I've wanted a horse since I was a little girl. So after a few years not riding regularly I've decided to get back into my life-long love, full swing! After only a few months of horse shopping I found my cute mare Dani in 2012. Then in 2015 we moved from CO to NC and bought horse property. We now also have Chance a sweet Arabian gelding. This is the story of my continuing adventure in the world of horses in my backyard.
Our Horse Trailer Project
November 03, 2024
Serene Sunday
October 20, 2024
Horse Nutrition- what you don't know you don't know!
I want to start this post out with stating:
I AM NOT AN EQUINE NUTRITIONIST
I am not offering any advice or suggestions. I am merely documenting my discoveries in feed with my own horses. I will link to sources as appropriate but for a full assessment of any animals diet please consult a certified equine nutritionist. Veterinarians are not specialists in nutrition, they can help some but they have their specialty in disease prevention, lameness etc. etc.
I AM NOT AN EQUINE NUTRITIONIST
When I first owned horses I just just had Dani at a boarding facility that fed grass hay and I supplemented with some vitamin/mineral supplement from SmartPak. Eventually I moved on to just using a Ration Balancer since I was sold on the idea that it was cheaper and still had a low feeding rate for an easy keeper that stayed quite healthy on just grass hay.
I never really had any issues. Then with Chance he was on the same regimen here in NC. Once Dani had laminitis and then Chance started loosing weight and not eating a Senior feed I had for him. I started to delve in and learn a bit more. I needed more fat for Chance but it needed to be low sugar and starch.
NSC description......... Low NSC feed is recommended for Insulin resistant horses and those with Cushings. Check for Chance on Cushings and check for Dani on IR and Cushings. The ration balancer I had Dani on was good but I found one with an even lower NSC level and lower feeding amount.
Then in fall 2023 I broke down and got a hay probe ($150-$180 for these suckers!!) By then I had Seamus too and he is a young horse, so I was determined that I get more information about what I was feeding my horses.
What is in a hay test analysis?
Depends on what you purchase. I went with a lower level analysis but it gave me a general idea of the nutrition and most important for my IR and cushings horses the sugar content.
Seamus with Northern Lights from Oct. 10, 2024 (blurry since it was handheld long exposure) |
September 08, 2024
September 02, 2024
Is Seamus really a black horse?
Horse coat color is apparently complicated. Many people think they have a black horse but they don't or they have a black horse that doesn't look black in the summer. Seamus is registered black with the Kentucky Mountain Saddle Horse Association. I didn't quite believe it since he started to look like a sooty buckskin or bay in the summer with his coat bleaching. Maybe he was actually bay or had a dun gene?
I decided to get him genetically tested. I also took a look at diet, in particular microminerals. The black coat, any dark coat for that matter, requires a higher a level of certain minerals to produce the melanin. I'd had him on a balancer for grass hay and then supplemented with Nuhoof which has.....you guessed it Zinc and copper in it which is also one of the requirements for hoof growth. Makes sense right? Hooves and hair have keratin as a main component. He should have been getting what he needed.
The test results were in....
Guess what color Seamus 's genetic report indicated?
Black.
He is "EE"- meaning no red factor, these are two dominant alleles, Red is recessive, you need two recessives "ee" to show the Red phenotype (aka Daenerys). An "Ee" horse would not be Red, since you need two recessive "e's" to express the red color but could obviously pass on that gene....not gonna go down the Punnett squares explanation. So many resources online if you want to really delve into it and learn!!
Agouti affects the distribution of black pigment if a horse has any, "Ee" or "EE".
Seamus is "aa" for Agouti. A bay horse only needs one dominant "A" to have the black coloration restricted to just the points just the points like in a bay (mane, tail and legs Aa, AA). If there are two recessive copies then the distribution is over the entire body of the horse (aka black)
Lastly there is no Dun dilution gene; he is nd2/nd2 (Dun horse dilution genes)
August 26, 2024
The Hoof Saga
Then with more mud and a feisty young 6 year old horse that loves to bounce about, Seamus must have bumped it since the flap was now 90 degrees out from the rest of the hoof.