Trinity Consultants 01243 551766
FEEDLINE……..
OCT - NOV 2006 No 44
If you can see white patches and lines in your fingernails it is most probable that for a short period in your life your mineral intake/uptake was interrupted, just as it is when it appears in your horses hooves. Fret marks are a clear indication of interruption. In birds, fret marks appear as irregular patterns and minute holes in the primary feathers. It was thought that their appearance was due to wear and tear and long periods of flight but this is not so, as fret marks can be induced by locking birds up without food &/or without any flight activity. Some say fret marks are an indication of Zinc deficiency or an imbalance with phosphorus or an inability to be utilised due to lack of protein, others insist it is a lack of Iron assimilation; it can be either. This is because Zinc and Iron form enzymes to enable proteins to make new cells needed for growth and healing. In the adult horse expansive growth has stopped, only the hooves, teeth and haircoat continue to grow expansively because they are shed, growth in the rest of the body is more maintenance and repair. Hooves and haircoat are our barometers of new growth as dung and urine is for digestion. It is most likely that in the otherwise healthy horse if hooves and haircoat are satisfactory then maintenance and repair in the rest of the body is going on OK. If horses have poor hooves they have or are experiencing a mineral deficiency, if you have poor nails likewise, such things are an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible problem. To remedy this feed more or better minerals to your horse and to yourself, because it is obvious that due to individual characteristics, stress, pollution, age or dietary insufficiency you are failing to maintain optimum growth and tissue repair. Something which is going to take its toll sometime in the future and as sure as night follows day this will affect the immune system and have a knock on performance and well being.
We are currently majoring on five formulae for remedial growth and integrity in hooves. Seagarden Foot Formula 7161; which includes Seaweed for its available Silica content, Tenderfoot 80; where we use a peculiar type of Dolomite instead of Seaweed, Foot Formula 5161; useful when Seaweed is already being fed, Formula 4161; a combination of the extra nutrients needed for hoof repair above that already being supplied by adequate levels of dietary minerals and vitamins and Tenderfoot 4162; which is Formula 4161 plus the S/26 Dolomite plus Maglyte. There may be reasons for further combinations, whatever, we are only to happy to discuss the individual problem and formulate on a bespoke basis.
A common cause of circulatory disorders in horses is auto-toxaemia, which calls for agents to assist in the elimination of wastes (by products of exertion), free radicals (body rust) and poisons via the kidneys, skin and bowels. Routine 10 day periods of L94 help resolve this problem and help ensure that susceptible horses do not start competition carrying the debt accumulated during training and from the last outing. It can be a good idea to feed L94 in the week prior to racing/competition, it can do nothing but good and lots of horses perform better because of it.
Form is such an elusive spirit, having a string of horses increases the odds on winning, having a lot of horses to choose from and recognising which horse is in form is not quite the same skill as getting one or two horses to win out of turn. Perhaps this is the difference between a good coach and a good manager in football terms and someone who can do both in racing is indeed going to be successful. With youth on their side, flat horses need little more than good wholesome food not overfed and sensible training. As they get older and fail more times their individual traits and weaknesses become more evident and as horses learn by experience and not by ideas, their thinking becomes more of a reflection of how they are managed and handled, so quite often older jump horses and those that leave racing and go into other sports can carry quite a few ‘scars’ and have become very ‘individual’. Such individualism can be a real challenge to the unsuspecting trainer and sometimes a lot of frustration to a new owner particularly if they are in a hurry. Indeed it is interesting how many horses’ records show them being in one or two yards for a long time and then in a series of yards over a sort period.
Not so many people lie about horses but many fail to tell all and this added to the increasing time it takes for a horse to settle to new environment and management as it gets older can be enough to spell disappointment. The best thing for older horses experiencing a big change is time to adjust, TLC and avoid overfeeding.
With only a few horses, registering a win gets a lot harder, as the fact that all horses come into form sometime is not enough. Instead of waiting for it to come round you have got to go after it. If form is anything it is the coming together of everything beneficial, everything coinciding at a certain point when there are no outstanding restrictions occurring. Such restrictions are myriad and everyone has an opinion as to what they may be at the time. From a nutritional angle our observation is that a big part of “form” is the pronounced increase in the efficiency of four factors namely, 1) Protein synthesis, turning plant protein into horse protein and engineering responsive muscle, 2) Protection of myelin sheaths and capillary walls and the bridges between nerve and muscle, 3) Free radical quenching and the detoxification of the system directly effecting lymph and blood circulation and 4) Anaerobic capacity. In the otherwise healthy, injury free and well trained, increased efficiency of these four factors makes the difference between finishing first and finishing down the order. It is going to be either neurological numbing, hydrogen ion build up in muscle or glycogen (anaerobic fuel) depletion occurring in horses before yours that means you win. To help ensure all of these factors are covered as well as possible we make Ashva Mitra an innocuous brown powder that you add to the regular feed when in training. It helps uncover potential and what is most noticeable it seriously reduces recovery times. It is not cheap it never will be, the cost can sometimes be as high as 120 pence a day we have experimented with less expensive options that on paper look just as good but they have not worked so well.
Overfeeding is the scourge of the 21ST century and more problems in horses are caused by overfeeding than nearly anything else. Everywhere there is somebody urging horse owners to feed more with bright packaging, pseudo scientific recitals, cascades of superlatives and the insinuation that you must if you care or you will cause harm if you don’t. The growing numbers of horse owners saying they are confused by the pressures of feed marketing are only exceeded by the number of horse owners being disappointed. The fact of the matter is that horse feeding, in the interest of the feeder and the horse, need not and should not be complicated; at its simplest; feeding is the adequate provision of good grazing and/or conserved forage, minerals and oats/cereals. It is only when one or more of these three factors are not up to standard that problems arise. When thinking of feeding it is helpful to think and construct what you are doing by these three parameters. Circumstances may dictate that you merge one with another or substitute cereals with a by product or fortify the roughage with a chop or some auxiliary roughage if you are short or if your hay is not quite up to quality. That may be so, but stick to the three categories in your mind & decide which food you buy fits into which category, this will avoid duplication and feeding the wrong thing for the wrong reason.
We must be doing something right with D78 we make for stiff and arthritic dogs as the number of Clients that have seen the difference when they have fed the capsules has swelled over the last half year. Indeed we have run out of ingredients on occasions. D78 was originally tried as a result of Cope Extra being a success with horses and to start with was formulated to help some farm dogs and an old dog at our local dog rescue centre that had become a semi permanent resident. We are not geared to make thousands but if you would like to try some D78 capsules on your dog we will quickly make some up for you. Cost for 120 Capsules is £16.10 less appropriate discount. Feed one to three capsules daily depending on size and severity. They can be broken up and mixed with a little prepared breakfast cereal, included in the regular food or concealed in a piece of cheese.
Fortunately those that work with horses are on the whole a healthy bunch and getting soaked to the skin several times a day in poor weather does not have much of an effect besides discomfort. Subject a group of urban office workers to such rigours and they would not ail nearly so well. One of the reasons for this maybe because when you are out there working it is, with, of course, exceptions because you want to be and unaccompanied by stress. In a study with dairy cows waiting out in the open in inclement weather, it was found that if they were eating the incidences of mastitis over a set period was low, cows exposed to bad conditions over the same period but with no food to eat whilst waiting recorded substantially higher incidences of mastitis. So think to yourself when you are out there in the sheeting rain, if you don’t have a cold you must be happy!
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