Contents

1. Intro
2. The big question - what started this Mineral Mullarky?
3. Minerals are the nutrient foundation of any diet
4. How do mineral imbalances affect our horses?
5. In nature, nothing acts in isolation
6. Getting the ratios right
7. Now let's throw Protein & Energy into the mix
8. Summary
9. A nutrient snapshot
   

Back in the mid-2000s, many of us horse owners were looking at a new concept – ‘barefoot’. Don't raise eyebrows though - I promise this isn't a Carol-Barefoot-Is-Best ramble - stay with me! We weren’t looking at it for some passing fad or trend - back then there was a huge misconception about going barefoot; many thought it was extremely cruel, without appreciating that many of us had no choice to consider it as a way to genuinely save our horses from a PTS prognosis, all as a result of a ‘navicular’ diagnosis and DDFT damage.

We were literally in last-chance-hoof-corral, yet the conventional forums (Horse & Hound especially) went feral on us, branding us as members of some kind of cult. Thankfully, a remarkable under-the-radar forum came to our rescue – the UKNHCP (UK Natural Hoof Care Practitioners) run by Nic Barker of Rockley Farm (barefoot lameness rehab).

As more knowledge was shared on the forum about how diet and environment affected the hoof (shod or not 😉), over time the mineral discussion became a central theme, driven by members' insights and inspired by Dr. Eleanor Kellon's NRC+ training course. Many of us started buying multiple bags off Ebay - magnesium, copper, zinc, phosphorous and selenium, all trying various solutions from our kitchens and reporting back. Over time this eventually formed the early blueprint of an essential nutrient foundation for the equine diet to match the mineral deficiencies in our UK grasslands.

My own early mineral blendings, accompanied by the obligatory lungfuls of mineral dust cloud, created a Sunday kitchen-bombsite as each week I'd line up bagfuls of various powders in front of numerous jars and labels, then attempt to blend a weeks' worth of minerals for five horses. I was determined to crack it - our Kelso's dry, brittle, cracked hooves depended on it (see About Us). Took me hours - never was the Sunday lunchtime pub trip so badly needed.

As us UKNHCP forum members also soon learned, with each season the grass chemistry inconveniently changed, so not only did this confuse us all but also meant that the homemade mineral mix had to change as well.

Eventually I soon had the process licked, and it proved to be worth every second. Our horses' hooves went from footy, flat and cracked, to strong, robust, and - as the saying went back then - proper rock-crunching barefoot hooves. Well, apart from my EMS connie Murphy - fabulous hooves in winter, but dreadful splat hooves with weedy frogs in summer, but that's a whole other story.

Eventually, as with when I originally put together our very first herbal respiratory blend to help Kelso get better, it wasn't long before I was asked to blend a mineral mix for a friend. As more requests came in, by summer 2013 our first mineral balancer had landed on the website. Initially named 'BareEssentials' (for obvious barefoot reasons), it eventually morphed into what became our EquiVita to suit all hooves, because hooves need nutrition whether shod or not. 😉

2. The big question - what started this mineral mullarky?

For those of us who have hit the half-century-plus (me included), no doubt you’ll remember the good old days. This was when our horses were turned out on unlimited meadow grass in the summer, and fed sun-baked aromatic hay in the winter, cut from that same meadow grass. There were no manicured or stripped paddocks like today, and no former dairy farms diversifying into livery yards with rye grass on offer as the grazing. Back then horses lived on established equine farms or studs with natural, native pastureland bordered by trees and woodlands, and with hedgerows to browse on.

Our horses were housed in centuries-old stone stables on straw beds, and we fed them an occasional scoop of oats or a warming winter bran mash alongisde a pot of bubbling linseed on the boil, all bought from the local corn merchant and sold to us in woven hessian sacks. Our horses were healthy and fit; no-one had ever heard of the words 'laminitis' or 'Cushing's', and shiny packaged feedbags hadn't even been invented. Us yardies would regularly gather in stone-walled tackrooms to polish the leather, with mugs of tea brewed on a stove fire also lit to keep us warm on frozen-finger winter days. I can still conjure up the wafting aroma of the saddle soap to this day. Oh the memories ... 😉

As coincidence would have it, the mid-'60s also brought with it modern progress, aka intensive farming, which poured billions of gallons of agri-chemicals onto the land. This changed our native grasslands beyond all recognition, with new 'improved' grass species, chemical fertilisers, pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, and flipping Glyphosate, aka RoundUp, courtesy of Monsanto, which soon hit the headlines as being harmful for health, whether human or horse.

Cut to today, several decades on, and today's pasture 'forage' (grass/hay/haylage/drylage), plus the majority of today’s feedbag ingredients, are all grown on this same chemically damaged soil, with a fair bit of GMO thrown in for good measure as well. Some call it progress ... (for more info on what's gone wrong with our grasslands and feed, see our Feeding Our Horses Healthy section off the main menu.

Since those days it’s no co-incidence that our horses today have developed significant metabolic health and behavioural issues, including my own horses who metabolically crashed in the mid-2000s due to chemical contamination. Which is what led me to the UKNHCP forum ...

It's easy to take our soil for granted; that is, until we lose it. The soil beneath our feet is arguably one of the most under-appreciated assets on the planet. Without it, life would largely cease to exist. However, it's now known that our UK grasslands are commonly deficient in many essential trace elements, having had the life stripped out of them by over-intensive farming practices and chemical saturation. Those decades of changes to the grass chemistry now cause significant changes in the chemistry of the horse, which directly - and adversely - affects the horse's system, all the more so when over-grazed on today's common practice of restricted paddock space.

The NRC Guidelines are there for a reason, yet most commercial 'one-size-fits-all' balancers rarely get the mineral ratios balanced to either our UK forage or even the defined guidelines, which can mean that your commercial balancer may make your horse's dietary mineral levels even more unbalanced. For example, many add synthetic iron and manganese which are already way too high in our UK grasslands. This not only risks subclinical toxicity but they also act as antagonists and block the uptake of the very nutrients you're spending good money on to balance your horse's diet correctly.

Many balancers also add calcium, again naturally already too-high in many areas of our UK grasslands, which without the correct ratio of magnesium to balance it for healthy cellular energy exchange, can cause our horses to seem like Tigger but not in a good way. Springtime mega-spooky/explosive? Yep, that'll be the natural spring grass calcium:magnesium imbalances naturally pushing through. Those grass sugars get the blame, yet it's more likely to be too much calcium in the grass growth and not enough magnesium. If we don't get the balance right between these two, as well as many others, we get it wrong at our peril - and our horse's, because many people blame the horse, thinking they're being belligerant and misbehaving, which couldn't be further from the truth ...

Nutrients play a critical role in a wide range of biochemical systems which affect virtually every metabolic function in the horse, and I speak from personal experience. Getting my connemara, Murphy, minerally-balanced, literally saved him, not to mention my sanity.

3. Minerals are the nutrient foundation of any diet

It wasn't until shortly before the publication of the NRC Nutrient Requirements of Horses in 1989 that anyone really paid any attention to the lack of micronutrients in equine nutrition. These days there's now undisputed evidence that our UK grazing areas are lacking in the essential minerals and nutrients required for the health of our horses.Forage analysis, and the subsequent mineral balancing, is now a Big Thing in our horse world today.

The daft thing is that the amounts required are, in some cases, minutae-sized - we're talking micrograms, hence why they're referred to as micronutrients, yet they're so very critical. These nutrients play a vital role in a wide range of biochemical processes which affect virtually every metabolic function in our horse.

However, there are many factors that affect the mineral content of our grazing land and the hay that's cut off it; soil quality, grass species variety, seasonal growth changes, dry curing, plastic wrapping, storage ... even the weather. A simple overnight change in weather can radically change the mineral levels in our grass. A mile up the road, or even the next field - the grass composition may be completely different again.

You might also change your hay supplier who cuts a completely different grass type - it'll look and smell like hay, but its mineral content could be completely different to your previous hay supply, which means it'll affect your horse differently.

It may seem incomprehensible how an area known for being 'low in copper' or 'high in iron' can so radically affect our horses' health, and it's even more impossible to keep track of these changes in mineral content and balance. However, the implications - and results - only serve to demonstrate how detrimental it can be to our horses not to have their forage mineral deficiencies balanced. Put simply, a horse on today's UK grasslands won't maintain wellness on a diet of grass and hay alone. It's imperative that we add back in what's been stripped out.

Probably all of us have seen at some time or another that hooves are just one area affected by deficient mineral nutrients. You'll see flat soles appearing in summer where once there was healthy concavity in winter, or maybe cracks appearing on hoof walls previously as tough as army boots. And then there's that early glimmer of white line separation come spring, previously as thin as a credit-card, then seemingly overnight becoming wide enough to scrape a hoof pick inside it. Cue the laminae beginning to separate from the hoof wall.

If ever our grass gave us a massive heads-up that its chemical composition changes dramatically, the spring/autumn grass flush and resulting laminitis risk is there for all to see. It would help if this chemistry was as clear to understand though. Mineral and structural changes in our horses' grazing can be an absolute minefield, and it’s no wonder that we get confused, or are unaware of what is, or rather, what isn’t, in our grass, our hay, and the shiny feedbags we buy. I completely empathise because I was once in that very same boat back in those early UKNHCP forum days.

As horse owners in this day and age, the onus is on us to become aware of the importance of balanced nutrition, just like it is for our own health and our children. We need to get away from the mindset of feeding from shiny bags because we like the look of them, or worse, that our horses like them! There's a good reason why beloved Ned loves his mass-produced ultra-processed brand feed or lickit - you just have to look at the ingredients, and more often than not you'll see a ton of molasses and junk fillers featuring in there somewhere ...

It really is the difference between feeding our kids on a diet of burger and chips, washed down with an aspartame-loaded fizzy drink, or a nutritious plate of real food with lots of healthy veg alongside balanced portions of wholefood protein, healthy fats and appropriate carbs. Feeding a correctly balanced diet with each nutrient being supplied in the correct amount is as critical for our horses' health as it is for us Without the right minerals in balance, everything else sits out of balance on the sidelines. Minerals are the foundation of any diet, the most important part of any diet, yet ironically probably the most ignored part.

4. How do mineral imbalances affect our horses?

Changes in the chemistry of grass cause changes in the chemistry of the horse, which directly and adversely affect the horse's nerves and muscles.

How many times have we heard someone say their horse ‘isn’t right’, or that they’re 'misbehaving', 'won't listen', being 'aggressive', and so on? And how many times have we seen more and more gadgets and riding aids strapped on to control their alleged 'naughty' horse?

Worse, how many times have we heard "He’s not getting away with it!", and ‘Push him on!’? Or an instructor's favourite - "Use your stick!" or "Give him a smack, he's being naughty."

Now here's a useful list - have you ever seen any of the following arise with no obvious explanation?

• Your normally friendly, chilled horse becoming suddenly full of nervous energy, even aggressive.
• Suddenly becoming irrationally herd-bound, or nappy, spooky, belligerent, stubborn, resistant, headshy, headshaking, girthy, cold-backed.
• Problems going into canter, bunny-hopping or fly-bucking into it (this was me and Murf).
• Not able to track up, or strike off on the required lead.
• Stiffness in the neck, or head held high with a banana neck (Murf), or a hollow back, stringhalt, or worse, staggers.

As the saying goes, 'Horses don't have bad intentions - they simply react.' This is actually a physiological fact - a horse's brain doesn't have a frontal lobe, this being the area of the brain that figures stuff out, so they actually don't have the ability to have 'intentions' - they literally can only react. I can't count on two hands how many times I've said this, only to have an owner look me in the eye and say confrontationally, "You haven't met my horse." More like they haven't seen their horse is stuck in brain fog treacle and their legs don't/can't work ...

Horses don't produce these negative behavioural responses towards us to be wilful - the heartrending fact is that they're so chemically unbalanced that it's all beyond their control, while desperately trying to communicate with us that they're really struggling to comply with our demands. Or worse, they finally shut down. The fact of the matter is that it's US who are getting it so badly wrong by not balancing their diet, and hence their whole body's biology, correctly.

5. In nature, nothing acts in isolation

So it is with minerals and their interactions. While each individual mineral has its own actions, there are thousands of re-actions occurring at any given moment in time in the horse’s body, each involving many complex interactions with other minerals, vitamins, protein and energy sources. It's all about the correct ratios of each mineral working in harmony with the others.

Very rarely is just one mineral deficient in a diet - there are usually multiple imbalances. While our grass, hay and soil has it's own mineral excesses and deficiencies, further imbalances are caused by us supplementing with some minerals but not others. Magnesium is a well known culprit here - it's probably the most popular individual mineral fed independently into the feed bucket, yet by adding only magnesium, this simply serves to unbalance the complete nutritive picture even more.

Some of us will be aware that the areas we live in are deficient in one or other mineral; for example, our region here in Somerset is said to be low in copper. Other regions are known for being high in iron, i.e. pockets in Scotland and the NE, and the entirety of the UK is said to be low in magnesium. However, to assume a dietary issue can be fixed by only supplementing with what’s apparently low in your area will neither improve nor repair the problem; in fact it will do more harm than good because you've just unbalanced the associated ratios even more.

Getting the ratios right

Many minerals work in synergistic ratios with others, for example, as briefly mentioned earlier calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg) should be balanced by the ratio of 1.5 parts Ca to 1 part Mg, up to a maximum of 2 parts Ca to 1 Mg, hence the familiar equation Ca:Mg 1.5:1-2:1. In other words, more than 2-parts calcium to 1-part magnesium will mean there's not enough magnesium to balance the healthy cellular energy exchange, which in plain english means your horse becomes rocket-fuelled.

Another important synergistic combination is the calcium (Ca) v. phosphorus (P) metabolism in the horse’s body. Together they're both essential for sound bone development; bone structure is 35% calcium and 17% phosphorus. If the ratio of these two minerals is unbalanced, there could then be many complex interactions with other minerals and compounds to the detriment of our horse's skeletal health.

Getting the ratios right is vitally important for our horse’s nutritional wellbeing, as well as the absolute amount of each mineral fed. For example, take alfalfa, very common in our horse-feed world of today (despite it not suiting all horses). Alfalfa is high in calcium and very low in phosphorus, so if you’re feeding an alfalfa chaff, there will be a significant excess of calcium in the diet v. phosphorous, hence an imbalance.

Alfalfa can also be too high in protein for some of our horses, which is explained further down in Protein & Energy, but meanwhile, just to give you a flavour, here’s a bit more science about these complex mineral interactions, just to make your eyes glaze over :

• High magnesium levels in the diet will increase calcium absorption, yet excess phosphorus (significantly prevalent at times of strong grass growth) will decrease calcium absorption.
• Too high zinc levels will decrease calcium and copper absorption, while high calcium levels will interfere with copper, manganese, zinc and iron absorption.
• And while we're on the subject of manganese, there's a very severe imbalance caused by manganese so high that horses won't get enough copper and zinc, so these two need to be balanced to the manganese level in our grass.
• High calcium levels limit phosphorus absorption, while high sodium and chloride levels increase phosphorus absorption by 30-60%.

I did say it's a minefield! And for the non-chemists out there like me, it can honestly make your brain hurt . . . 😵

6. Now let's throw Protein & Energy into the mix

Stay with me, because these are relevant. There are 2 types of 'concentrate' – protein and energy.

Energy 

The natural source of a horse’s energy comes directly from long, stemmy grass, i.e. hay or grass that’s been allowed to grow through the summer to grow a stem and seed head. And it's in those long grass stems where the cellulose fibre sits, which a horse has evolved to eat, and the very fibre that the hindgut fibre-fermenting microbes ferment down. This fermentation process produces three volatile fatty acids, proprionate, butyrate and acetate, which are then metabolically converted into ATP energy. If your head's spinning, this is all explained separately in the ATP energy link just mentioned.

However, many of us also add extra concentrate to our horses’ diets if, for example, we think a horse needs more fat coverage (which is actually the wrong way to do it!), or if there’s not enough available fibre in the diet, i.e. if a horse is permanently turned out on neon-green short grass which is all leaf blade and no stemmy fibre.

Typical energy concentrates are grains, or some premixed/pelleted feeds, yet most of these premixes are either deficient in vitamins and minerals and won’t account for individual needs, or they include a vitamin/mineral premix, which sorry to say is synthetic.  As in fake. So, the gut absorption receptors don't recognise them as actual nutrients, and the liver doesn't know what to do with them, so they're sent off to the kidneys to excrete them.

Either way, energy concentrates aren't remotely balanced to UK forage analyses, plus they can also inhibit mineral absorption.

Protein 

Protein quality refers to the amino-acid content, determined by the amount and balance of 10 essential amino acids. Proteins come in 'chains' - short chain, medium chain, and long chain. I won't go into the differences here because you can easily google them. However, if this makes your eyes glaze over, think of a pearl necklace - the pearls are the amino-acids, and the whole neckless string is the whole protein. Or a train - the carraiges are the amino-acids, the whole train is the whole protein.

However you imagine them, proteins are essential for life, health, and growth, vital for supporting muscle, bone, joint, tendon, organ, hormone, enzyme, hoof, and connective tissue health - you name it, proteins are essential for it.

As examples, Lysine is the most important amino acid for horses as it supports overall immune function. Glutamine protects lean muscle mass including connective tissue, and supports brain and nervous system health. The branched-chain amino acids, leucine, isoleucine, and valine, support muscular integrity and contribute to blood sugar control. Our well-known friend Methionine is important for hoof structure. And so the list goes on ...

Protein requirements can vary significantly depending on age, stress and workload, i.e. for a typical good-doer pleasure horse, protein intake of 7-10% is more than adequate. And guess where the main source of our horses’ protein is? Grass! Most UK grass hays are around 6-10% protein, so the take-home message is that we rarely need to up the protein levels in our horse's diet unless they're in hard work or competing.

Pulling this together, this means that also making sure energy and protein are balanced is also a vitally important pieces in the whole big nutrient jigsaw.

As I say repeatedly on this website, a horse is nothing more - and nothing less - than a hindgut forage fibre fermenting machine. The fragile equine digestive system is evolved to eat grass forage fibre with woody (lignan) roughage to keep everything moving. And whether your horse is a leisure or competition horse, in theory they should be getting all their energy, protein, vitamins and minerals from the grass forage us humans provide them with.

However, these days we know that our UK soil has been stripped of nutrients over the decades, which means our grasslands are  nutritionally unbalanced for today’s equine's physiological development and athletic performance. Hence why it's so important to supplement with a mineral balancer.

7. Summary

Fast forward a decade-plus, and the equine supplement market is now saturated with similar products promising allsorts for your horse, many also saying they're balanced to the NRC guidelines despite being anything but. As for my original concept, and like others out there in the early days, we grew our range to include a large selection of various balancers to match every need we could think of. Over time, however, I began to sense that the multitude of choices was causing confusion, with an intuitive feeling telling me that we needed to simplifying our range, a sentiment very much echoed by our clients who were letting me know that they were confused with all the choice and not sure which balancer to choose.

Furthermore, over time and with new research being published on certain ingredients in the formulas, we gradually streamlined our balancers to focus on what was actually essential and not extras chucked in for good measure, and in a natural, non-synthetic (chelated) and yeast-free formula. This offered our clients a more cost-effective solution while avoiding unnecessary complexities.

The end result was our EquiVita and our VitaComplete. Our EquiVita is ideal for general maintenance and summer balancing, and our VitaComplete is formulated for winter balancing and/or when hay's in the diet. Both put back into the diet what's missing, balanced to our UK grasslands, as required by the equine body for normal function.

8. A nutrient snapshot

• Calcium – normal growth and function of the nervous system, muscles, blood clotting and cardio system. Not necessary to inclue in a balancer as it's already at high levels in our UK grasslands, especially in spring.
• Phosphorus – metabolism and nerve function, formation of bones, muscle and teeth.
• Magnesium – metabolism, formation of teeth and bones, and maintenance of normal CNS.
• Sodium & Chloride (Salt) – maintains a normal electrolyte balance in body tissues.
• Potassium – maintains cell integrity, nerve and muscle function, digestion, and relaxation of the heart muscle.
• Zinc – bone and cartilage development, integrity of skin, hair and hooves.
• Copper – iron metabolism, bone development and joint connective tissue.Iron – a vital component of haemoglobin in red blood cells.
• Manganese – bone, cartilage and tissue development, blood clotting, normal growth, lactation and reproduction. Already at high levels in our UK grasslands and never needed to supplement.
• Cobalt – formation of B12, red blood cells, haemoglobin, nerve cell function.
• Selenium – normal growth, fertility, inhibits cellular oxidation. To be supplemented at micro-levels.
• Iodine – thyroid function and a component of thyroid hormones which regulate metabolic processes. Already at high levels in our UK grasslands and not necessary to supplement.
• Vit.A (Retinol) - maintains vision, muscles, growth, reproduction, skin and mucous membrane integrity. Sufficient levels provided from growing grass.
• Ash Content – a measure of the total amount of minerals present within a food, whereas the mineral content is a measure of the amount of specific inorganic components present within a food, i.e. Calcium, Sodium, Potassium and Chloride. Ash is the inorganic residue remaining after the water and organic matter have been removed.