At Calm Healthy Horses we rely on our FB page and posts as an important method of communicating with you.  From there you can contact me in the UK if you want to ask about specific issues so I can help you work out what you can do to improve the situation for your horse.   At Calm Healthy Horses we always consider the WHOLE diet and management, and in our experience working to get the right balance for the horse on a day to day basis is the only way to avoid problems.

Below is a FB post from early spring 2018 Im using it to demonstrate how using jigsaw pieces of information can limit our ability to get our heads around the problem.  Ive picked the main themes from about 50 comments and provided our perspective on that information

Looking for advice! I bought an 12.2 lead- rein pony last autumn.  She was brilliant for the first few months, just a little jumpy in the wind. But now she’s become really spooky, to the point I daren’t put the little ones on her! Could it be the grass, or just the fact she’s settled in? Her teeth have been checked. I’ve been lunging her and she is spooking on the roads when I long- rein her. Should I try magnesium? Any ideas would be very welcome – not sure what to do next!

Reading the orignal post, you could  summarise that the poster purchased a lead- rein pony in late Autumn/early Winter.  All was well EXCEPT that the pony was unsettled in the wind! Here is the first hint! By February, the pony is becoming dangerous for the children to ride, inspite of an adult lunging and longlining it.  The pony is in at night with hay, given a token bucket that doesn’t add anything to balance the diet in terms of vitamins and minerals.  Grass management is in place using the muzzle and stabling but still the pony is getting more and more unpredictable.   The original question was – will feeding magnesium help ?

So to clarify,  the level of potassium and nitrates in the grass when it’s in growth stage is the root cause of the issues.  The resulting imbalance puts stress on the nervous and other systems, further elevating the need for magnesium, calcium and other important minerals  in the diet.

Having no regular vitamin and mineral supplement in the bucket puts the pony in a weaker position towards coping with the Spring grass, inspite of the grass management that is in place. Lack of salt further compromises the pony’s ability to employ its natural resilience. I would guess, given the comment about “Brilliant except for the wind’, that the pony became compromised over the previous months and by February has become very grass- affected.  In addition to further improvements in the managmenent of the basic diet, additional supplementation of GrazeEzy and Alleviate C would be highly beneficial.

Hopefully the poster did her homework and was able to work out why and then what her pony needs rather than using bits and pieces of information that don’t add up to a long term strategy for success.

One of the reasons I feel strongly about this is that I also had to use a jigsaw of infomation when working out what was wrong with my horse in the past. Even though I had studied equine nutrtion, it was only through Jenny and Calm Healthy Horses that the problem of potassium and nitrates became clear to me.  Before my horses became so Grass Affected that their health and performance were seriously affected, I also believed that more work and correct handling were the answer.

Right at the begining of my journey I can also remember buying a pot of magnesium oxide to add to the feed.  On its own it did no good and my horse soon came down with full-blown laminitis.  I was also using a muzzle and keeping the horse in a stable at night with ad lib hay. Thankfully, and with Jenny’s help, I was able to broaden my knowledge and complete the jigsaw puzzle. I am now relieved to say that I can now prevent my horses suffering from grass affected issues.