular diet is deficient.
I’ve found the most difficult part to assess is hay quality if it hasn’t been tested.
To answer the specific question - PP and SP as brands are neither better nor worse than each other. Both have so many supplements and a significant markup for convenience that you likely shouldn’t be making supplement choices just based on that. Decide what ingredients/nutrients you want to feed and how much, then pick a supplement.
I find most “all in one” or “comprehensive support” supps to be expensive and pointless due to the lack of useful amounts of actives. The list of actives is long but the AMOUNTS are low. This goes for both these brands and plenty of others. For this reason, I piecemeal my supps together (natural E, Cu/Zn).
Why someone chooses one brand/delivery system over another is usually based on Cost, and maybe Barn Preference if you board. I use SmartPaks (though the supps are other brands) because I board one and having worked many farms I know that scooping supplements takes FOREVER and is easily missed. If someone forgets to feed a strip, that’s easier to notice or coach vs arguing that a tub lasted “too long”. I don’t like the Platinum Paks as they’re irritating to deal with if you’re wearing gloves so there’s a measure of personal preference there.
Step one is to decide WHAT you’re wanting to supplement (and why). Usually that decides where you get your supps from. When I feed my own horses, I have supps coming from 4 different places 
Don’t forget…it’s SmartEquine, not SmartPak now. 
As long as one understands the shortfalls of FXL, that’s fine. For example, unless you’re specifically adding some, it tells you the diet is deficient in B12, ignoring the fact that horses make plenty of their own as long as their digestive system is working properly.
I’ve also seen it tell someone their diet had too little Se, when the issue was they didn’t have the right calculations based on the GA they had for the inputs.
And if you don’t have a forage analysis, it’s useless, since their average (and remember, they’re not based in the US) may be wildly different from what you’re feeding
You can get not Smartpak brand supplements through Smartpak/SmarEquine too.
I recently did a revamp of my mare’s feed regime and she has some metabolic / pretty specific mineral and vitamin level needs that I wanted to pay close attention to. I found the Mad Barn Feed Comparison tool helpful in comparing the various levels of different supplements and feed combinations super helpful and ultimately was able to simplify and identify alternative brands / options. It does require doing your own googlign and searching for what to compare and a target of rough levels you want coming in from your feed / supplements for the various micros / macros / vitamins / etc but I found it useful
Re the MadBarn tools - just know that they’re database isn’t always accurate. Once you’ve chosen things to look at, I highly recommend going to that product’s home website to make sure what MB has is what the company has. I’ve seen some wildly different numbers, as well as just a bit off.
AND, make sure you’re comparing things on a proper per-serving basis. Their tool usually does come up with the basic serving size as the default, but not always, and your horse may be bigger or smaller and require a bigger or smaller serving size than the average/default.
This. I’ve seen calorie counts off by like 500kcal/lb - a huge issue if you’re watching that. Other data has been off significantly when I’ve been looking at this stuff. I like Mad Barn, I just think their database is flawed.
IME FeedXL has limited usefulness (suggests things are deficient despite being naturally produced by the horse, for example), but I find the individual data points to be more accurate than Mad Barn across brands. It’s a good free starter tool if you have some idea of what you want the diet to look like and aren’t just going off the generated color graph.
Hay testing is really helpful but boarding often makes that hard.
Yes, I think both tools have value IF you at least understand a few things, and make sure you can check the accuracy of the inputs
I was wondering about. I was looking up Ultium on their site and it came in much lower than had been previously reported here on the forum, but I couldn’t find a current value put out by Purina 
I’ve never found if this is linked from their website, so can’t tell you where to look. But generally, if you google “{company name} horse feed calories” you can sometimes find things from the company itself
https://www.purinamills.com/getmedia/b460d73f-5991-453d-b104-2451626bcbf6/Purina-Horse-Feed-Major-Nutrient-Content-Chart-06-09-22.pdf?ext=.pdf
Tribute has one as well if you do the same search
I actually like to use the SmartPak supplement wizard tool to help me evaluate what supplements to give, if any. I don’t take their results as gospel by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s helpful to identify areas that you might think about adding in. For example, they always suggest joint supplements. I do provide joint supplements to my horses, but I use either Adequan or Pentosan.
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