Feeding a horse real food vs. natural supplements

I was responding to a post on my forum about feed supplements and the fact that our horses sometimes need the same supplements we do. I do agree that your health challenges can be similar to our horses and I think this may be because we are drawn to horses that are the same type as us. Since natural nutrition is based on staying healthy rather than treating symptoms it makes sense that principles that apply to people work for horses as well and vice versa.

I do think Uckele is a good company. I just have not had need for their products since I have others that have worked well for me for years. They do lots of custom mix feed supplements for people to balance their hay but again my preference is to balance as much as possible with food based products rather than inorganic minerals. I think you have to consider that natural does not always mean food. An inorganic mineral is natural but not food like the minerals you get from alfalfa hay or pumpkin seeds. Glucosamine is produced in a lab from natural cartilage but it is not a food. Whenever possible I like for the horses feed to support he body with high quality food that contains many varied nutrients such as, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients like carotenoids and chlorophyl, antioxidants and natural healthy sugars. I tend to buy my herbal products from companies that specialize in them so I can talk to them about specific actions of herbs and find out why they chose a certain formula.

For horses that are not able to forage in native grass pastures we may need to add in additional herbs or special foods to help them through a minor ailment or to adapt better to the season. Feeding a horse baled hay, bagged feed and formulated feed supplements day after day is not enough to keep the horse in optimum health. Horses like people need live foods that have varied nutrients and pigments to give the body energetic balance along with actual food ingredients. If we feed our young horses well they will have fewer health problems as they age and we can use our nutriceutical type products later in life when body parts finally begin to wear out. Madalyn

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