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Extra minerals for your horse: When is that necessary?

Minerals are essential building blocks for bones, muscle tissue, organs, and the nervous system. Therefore, your horse needs to be able to absorb enough minerals with its food and water. But minerals are complex, sometimes work together, and occasionally interfere with each other. How do you know if your horse is getting enough minerals or needs extra?

Electrolytes

Minerals

Feeding

12 June '23 • 5 min reading time

Minerals are important for the skeleton, nervous system, and digestion. Horses require a large number of minerals, sometimes in very small amounts. Minerals are usually divided into minerals and trace elements. Minerals should be given in grams per day, trace elements in milligrams. Some of the 'major' minerals include: calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, chloride, and potassium. Trace elements include: zinc, copper, iron, manganese, iodine, selenium, cobalt, molybdenum, and sulfur.

Compounds

When providing minerals, two important questions come into play. Firstly: in what compound is the mineral in the feed or supplement? A mineral is always bound to, for example, an oxygen atom or a sulfur atom. For example, magnesium can be fed in the form of magnesium oxide, or as magnesium sulfate. But it can also be bound to an organic compound, such as chelate. The compound of the mineral affects its absorbability. For example, magnesium oxide is not very absorbable, magnesium sulfate is much more absorbable, and magnesium chelate is even better. Therefore, you need to feed less of the latter compound for the same result.

Routes and challengers

Minerals can also interfere with each other. This happens, for example, when they use the same route to be absorbed into the body. They can then displace each other. This happens, for example, with calcium and magnesium. If you feed too much calcium can disturb the magnesium absorption – and vice versa. Also, zinc and copper interfere with each other, as do zinc and iron. Some minerals are better absorbed when certain vitamins are present, such as vitamin D and calcium or vitamin C and iron. In short: it's quite complicated...

Measuring mineral deficiencies?

For some minerals (and vitamins), the body stores a reserve. In those cases, the blood value is often stable. This means that you can't always measure from the blood whether the body is getting enough. For example, mares will always put calcium in their milk to provide their foals with good nutrition. Even if they have to draw that calcium from their own bones, making them less sturdy. Hooves can also serve as a depot for minerals. In addition, the liver can store stocks of essential substances. But at some point, such a stock is depleted if not enough comes in through the feed. For some minerals (and vitamins), a blood value is reasonably reliable, for others not. Then you only see a deficiency when your horse shows symptoms.

General rules?

Although each horse is different, we can say a few things in general. In general, it is wise to give a horse a daily balancer or biscuit that covers the basic need for vitamins and minerals. These substances are also in concentrated feed, but then you have to give the entire daily dose on the packaging, usually about two kilograms per day. For many horses in recreation and light sport, that is very much, especially because of the sugars and additives in that concentrated feed. Therefore, they usually have enough with high-quality unpacked hay and a balancer. In certain situations, mineral supplementation may be wise. Growing horses and lactating mares, for example, have a greater need for calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, and silicon. You can find this in special feed or supplements. Horses that need to build muscle, have a lot of stress, or work very hard often have a magnesium deficiency. Horses that sweat a lot can use sodium, chloride, and often potassium (salts / electrolytes). Horses with brittle hooves can be supported with silicon. And horses that get soaked hay, for example, because of a dust allergy, can develop a general deficiency of minerals because some of it washes out of the hay.

Letting your horse choose

For the small minerals, of which your horse needs only a little, it is often even more difficult to know if your horse is getting enough. This is also because the composition of hay varies per season and type of soil. When your horse gets enough trace elements, its body can better handle the minerals and macronutrients from the hay and feed. It is therefore a good idea to let your horse make the choice. Use, for example, a concentrate of Bering Sea water, which you pour a splash into a bucket of drinking water. Make this bucket part of a mineral buffet, or offer it next to a bucket of clean water without additives. Your horse can then decide for himself what he needs at that moment. Because... they know themselves!

Why seawater?

Research shows that mineral products from the sea have various advantages. They contain good amounts of the major minerals and also many different trace elements. In addition, the absorbability of all those minerals is much better than with minerals given as powders bound to oxide or sulfate. The trace elements in seawater are attached to small single-celled algae or phytoplankton. You can't see those algae with the naked eye, but they are crucial for absorbability. Because the minerals are attached to the algae, they can easily pass through the intestinal wall and be absorbed into the bloodstream. Water from the Bering Sea contains very few contaminants and many different trace elements. Therefore, it is a very complete supplement. Moreover, Bering Sea water contains relatively much fulvic acid. Fulvic acid acts in the body as a transporter and binds particles. Fulvic acid can transport nutrients such as vitamins, herbs, enzymes, and minerals to the correct cells in the body. Then the fulvic acid takes the waste and contaminants, such as pesticides and heavy metals, and removes them.

Sources:

Table with requirements for major minerals and trace elements for different types of horses: https://www.voervergelijk.nl/informatie/92/behoefte-vitaminen-en-mineralen

M.J.S. Moore-Colyer. Effects of soaking hay fodder for horses on dust and mineral content. 2010. Animal Science Volume 63 Issue 2. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/animal-science/article/abs/effects-of-soaking-hay-fodder-for-horses-on-dust-and-mineral-content/F39299E2734D846DDA425B57DA056726

H.F. Hintz. Mineral requirements of growing horses. Pferdeheilkunde12 (1996)3 (May-June)303-306

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