You’re committed to providing the best care for your horse. This guide will help you determine which supplements to choose, and how and when to add them to your horse’s care routine.

By Madeline Boast, MSc. Equine Nutrition

Every time you enter a feed store, you’re welcomed by a wide variety of dietary supplements and nutraceuticals. With all the appealing options, it’s easy to feel tempted to try something new each visit.

Supplements are products that are meant to provide a health benefit but are not required to meet an established nutritional requirement. These products should support the normal function of tissues and organs as well as elicit a health benefit when fed. Navigating these products and the science behind them can be difficult, but taking a critical look prior to adding them to your horse’s ration can save you money and ensure you’re purchasing a well researched product.

Creating A Solid Foundation

When problems with our horses arise, many of us are tempted to run to the store and grab a supplement that we think is going to help. Often, these nutritional issues could be resolved or improved by first addressing the horse’s basic nutrient requirements and ensuring that there are no deficiencies. For example, when a horse has poor hoof quality, a supplement that incorporates amino acids, key minerals, and biotin may be purchased. However, a base diet with quality protein and a good ration balancer to eliminate mineral deficiencies could do the trick just as well.

Related: What Is Teff Hay for Horses?

The National Research Council (NRC) published the most recent Nutrient Requirements of Horses text in 2007. This text compiles the established nutrient requirements for horses and includes a requirement for energy (calories), crude protein, lysine, calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium, chloride, selenium, cobalt, copper, iodine, iron, manganese, sulfur, zinc, and vitamins A, D, E, B1, B2. Prior to adding any supplements, your horse’s nutrition program should be providing the recommended amounts of the listed nutrients.

As a horse owner, it’s unnecessary to stress over calculating each required nutrient intake individually. Equine nutritionists have already done that for you with fortified commercial feeds. Your role is to understand the various types and choose the one that matches your horse’s needs and compliments your forage. Commercial feeds can generally be grouped into three broad categories: ration balancers, performance/lifestyle feeds, and complete feeds.

Related: What is Grain-Free for Horses?

Ration Balancers: Ration balancers are designed to be fed in smaller quantities as they are concentrated sources of vitamins, minerals, and protein. Within this category there are also vitamin and mineral premixes. Although these products may come in a container similar to that of supplements, they are in fact part of the foundational diet as they are designed to meet the horse’s base nutrient requirements. Horses that are easy keepers and maintain their weight well or are overweight are candidates for a ration balancer.

Lifestyle & Performance Feeds: If your horse needs some supplemental calories, you may choose a lifestyle or performance feed instead of a ration balancer. These products are fortified with vitamins, minerals, and protein, but will also include supplemental carbohydrates and fats. Due to these products containing a greater amount of nutrients and calories, they are designed to be fed in larger quantities to meet your horse’s vitamin and mineral requirements. Adding to the nutrients a product is providing will dilute the vitamin and mineral concentration, hence more needs to be fed.

Complete Feeds: The third category is complete feeds. These products provide supplemental vitamins, minerals, protein, carbohydrates, fats, and fibre. Generally, they are used for horses with dentition issues or those recovering from a health issue that has resulted in an inability to consume enough hay or pasture. To meet vitamin and mineral requirements using a complete feed it must be fed in very large quantities.

Unfortunately, the feed store is not organized in a way that groups these products by category. The way to tell them apart will be to look at the recommended feeding rate on the bag. Ration balancers instruct a feeding rate of about 600–1300 g, vitamin/mineral premixes will be lower at about 200 g daily. The performance and lifestyle feeds have feeding rates of about 2-5 kg daily and complete feeds will be even higher at about 10-12 kg. These products have been designed by equine nutritionists to be fed at the recommended rate. Therefore, if you are feeding below that rate your horse may have some vitamin and mineral deficiencies in their diet.

Related: How to Accurately Feed Your Horse a Forage-Based Diet

The takeaway for foundational nutrition is to head to the barn and read the tag on the feed your horse is consuming. If they are being fed below the recommended feeding rate consider either increasing the amount fed, or switching the product they are on to one that better suits their needs and can be fed at the correct rate without causing unnecessary weight gain. 

Adding the Cherry on Top

Supplements and nutraceuticals often make fantastic additions to well balanced nutrition programs. As previously mentioned, these products should support normal tissue function, but do not cure or treat health issues. For example, omega-3s are often fed to reduce inflammation in the body and support normal tissue function.

Picture the feed room at your barn — how many supplements are in there? How many is the average horse being fed? How many of these products are being fed based on need and providing an actual health benefit?

An analogy that encompasses this concept well is a bowl of oatmeal. The oatmeal is the foundation, and the functional supplements are the toppings. Oatmeal on its own is great, but when you add toppings such as blueberries, it’s enhanced. When there are nutritional concerns, don’t make the first stop the feed store. Make the first stop the feed room and bring a simple kitchen scale. Weigh out how much of the feed your horse is fed daily and ensure that it follows the recommended feeding rates. If you feed a combination of several products it is recommended to consult a qualified equine nutritionist to review the program for you. Then you can begin investigating supplements that support your goal, whether it is better gut health, improved hoof quality, additional weight gain, etc. 

When nutritional concerns arise, your first stop shouldn’t be the feed store; instead, head to the feed room with a simple kitchen scale. Weigh the amount of feed your horse receives daily to ensure it aligns with the recommended feeding rates. Photo courtesy of Madeline Boast

Safety & Regulations

Many people assume that if a product is marketed for horses, it’s backed by solid research. However, it can be surprising to learn that, in many cases, purchasing a supplement means your horse is essentially part of a testing process. Additionally, just because a product is “natural” doesn’t guarantee it’s safe; think, for instance, of the many natural plants that are toxic to horses.

Health Canada regulates the animal supplement market for non-food animals and identifies the products with Low Risk Veterinary Health Product numbers. This regulation does not guarantee efficacy of the products and there are numerous mis-labelled products that fly under the radar for extended periods of time. The general rule for supplement claims is that it can use function claims but not drug claims. For example, a product can “support” or “maintain” respiratory health but does not “cure” heaves.

Related: Is “Natural” Better for Our Horses?

Multiple studies have found discrepancies between what the label states and what is in the container. With no guarantee that the products you are purchasing will meet your horse’s needs, it is essential to do your due diligence before buying a product.

Many reputable companies will opt to join the National Animal Supplement Council (NASC), which is voluntary. When part of NASC, the company must pass a third-party quality audit every two years and maintain compliance with their quality standards. The focus of this council is on truth in labelling, rather than on product efficacy. It simply means that the contents match what is stated on the label.

Research

Unfortunately, there will always be some supplements that are not worth purchasing or come from companies that lack clear quality control measures or investment in research. But that doesn’t mean all supplements are bad; in fact, there are many fantastic options on the market from reputable companies that do invest in research.

Product Research: There are two different types of research that supplement claims may be based on: product research and active ingredient research. Species-specific product research is the gold-standard and what should be strived for. This is when the exact product formulation (combination of ingredients) is evaluated for efficacy. It can be completed in a lab setting (e.g., in vitro on tissues), or on a live horse (in vivo). This type of research is preferable as you do not have to extrapolate as far as you often have to with active ingredient research.

Active Ingredient Research: Active ingredient research is when there are studies completed on the active ingredient that is included in the product formulation. It is common for this research to be done on other species (not horses), and then those claims applied to equine products. For example, if a joint supplement includes glucosamine and this has been shown to elicit a positive impact on joint health in mice, assuming that it will do the same in horses is an extrapolation.

It can be confusing to navigate supplement claims and to find the scientific studies they are based on. If a company is investing in equine specific research, they will be enthused to share their research studies with you. Take time to reach out to companies and read through the science as there is no reason you should be spending your hard-earned money to use your own horse for research.

Finding the Science: Understanding the importance of research is a great first step, but it can be a daunting task to find the scientific papers. Most of the time, if a company has product research completed and published it will be clearly listed on their website. This type of research is unfortunately rare. Therefore, most of the time you are seeking out active ingredient research.

PubMed and Google Scholar sites are free to use. Simply searching “equine” or “horse” with the name of the active ingredient in the product will provide you with lots of information to sift through. The information that you are looking for is whether there is equine research completed with the active ingredient, and what dosing was used to elicit a benefit.

Related: Equine Skin Health: What Every Horse Owner Should Know

Taking this information back to ensure that the product you’re looking at purchasing is meeting that recommended dose of active ingredient is a key piece of information to base your decision on.

If you have questions about the supplements you are feeding your horse, consult an equine nutritionist. Photo: Doswell Creative

Adding Supplements

With a better understanding of the supplement industry and the science behind it, this straightforward step-by-step guide can help you decide when and how to incorporate supplements into your horse’s care routine.

• Are their nutrient requirements met? Addressing your horse’s base diet and ensuring that it meets their nutritional requirements should be the first step when evaluating how to combat a nutritional issue or meet a specific goal.
• What nutritional goals do you want to focus on? Is your horse dealing with recurring gastrointestinal issues? In that case, adding GI-support supplements could be beneficial. Or, if you have a performance horse that occasionally experiences stiffness, you may want to focus on joint health. Whatever your goals for your horse, narrowing them down and focusing on one at a time is key to evaluating effectiveness and avoiding a long list of products that may not be truly beneficial. Once a goal has been set it is time to dive into the science.
• Does the product have research completed on it? Reading the supplement website will provide you with insight into the type of research they are relying on for their claims. It is strongly recommended to contact the company and ask for their studies as well. If there are no product research studies completed, you can turn to searching for active ingredient research on PubMed or Google Scholar.
• Is the company reputable? Do you trust the safety of the products they sell? The NASC lists the companies that opt in to their voluntary program. This can provide you with a great start on which companies are investing in quality control and truth in labelling. However, some larger companies may have their own quality control processes in place, which may be why reputable companies are not listed on the NASC site.
• Monitor Progress: Dietary supplements should be added one at a time. If you are adding multiple products at the same time, it becomes next to impossible to determine which may be helping and which may not be useful to keep. If you do not observe a difference, I encourage you to discontinue using the supplement and try a different one. Many times, horse owners will start feeding a supplement and then just keep it in the program forever; they become nervous to remove it, wondering if it might be helping. Try to choose a few measurable parameters and take the time to evaluate if the product has resulted in benefit. The timeline for evaluating efficacy will vary depending on the type of supplement. For example, if you are focusing on hoof quality, it will take six to nine months to truly observe a difference.

Take Home Message

We all want the best for our horses, but adding supplements without careful consideration can get expensive and might not even benefit your horse. When nutritional or health concerns come up, take a step back and assess your horse’s foundational nutrition before adding dietary support. Taking the time to research beforehand can help you select an effective product backed by science, and ensure real benefits for your horse. Remember, companies that invest in science will be eager to share it with you, so don’t hesitate to reach out to them. If you have specific questions regarding your horse, it is recommended to consult a qualified equine nutritionist. 

Additional Resources: 

• National Animal Supplement Council
• NASC – Member List
• Google Scholar Search

Related: Healthy Hooves Hoof Care Guide

Related: What’s in That Feed Bag?

More by Madeline Boast

Main photo: iStock/Nattrass