We hear constantly from horse owners that the supplement market is overwhelming and confusing. In introducing the Fireside Video series we hope that we can provide you with accurate information about the various categories of supplements, what they can and can’t do and which ingredients are credible. We hope to engage with horse owners to answer their questions about what can be a very confusing subject. Continue reading →

It wasn’t so long ago in the US that I would have not been surprised to see a claim like that. There are still plenty of ads for human supplements out there making all kinds of outrageous claims. The fact is that supplements are not drugs, they don’t work like a lightbulb but to our amazement many people will still kiss a frog and expect it to turn into a Prince. Continue reading →

So you do a bunch of research into Protein levels, you’re concerned about starch levels and you have a pretty good idea of what is in your hay – does that sound like you? Alternatively you were at a show and this very nice sales person told you all the reasons why their bagged feed addresses everything you need and all the other feeds are rubbish. There are any number of reasons why you are feeding a particular product but I am willing to bet that 99 times out of a 100 when you actually try to figure out what is in the feed from the label, you will be struggling.
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One of the first questions that springs to mind is why are horse supplements important in the modern equine diet?

If you go back in time a hundred years, horses were living on large areas of pasture with a rich combination of grasses, herbs and other beneficial plants that provided them with a rich source of nutrients. Today the vast majority of horses are confined to small areas, many having no access to pasture whatsoever and are sustained by grass and legume hays and grain products.

At Grand Meadows we believe that the heightened interest in digestion supplements has arisen from a widening recognition that the way horses eat today has changed so much relative to the way the horse’s digestive system has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years.

Horses evolved as grazers, and in order to consume sufficient forage to meet caloric demands, they must graze for many hours each day. Thus, their digestive system is designed to function through continual ingestion and processing of small amounts of forage. As soon as a horse rips a blade of grass or grasps a piece of hay, digestion begins.

In many cases horses are being fed quantities of cereal grains, ingredients that horses have not evolved to eat as a daily part of their diet. This change from a diet that consisted of 100% forage to a mixed diet has resulted in unprecedented levels of digestive issues from gastric stomach ulcers, hind gut acidosis, metabolic illnesses and gas or impaction colics. While we cannot realistically except horse owners to universally change their feeding programs, we believe it is helpful to understand why it is a good idea to be proactive in feeding a well formulated digestion supplement. As an example a viable* digestion supplement can support the more efficient breakdown of complex carbohydrate in the small intestine and reduce the workload being placed on the microbial population in the large intestine. This in turn will allow those beneficial bacteria to focus on breaking down the more indigestible cellulose and lignans that are not broken down in the small intestine, aiding the extraction of the remaining nutrients and supporting the production of B-vitamins for the immune system and Volatile Fatty Acids for energy.