Elegance had her third dental visit and second power tool dental procedure on March 1, 2016. She was ready for another adjustment as I saw her starting to avoid the long stem hay and searching for the fine stuff that falls out during their selecting what hay to eat. Also, washing her mouth out every 3 or 4 days showed more packing between her left upper dental arcade and her cheek. My equine dentist sent me a mouth washing tool, bless his heart. What is used is called a “drencher” for sheep and cattle if you care to look up what those look like. Here is what her mouth looks like after he finished. Please note how “short” her right side lower molars are. This is from years of over grinding on the right side. What he told both myself and my veterinarian, who was present for the special sedation she needs for this type of dentistry, is he isn’t trying to make both sides of her mouth look the same. He is balancing each side to itself. The two sides will never look “equal”. He said if this problem had been caught when she was young it could have…
Above on the left is the relevant portion of the output provided you by Equi-Analytical for their (601) Equi-Tech hay analysis. For purposes of education I also added a test for Selenium (not part of the Equi-Tech analysis). I already know I live, and my hay comes from, a selenium deficient area of the United States (and Canada where this hay came from). On the right side is a portion of the spreadsheet I have for analyzing the diet in total,including all feeds and supplements. I’ve selected just the hay portion for the purposes of this post. It shows what 20lbs of hay/day provides the horse. 20lbs/9kg per day is what you would feed a 1000lb/454kg horse if feeding at 2% of desired body weight. As you can note from the analysis on the right, this hay provides way too much Iron (Fe) and Manganese(Mn) at a gram each and not near enough Copper (Cu) or Zinc (Zn) to combat excessive uptake of those two potentially toxic minerals. How do I know there is too much Fe and Mn and not enough Cu or Zn? I’ve used the National Research Council Nutrient Requirements of Horses, 6th Edition to create my spreadsheet with modifications suggested by…
The equine dentist I have been using for the past 4 years, Ron (he was recommended by my previous dentist, Larry, when he retired), visited Elegance yesterday October 9, 2015. He palpated her entire jaw line on both sides, checked how much chewing motion she had, and checked her TMJ area before he looked inside her mouth. And what he found when he did made me gasp as I looked over his shoulder. Her left upper side molars were worn at about a 45 degree angle from the inside edge of the tooth to the outside edge of the tooth. You can see all the hay packed between her molars and her cheek because she can’t move her jaw cleanly to the left without running into those upper teeth. She lacks a level chewing surface so she gets very little masticated correctly and she gives up eating sooner than a normal horse because of the pain associated with eating. Needless to say the other molars, both lower left and right side upper and lower are affected. So you know what a normal left side molar area should look like here is the same picture of Fin DeSiecle CF 1999cm taken…
Now that we know Elegance has metabolic imbalances, as well as toxicities, the question becomes how best to supplement her to detox the toxic level of Aluminum and the overload of Iron? The first step is to have either hay and/or pasture tested for what the horse is consuming as the bulk of their diet. In Elegance’s case, it is definitely hay. And it just so happens I received 6 ton of hay a couple of days ago which will last until next summer. Therefore I will describe the process of testing your hay and where to get it analyzed. I use Equi-Analytical for analysis. They are a leader in testing hay, first for dairy cattle and now for horses too. Therefore they have analysis packages geared toward what the horse owner needs to know. In addition they offer free postage paid mailers for your sample. The test I use is 601 – Equi Tech. It gives a great comprehensive package of information at a great price. What it doesn’t test, by default, is Selenium for example. To add that particular result to your report is an additional dollars. I don’t normally add Se because I know, here in the Northeast, we have…
I received the Hair Mineral Analysis results for Elegance yesterday. It is very revealing. She is over the top in Fe(Iron), Li(Lithium) and Al (Aluminum). She is below normal for Ca(Calcium), P(Phosphorus), Mg(Magnesium), Mo(Molybendum) and Se(Selenium). The low Se is not uncommon in the US. Even when the USGS Soil Selenium Map shows adequate soil selenium levels. I’ve zoomed the map in on the Eastern Central States. To see Frederick County’s level (where Elegance has lived most of her life) move your pointer up to north east Maryland. It is very enlightening to read the comments about her analysis and note how vitamins and minerals all interact with each other. Her analysis is a case in point about the need to balance what our horses eat. Excess in one area can cause a deficiency in another and the opposite is true too. Here is a a look at how only a few of the major and trace minerals interact with each other:
Meet the newest member of my little herd: Elegance CF 2001gm Darlene Summers graciously allowed me to acquired this mare from her after I fell head over heels for her the first time I met her in August of 2015. These pictures were taken the morning after I’d brought her to my place in September 2015. She looks pretty good in the left photo. She doesn’t look underweight to me based on the amount of fat (just right) covering her ribs. But the picture on the right shows a backbone that is somewhat prominent and hips that aren’t nicely rounded. You might think this is just an angular mare, however when you see her in person you are struck by the fact that she has no muscling anywhere except the underside of her neck (she’s big on the “listening horse” stance). And she is 100% Davenport and they tend to be nicely rounded Arabians. Elegance has been trained to ride and was ridden more than just occasionally before she delivered her first foal in May 2012. She has been ridden sporadically since and not at all in the last year. Still, she should have more muscle that she does. If she’s…
Edouard asked if I would write a series of posts explaining how I provide optimum nutrition for horses in my care. What is Optimum Nutrition? It is about feeding what the horse requires not just in the way of calories but equally important the major and trace minerals they require in the proportions they require, and the vitamins that are missing from their diet. That is optimum nutrition. Sounds like a lot of work right? Nope! The learning took time because I was part of the leading edge of owners trying to solve metabolic issues via diet. The actual implementation is very easy! I always find case studies with before and after pictures interesting you will be following with the case of my most recently acquired asil Arabian. But before I do that I will show you some before and after pictures of another asil Arabian to find its way into my care. So you can see what the “restored” horse looks like. This is the completed case of the tail female *Hadba mare RL Bilquis 2006cm. RL Bilquis time with me lasted from November 2012 until September 2014when I delivered her to her new home in Ohio to be part…