I’m looking at top line supplements. I’ve tried Tri amino, but it made my guys WILD. Are there any others you guys have used and recommend? I noticed Pro Elite feeds came out with a top line advantage supplement. Have any of you used it yet?
Interesting that tri amino made your guys wild. The first time I tried it my horse became super spooky. After 2 weeks of not being able to figure out what was up I took him off. Then later this summer when it was warmer I tried it again. Shortly after he went off his grain. I’m not 100% sure it was the supplement so I may try once again.
I’d be interested to hear what others would recommend.
I usually recommend TriAmino or Nutramino, since they are just the amino acids, no other ingredients. Any top line supplement that’s worth using is going to have those amino acids in them, so I’m not sure how you’d get around that!
I wonder if it’s not the supplement that’s making them wild but the supplement is causing them to produce more acid and making them ulcery.
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I don’t understand how straight amino acids - the building blocks of proteins, and 3 that are essential AAs at that (meaning they have to be ingested) - can make a horse “wild”, or even produce more acid 
What does “wild” mean?
The Topline Advantage is just the Progressive product under the ProElite name. It has the same 3 amino acids that are in TriAmino - lysine, methionine, threonine. 1/2lb of the Topline Advantage is going to provide the same 10gm lysine, 5gm methionine, and actually a bit more threonine at 8gm. Plus a whole lot more things.
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Two of my horses went from relaxed and happy to tense. I took my one mare to a dressage clinic and she LOST her mind. This is a mare that I can usually get on and walk around. She may be a little tense in the walk until she settles but she is never bolting as I try to get on her. There was no big temperature drop, nothing was pinching her. The only change to her routine was adding the Tri-Amino a week before. I didn’t think it could be possible until I started reading the reviews on Smartpak and several others reported the same problem. I am tempted to try SmartMuscle and topline advanced in case it was just this particular supplement.
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I’ve tried it, and I actually really like it. More importantly, my horse really likes it.
My 17 yo TB was losing topline in a big way, most likely because he refuses to eat hay when there is grass in the summer, and grass is just not enough to sustain him forage-wise, even though we have pretty lush fields. I was upping his grain a good amount (but still within the recommended amount) and tried adding some alfalfa, but just wasn’t seeing a result I needed and didn’t want to go crazy with grain volume. He is not a hard keeper, at all, and actually tends more toward the cresty/metabolic end of things, so for him to lose topline like this was something new.
He’s been on it for a few weeks now, looks great, and is not hot or wild. I know, personally speaking, lysine supplements can make me feel weird, so amino acids aren’t totally innocuous when they are cultivated as isolated supplements rather than gained organically through food. It likely comes down to which binders, etc are in the supplement.
My horses is also SUPER PICKY and turned his nose up at literally every other kind of muscle builder, protein supplement, etc, that I offered him. He eats every last bite of this stuff. Do I love that it’s a soy-based source? No…but, the equine feed industry has a long way to go before it nears the sourcing purity we expect for ourselves and even for our dogs. So, there’s one user experience.
We are almost all the way through our first bag (if you want to try it but aren’t sure you’ll like it, Pro Elite does not do samples, but they will send you a free bag… so…) and so far, so good. To the point that I might back him down off of both his grain and the supplement a little.
I had a very hard time building a topline on my horse, who has his own issues with ulcers. His dietician recommended empower topline balance, which is not a supplement but a ration balancer.
https://www.nutrenaworld.com/product/empower-balance-grass-formula-supplement
we don’t feed much, but it’s made a huge difference. He eats it readily. It has some pre and pro biotics as well.
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I have been feeding the Proelite Topline Advantage for a little over a month now. No change in my horse’s behavior (he is always calm), and not sure about his overall condition because he was in good condition to start. I started feeding it at the recommendation of my vet.
One thing I have noticed- an old injury that never quite healed right with the hair never growing back is starting to look better. After a coupe years of NO change I actually think it is improving. At first I couldn’t figure out what was different but then I realized the only new thing is the addition of the Topline Advantage. I will be keeping a close eye on the old wound to see if it really is getting smaller. If it does then I would absolutely swear by this stuff, because like I said, it hasn’t improved in years despite trying everything I could think of.
I’ve tried Tri-Amino, Animed Muscle Up, SmartPak Muscle Mass, Purina SuperSport, you name it. Hands down the best top line support I’ve found is the Purina Enrich+ ration balancer. I feed 1 lb a day along with a small amount of Tribute Senior Sport and his top line has really filled in. I think (as with most things we try to fix with supplements), making sure the diet is complete and balanced goes a lot further to building top line than trying to spot treat.
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Topline Advantage behaves and is fed in the amount of a balancer–not a supplement. It’s all well and good to say we should balance their diet, etc, but the reality for most of us is that we board and have limited control over grass quality and hay nutritional content. We feed high quality hay where I am, and have actually very good grass, but he was still in need of additional support. And yes, it makes sense that a wound would heal better as the product is comprised of amino acids, like lysine, that support skin and connective tissue. I had also noticed that his hooves were looking worse after years of looking great when his topline started to go which pointed to nutritional and caloric lack, to me. Topline Advantage also mentions that it helps with “healthy coat and strong hooves.” I have long since taken my horse off of hoof supplements as I had tried every one and never found them to work. Moving to a new barn with a new farrier and dirt/grass turnouts instead of red clay made the difference he needed, but the deterioration coincided with topline loss, so ideally both will improve if this product continues to help.
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So how is a “top line supplement” different from any other weight gain supplement?
I have to admit to being very skeptical about the whole idea.
Anything listed as “topline supplement” needs to have quality protein, which means good amounts of amino acids. It may not have many calories (like Tri-Amino/Nutramino), it might have some (ration balancers with 30% protein).
A weight builder is typically a high % fat, may or may not have much of anything else.
They are very different.
No skepticism needed. Quality protein is a requirement for muscle development. Calories are as well, but at some point a horse may be getting plenty of calories (ribs well-covered), but not enough quality protein, or even not enough fat in some cases.
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Okay. So it’s basically a muscle-building supplement. That makes more sense.
Do these things contain anything that makes them top line specific?
Muscle needs protein. Quality protein. This means amino acids. There’s a whole list of essential amino acids (EAA), meaning they are ones the horse needs to ingest, he cannot manufacture.
Lysine is the first limiting EAA, meaning if there’s not enough lysine, then allllll the other AAs down the line are limited by how much lysine there is. AAs form chains to be proteins. So think of the AAs as letters in the alphabet. Without “a”, there’s a whole lot of words you can’t make, no matter how many other letters you have.
Lysine is also an AA that a horse might easily be deficient in, as it’s fairly easy for grass/grass hay to be low in both protein and lysine.
Next is methioinine.
For that reason, all good “topline supplements” need to contain good amounts of lysine and preferably also methionine. By “good amount” I mean on the order of 10gm lysine, and 3-5gm methionine.
There are some supplements that also have a few gm threonine, and some have a whole list of AAs (and some of them have them in such small amounts as to be almost useless - Equinety is one supplement like that).
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Hmmm. Okay.
I can see that you’re very knowledgeable, JB, but I’ve seen too many people admiring the lovely “top line” on a horse that’s simply fat to be completely rid of my skepticism just yet.
Is a special “top line supplement” really doing anything special if a horse is already getting a well-balanced diet with sufficient protein and micro-nutrients, and is being trained and ridden correctly?
I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass here, I just tend to think that many supplements on the market today are basically a waste of money.
Well, there is a lot to be said about ample calories making for a nice top line. But there’s also conformation. And genetics in terms of natural muscle development. A lot of Show Hunters for example - bred for a nice genetic conformational topline, and while they might also be a bit overweight (or a lot :rolleyes:) the inherent topline is still very nice. Don’t think they’re saying it’s nice simply because the horse is fat. But I agree that too many people confuse “in good flesh” with the actual topline health.
[qutoe]Is a special “top line supplement” really doing anything special if a horse is already getting a well-balanced diet with sufficient protein and micro-nutrients, and is being trained and ridden correctly?
[/quote]
No - you can’t feed beyond what genetics and work (and saddle fit) are allowing.
I don’t mean to be a pain in the ass here, I just tend to think that many supplements on the market today are basically a waste of money.
I couldn’t agree more. So many have great ingredients, but at amounts too low to be of value. Many have ingredients that have no research in horses at all, merely extrapolations from other species, or, worse, from in-vitro studies :rolleyes:
Many supplements DO have their place, but are being used incorrectly. Stop using weight builder supplements when you’re feeding 10lb of hay and sparse pasture and 2lb of a feed meant to be fed at 6. Stop looking for a “calming” supplement when your horse is fed 12lb of Omelene 200 and stalled 20 hours a day and you’ve got a narrow tree saddle on a table-top back.
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Yes! Absolutely! That’s pretty much where I was going with all the questions.
Horse people seem to have become weirdly dependent on a crazy array of supplements to make up for glaring holes in what used to be ordinary horsemanship and husbandry. (The quality and quantity of hay fed at boarding barns for example . . . :no:. Yeesh.) Many of us also seem to be terribly gullible when it comes to products for horses in a way that we’d never be about products for ourselves.
Would any reasonably intelligent person, for example, fall for a human protein supplement that claimed to target the glutes or biceps specifically?Or how about something called a “six pack supplement”?
I can’t imagine anybody over the age of ten falling for a thing like that, but when it comes to some overpriced powder that claims to target a horse’s “focus”? Hell yes! That crap sells like hot cakes!
Have you taken a look at the human supplement lineup these days? Or the gadget lineup that promises to give you a thigh gap and shrink the “chub rub”? :no: Take a pill to keep your body from digesting fat and the pounds will melt off, revealing a delightful 6-pack. :mad:
People fall for quick fixes no matter the source of the problem
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A thigh gap supplement???
:lol:
I’m sorry, but that’s just hilarious.
