What supplements have worked for you? which ones haven’t? Just curious thanks.
Without knowing anything about your horse and what you do with your horse, I will offer this:
Seaweed-based supplements like Source or Hilton Herbs Hoof & Heath give a lot of bang for the buck, in hoof and skin health + trace minerals.
You really need to look at your horse’s condition, needs, diet and work-load to think about whether supplementation is needed and if so what kind. If you have an easy keeper who doesn’t work that hard and is in good hoof and condition, you may not need anything.
I feed the Uckele Sport horse pellets and my horses look amazing!! So if you need a vitamin/mineral supplement I really recommend it…
Its not for my horse but in general. Thanks guys
Feed a senior feed and a probiotic that’s it. Most horses do just fine with a good feed. Really depends on what your wanting to supplement for.There is a lot of supplements that don’t have enough of anything to do any good.
Most horses don’t need anything but hay or pasture and a salt lick.
I noticed increased hair growth (and possibly a bit of hoof growth) with a Biotin supplement. It wasn’t night and day, but my gelding’s tail has less breakage.
Uckele’s G.U.T. has helped my Cushings horse with mild ulcers.
HA worked wonders for my old mare with arthritis (and for me). MSM was helpful, but not as good as the HA. She also had sarcoids which I treated with various things but finally found Hilton Herbs immune formula and a cream that, at the time, was called Ditton (it has a different name now, which I forget). That combo got rid of sarcoids in her ears that I had been treating ineffectively for years.
It would help if you’d define “supplement”.
There are those that make up for what a diet is lacking, either because the forage is deficient, or the horse is not able to consume enough calories to meet his nutrient needs (ie muzzled on grass, reduced hay intake, no concentrated feed), or he just doesn’t metabolize something well enough.
There are those that benefit the horse because of some issue - flax, for example, can help some horses with some arthritis or some allergy issues.
And there’s a giant category of supplements that are totally useless because while they might contain ingredients proven to have amazing benefits for which the supp is marketed, they’re in so little amounts as to be useless.
So the supplement that works is the one that fills the need in the right amount. People love to have the debate about, say, Farrier’s Formula being the best hoof supplement out there. It IS, for the right category of horse who is lacking in those specific things in roughly those amounts. But for the people who say it does nothing for their horses, that doesn’t mean it’s a useless product, because all it means is that their horse does not benefit from those nutrients in those amounts - he might need other nutrients (either altogether, or in addition) or his hoof issues are genetic and/or environmental.
That’s why I don’t like going down the very generic “what supplements work for you and what doesn’t” because it’s a far more complicated situation.
“Most horses don’t need anything but hay or pasture and a salt lick.” is an ideal situation based on ideal forage and the ability to consume enough of it, and assumes you are looking for general health, not necessarily optimal health. Horses’ smooth tongues are not well suited to licking blocks, and most horses, even if they do well on a block, would benefit more from a loose salt.
What counts as a supplement? Do you just mean powders, or other things?
I feed a mash of beet pulp, whole oats, a couple of alfalfa cubes for flavor :), salt, flax, and a complete vitamin/mineral supplement. Hay is currently half timothy, half local grass, and three pounds of alfalfa. She is doing very well on this, and it works out to cost less than feeding a bagged complete extruded feed (we only have two brands to choose from around here, none of the American brands). she also had free choice of a Redmond rock salt block, and she powers through 7 pounds in eight weeks.
I dropped the kelp/seaweed supplement a few years back when I realized that we were getting all the iodine we needed from the supplement.
I like flax and a good probiotic for most horses.
Been using Hyla Sport in my older guy and he’s doing well on it. It’s a flax based joint supplement.
This is such an open ended question it’s hard to respond at all.
But I do like feeding omega shine to mine to make them shiny.
Other than that, I generally look to Uckele or HorseTech when I have something specific I need to address.
Has anyone just not seen any improvement with any supplement?
Larkspade, supplements address ISSUES.
Without stating what issue you’re looking to “fix,” this is impossible question to answer.
There is no single supplement that will fix everything for every single horse, no. It sounds like that’s what you’re looking for?
[QUOTE=Larkspade;9008644]
Has anyone just not seen any improvement with any supplement?[/QUOTE]
Many years ago I acquired a malnourished rescue TB broodmare who had some pretty significant arthritis ( when it flared up). I fed MSM daily for months and it didn’t do squat. On the really bad days I gave her a dose of Bute and I couldn’t keep her in one spot. I know that worked.
Conquer HA
Remission
OptiZyme
Show Glo
Vitamin E (Elevate and Ultra Cruz)
These have worked for me.
Has anyone just not seen any improvement with any supplement?
Well sure. I’ve used several joint supplements that made no difference. That doesn’t mean they didn’t work for others (and I know for a fact they have).
I’ve added selenium to see if it would help with some tight muscle issues - wanted to see if moving the horse from middle normal to high normal would help. Not only did it not help, I couldn’t budge his Se blood level. But others have used Se successfully for the same symptoms (because clearly the cause was different).
So still, your new question is far too open-ended and entirely situation-dependent.
Liquid 747 helped my mare develop topline after we hit a plateau. Works very well.
Plenty of supplements don’t work with some horses. Especially if your horse won’t eat them… they’ve got to palatable.
Again, OP, it’s difficult to respond without knowing what specific results you do or don’t want from a supplement. There are hundreds of them for so many different reasons.
Example: My horse’s feet were chipping a lot, probably due to a number of things. The farrier suggested I put him (my horse) on a hoof supplement, so I started him on Horseshoer’s Secret Concentrate. Now, about a year later, his feet are much improved.
But, there are people on this board who’ll argue that it’s a crappy supplement, that it might have been the weather, that maybe the hay was better this year, or any one of a number of things. They might be right, or partially right. I think the supplement helped at least somewhat. Who knows?
To me, supplements are a sign of a problem in either the baseline diet or the horse’s general care. I try to address those two things before buying supplements.
But magnesium did help my mare with some muscle issues until I could fix the diet. Brand didn’t matter.
Biotin is helping my gelding’s hoof issues now. His diet doesn’t have enough biotin in it, and since it is working really well in all other respects… I may just keep him on a hoof supplement. Brand doesn’t matter; whatever is cheapest and has 20mg/serving works.
The only non-diet supplement I’ve used successfully was MSM on my mare who was prone to stocking up. It reduced the incidences significantly. Again, brand didn’t matter.
I’ve had better luck with alfalfa for ulcer issues than I have seen barnmates have with ulcer supplements. Raspberry leaves as a source of magnesium were useless. I never saw any “calming” affects from magnesium. I know people who have fed flax, but I never saw any particular improvement in their horses. I do find my own horses get super shiny on rice bran. I’ve seen various feed-through fly control supplements used to no obvious effect.
I’ve seen more supplements not work than work, frankly.
