Contents

1. A mind-boggling statistic
2. And then there's the feedbowl
3. Introducing our EquiVita/VitaComplete
4. What's the difference between EquiVita and VitaComplete?
5. The mineral:hoof connection - introducing Maisie
6. New to minerals?
7. A quick word on salt

Sub-Chapter (link below)

1. The story behind it all - how EquiNatural got involved with mineral balancing
   

Why do we need to 'balance' our horse's diet?

Good question! It's a known fact - grass forage is the main component and source of minerals, so why do we need to balance their diet?

The problem is that our UK soils and grasslands lack key nutrients essential for balancing their biology. By supplementing our horse's forage intake with a carefully formulated 'balancer', this replenishes the essential elements that our modern world has depleted, ensuring our horses receive the comprehensive nutrition they require for peak performance and vitality.

1. A mind-boggling statistic

Would you believe, 50 years ago, carrots had 75% more magnesium than today - www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15637215.

Just one example of how our soil nutrient levels have significantly depleted over the years due to industrial agriculture (see the UK Soil Observatory website). The problem is compounded - whether horse or human, we get less minerals from our food than we used to, due to chemicals like glyphosate sprayed on agri-crops, with our ultra-processed diets, pharmaceutical drugs, and inflammatory lifestyles depleting our bodies of the minerals we can get.

Us humans are armed with the knowledge to select an appropriate vit/min supplement off the shelf for ourselves, alongside upgrading our diet accordingly to add back the missing nutrients into our bodies. Our horses, however, rely entirely on us to get it right for them. This is why we need a balanced mineral solution to help provide our horses with an effective nutritional foundation.

Let's look at it another way. Imagine randomly removing 50% of the nuts and bolts from your car, then trying to drive it. How far do you think you’d get? Some might just about rattle and roll, but imagine the stress on your car engine. Chances are, you wouldn’t risk even putting the key in the ignition.

In our human world, if we’re eating the standard western C.R.A.P. diet (not being intentionally rude - it stands for Carbs, Refined, Artificial, and Processed), health nuts report that our own machinery is missing a staggering 80% of our essential nuts and bolts. Just as our car won’t function properly if we take out 80% of the engine, neither will our body, which is why such a high percentage of the western human race is so sick.

Put simply, we need all of the essential, key components for the body to work properly. And not unsurprisingly, it's the same for our horses.

FACT - Our UK grasslands are deficient in many of the essential key minerals, i.e copper, zinc, magnesium, phosphorous, selenium, and way too high in others, i.e. calcium, iodine, iron and manganese.

FACT - Changes in the grass chemistry cause changes in the chemistry of the horse, with many chronic health issues being due to unbalanced micronutrients.

FACT - Most alleged 'behavioural' issues (they're not behavioural) will resolve by adding back in what's deficient in our forage, which balance the horse's chemistry.

2. And then there's the feedbowl

FACT - Micronutrient deficiencies are guaranteed since the advent of mass agriculture, because mass-produced food is synonymous with low micronutrient food.

Along with hay, water and salt, supplementing the key mineral supply is the nutrient foundation of the diet. In the perfect world, how we supplement our horses should be adapted to the mineral content of their regular forage and their feedbowl content.

However, unless we grow our own hay or know the source of our hay's supply, there's no sense in having the mineral content of each hay bale analysed, as the values can swing from day to day, depending on the weather, the environment, and changes in the soil values. As an example, hay grown on sandy or moorland soils will usually have significantly lower nutrient content than hay from other soil types.

That said, there are certain standard values for mineral supply, and our EquiVita/VitaComplete mineral balancers are formulated to target the recognised standard nutrient/trace element deficiencies in our UK grasslands and forage.

3. Introducing EquiNatural's EquiVita & VitaComplete

Two expertly formulated, multi-mineral, efficient nutritional solutions that provide the known commonly-deficient levels of the essential key minerals lacking in our UK grazing and forage, as required by the equine body for normal function.

Our EquiVita & VitaComplete  are milled for us by Premier Nutrition, who are committed to manufacturing safe, compliant feed independently audited by, and certified to, UFAS, FEMAS, BETA NOPS, and ISO 22000, so you can be confident in the product you receive:

• Carefully formulated, multi-mineral, nutrient solutions specific to our UK grasslands' nutrient deficiencies.
  
  
• Balanced to the NRC guidelines, and measured to the RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance - set based on preventing deficiency), to nutritionally balance the diet, based on the recognised average UK forage deficiencies. This means our balancers provide the correct ratios of the key minerals and micronutrients to balance the equine dietary requirements.
  
  
• No fillers whatsoever! Just the composition your horse needs to balance their diet - Lysine, Magnesium, Phosphorous, Copper, Zinc, Methionine, Selenium, and Vitamin E - and none of what it doesn't - Calcium, Iodine, Iron, and Manganese.
  
  
• No synthetics! Our balancers nourish your horse naturally, as nature intended. Our nutrients are all in their natural forms as recognised by the intestinal nutrient sensor receptors (the molecular pathways through which the nutrients are absorbed into the bloodstream). For more on why we don't use synthetic minerals, see our Blog: Minerals, and it's All-Change - New data on synthetic chelated v. natural sulphates.

What's the difference between EquiVita and VitaComplete?

- it's all about the omegas and vitamin-E

Fresh, growing grass has an omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acid ratio of around 4:1, similar to other browse foods like leaves and buds, with summer's grass coming in at around 4% fat, and with 75% omega-3 (as ALA, alpha-linolenic acid).

Of course this level of natural grass-sourced intake isn't seasonally available here in the UK all year round, but there's good news - micronised linseed comes in at the exact same omega-3 profile as fresh, growing grass. So, outside of our growing grass seasons, i.e. winter, blood tests show that 20g/100kg BW of micronised linseed equals the same daily omega-3 intake as a horse on grass pasture (Equine Science study).

Equally, when grass is dried and baled as hay, the fragile omega-3 anti-inflammatory, essential fatty acids are also lost. This means if a horse is on a permanent hay diet, i.e. on a surfaced track system, again, micronised linseed will replenish this vital EFA. As an aside, linseed is also wonderful for condition and coat shine, joint comfort and itchy skin; it’s also a gut superstar, as it’s high mucilage content coats and soothes the GI tract wall and the food bolus for ease of transit.

Our VitaComplete is formulated for this requirement, to supply the exact RDA of missing omega-3 via micronised linseed.

Otherwise, for 24/7 summer grass turnout, our EquiVita will be ideal for you. However, if your horse is on a part-hay diet, i.e. stabled overnight during spring/summer/autumn, bear in mind that you'll need to add linseed to match the hay volume v. grass intake, i.e. if a horse is out during the day and in overnight (or similar), then feed half the m.linseed RDA ration, i.e. 10g/100kg BW per day. Full feed details are on our Linseed product page.

To recap:

• Our EquiVita is ideal for all-round maintenance.
  
  
• Our VitaComplete combines our EquiVita with an additional 20g/100kg BW of daily micronised linseed, and 10g daily certified organic and unrefined salt,  as a convenient 3-in-1 solution.
  
  
• NB. If your horse is experiencing hindgut disruption/dysbiosis, or if you're feeding haylage, we recommend you feed 4g/100kg BW Spirulina for 2-weeks, as it's an excellent gut mycotoxin-binder and deacidifier, as well as supporting metabolism and muscle building, and being one of the highest protein-rich foods in the plant kingdom.

4. The Mineral/Hoof Connection - introducing Maisie

Now back to the image of Maisie above. We got to know Maisie following the winter of 2017/18 where she'd been badly neglected and needed urgent rehabilitation and support. We were very much involved with her new owner with her refeeding programme, so much so that Maisie joined our herd for a few months, which meant we got to know this gorgeous little pony really well.

One of the most visible areas of improvement was in her hooves. You can see the profound changes in her hoof/pastern angle, with the new, stronger hoof capsule taking shape above the very obvious old hoof, all engineered by our EquiVita mineral balancer.

As her new, tighter hoof capsule grew down, it naturally shortened her toe to where it should be, which allows the whole hoof to be more supportive of the pedal bone and limb.

For the full story on Maisie with some great images, see her Case Study which her owner kindly allowed us to do on her.

5. New to minerals?

For new starters on minerals, we always suggest to start with our 1kg trial bag – any new-to-minerals horse will tell you that minerals aren't particularly yummy, so it’s best to start with a pinch in the feedbowl and slowly work your way up. Otherwise, you'll be setting yourself up for ‘the look'! Generally, 2-weeks is the average time reported back from clients who have to take it slowly, to get to the RDA.

6. Finally, a quick word on salt

It's essential to feed salt in the diet for so many important reasons; apart from keeping body fluids in balance and providing essential natural electrolytes (which play a key role in normal nerve/muscle/kidney function and blood sodium levels), sodium is also needed to balance potassium levels, both in grass and in the body, and especially in hot weather.

Sodium and chloride (salt) are the major electrolytes lost in sweat, followed by potassium, so we need to feed around 20-25g salt daily to cover a baseline requirement. If you prefer to feed an electrolyte supplement, make sure this amount of salt is included in the composition.

Salt also encourages a horse to drink water; obvious for summer hydration but for winter too, as horses drink far less water in winter so we need to help encourage them to do so.

However, the problem with blending salt into a mineral/vitamin mix is that salt attracts moisture - it's a natural dessicant (drying agent) so the risk is that it can denature the nutrient composition. This means that a mineral mix blended with fine salt may lose its essential structure, but also shorten the shelf-life. We therefore don't include salt in our EquiVita.

However, we do include 10g of salt in our VitaComplete, because when combined with the natural oil content from the linseed, there's much less risk of the dessicating effect over the time that the product takes to be used up, which is much quicker than the EquiVita due to it's higher feed rate. We don't add more than 10g as it would make the whole composition taste salty, and many horses don't enjoy the taste of salt.

Note: 10g salt per day is not enough to meet a horse's daily requirement - we should be feeding a minimum of 4g/100kg BW of salt, per day, into the feedbowl, and double this if in hard work/sweating, or on a really hot day. Also note that a salt-lick won't cut it - we never know if a horse has ingested enough, and over time they 'weather' and can harbour bacteria. The best way to ensure your horse is getting their sodium FDA? Add it into the feedbowl.

We sell the highest quality unrefined, unpolluted, coarse sea salt, certified by the Soil Association, available at seriously good prices compared to the supermarkets.

Meanwhile, click on the SHOP link below to see our Mineral Solutions product range.

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