Minerals are essential components of a horse's diet that contribute not just to their physical health, but also to their performance and well-being. In this blog post, we learn about signs of deficiency. Recognise the signs that your horse may be lacking essential minerals and whether blood testing is a reliable resource to use to identify this.
Mineral deficiency, especially chronic, long-term deficiency, is a huge issue in horse nutrition and tends to go unnoticed until something goes wrong.
The overlooked aspect of mineral balance is that just because you can’t see a mineral deficiency in your horse doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist. If you are not supplementing your horse correctly with vitamin/minerals that balance the diet across the entire dietary intake, it is almost certain that your horse will be deficient in something that will eventually cause a health issue sooner or later.
The good news is that all of these nutrition-related deficiency issues are so easily avoided. Instead of spending several months (and often several thousand dollars) fixing the problems caused by the deficiency, you can just prevent the deficiency and therefore prevent the issue.
Possible symptoms:
- Dull coat that lacks shine and richness of colour especially dull, bleached out in summer, hair folicles curling up at the end, dandruff/scurfy
- Skin issues or infections ie: rain scald, mud fever
- Cracked, weak, poor quality hooves
- Joint issues
- Poor immune system
- Taking a long time to recover and heal from injury/illness or repeated bouts of illness
- Changes in behaviour, often toward more anxious, spooky behaviour
- Loss of muscle or inability to gain muscle and tight sore muscles
- Weight loss or inability to gain weight
- Low energy or unexplained fatigue
- Gut issues, including poor digestion, poor absorption, and an increased risk of gastric ulcers including loose manure or diarrhea
- Reproductive issues in mares, and deformities in foals
Depending on the individual horse these symptoms may take several months or years to show up depending on their mineral status throughout their life.
The common port of call for people to establish if there is actually a mineral defiency is usually to get blood tests done via their vet. Stop! Before you rush out to get tested, bloods are unfortunately not a 100% reliable way of determining if your horse has a mineral deficiency or not. Why? A horse will attempt to keep the mineral level in their blood at homeostasis levels, meaning they will draw from organs, tissue and skeleton inorder to do this. This means that bloods can come back "normal" or "in range" yet internally the horse is minerally deficient. Bloods will not give you a true indication of the mineral status in the whole horse - only what is running through the blood at the time. The only two blood tests that are true gauges of levels are Selenium and Vitamin E. If blood tests come back low, then you have a full blown deficiency.
Think of a good mineral foundation as exactly that - the foundation to your horses health. If that foundation has a weak link or is missing a piece in the puzzle - the entire system built on that foundation is in jeopardy. And the longer that piece or link is missing the longer the horse has been drawing from its body to try to correct the foundation.
There is the school of thought that everything a horse needs is in forage only, and that they can self select minerals that they need. The only mineral a horse will actively seek out in balance to their actual physiological needs, is salt (sodium chloride). Horses on forage only diets, will be deficient in these minerals - Copper, Zinc, Sodium Chloride, Magnesium, Selenium (subject to locational levels) and possibly Vitamin A and E depending on what type of forage they are consuming. FACT.
The take home message? Just because you can’t see a problem doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. Investing in proper mineral supplementation can and will enhance your horse's performance, health and longevity.