Blog Hop: Supplements

An unofficial blog hop keeps popping up about supplements, I think it originated with Olivia, but I actually have my horse on supplements now so I figured I'd join in.

Why I want to feed him money, I don't know

In terms of hay, TC gets 5 flakes a day. Two are alfalfa and three are grass. Our grass is of good quality, so he is pretty much meeting a lot of his nutritional needs with hay. But I'm definitely a sucker for feeding him money, so he's also on some grain and supplements.

He gets 3 quarts of LMF Gentle Balance. He could probably go on something else at this point, but he was originally put on it because it doesn't make horses hot. And he was a bit hot on rehab.

With his grain, he gets some supplements!

10,000mg of MSM
TC has been on MSM since I bought him when he was four years old. It's cheap and makes me feel better about joint support for him.

5,000mg (I think) of Glucosamine
I wanted to add another level of joint supplement now that TC is working harder. I looked into different combinations of joint supplements that had both MSM and Glucosamine in them, but it ended up just being easier to get them separately. Maybe next year I'll put him on something fancier. But he's only just now starting to school the collected work so he's probably good.

1/2 cup of Omega Horseshine
I know you can feed up to a cup, but there are other coat/hoof supplements out there that are cheaper if I had to feed that much, so TC is on just the half cup. So far he DOES seem a little shinier, but he also rolls in the dirt, so he could be covering up a lot of his shine. I'm not totally sold on it, I think I might want to switch to farrier's formula to focus more on his feet and hope that has a good side effect for his coat. I feel like it doesn't matter how much I try to get his coat looking good, he's just going to roll in the dirt and make himself look terrible.

1 scoop of Muscle Up
I threw him on this when I was at Expo and they were offering me a buy two get one free supplement deal. I don't necessarily think TC needs a muscle supplement, he gets lots of protein from his alfalfa, but I was curious. So far he looks pretty much like I'd expect him to look given his level of work. Soooo we'll see. He's only been on it for a month and had a week off recently. What I am curious about is that he definitely has felt less muscle sore than usual recently. I'm not sure whether that's this supplement or just that he's finally fit/strong enough to not get sore.

6,000 IUs of Vitamin E
I've always fed Vitamin E, I get the little gel capsules from Costco super cheap and I figure it can't hurt to give it to them. Rico gets them so TC gets them too.

Psyllium (for the first 7 days of every month)
TC eats on sandy dirt, so I'm pretty paranoid about sand colic with him. The psyllium flushes him out every month.


That's what he's getting right now. I'm still working out exactly what I like and don't like to feed. I do like hearing what other people feed, even if it just enables me!