Diet page 4

Along with a correct fibre supply horses need an optimum supply of minerals and vitamins. Along with restricting grazing this is probably the most important aspect to creating a really strong performance bare hoof.

If you look here you will find out we had a few problems with our hooves. This was partly down to tar in road planings but it wasn’t the whole story! The whole story has taken us quite some time to work out but what we have found is quite literally changing the horses hooves as we type. Quite a few years ago now, along with Nic Barker, we experimented with feeding magnesium to our horses. We saw lots of changes in their hooves.

But magnesium wasn’t the whole story it was just the tip
of the iceberg!

Our horses have lived on our own land for the last 6 years. We harvest the forage and the horses live off this and a small amount of hard food. A number of years ago we had analysis done of both the grass and hay and then used the services of a bespoke supplement company. They looked at the analysis, said we were fine, formulated a supplement which we fed for over 6 months but we did not notice any changes or benefits until we supplemented the magnesium. At this point we ditched the so called bespoke supplement.
Three years later after having the track problems we did some nutrition courses with Dr Eleanor Kellon and were finally able to learn to read the forage analysis and what we found was a nightmare!