So, to summarize all of the equine nutritional advice of the last few weeks:
Feed your horse grass hay only, unless you live where grass hay doesn`t grow in which case feed whatever you can get but lay awake at night worrying about it.
Feed supplemental lysine from soybeans but only if whatever else you`re feeding doesn`t have enough or if your horse works extra hard or if you`re staying up at night worrying about it.
Feed vitamin and mineral supplements based on scoop size no matter what the label says because the labels are all wrong and besides, you`d just stay up at night worrying if your horse didn`t get enough.
Feed fat (oil) to your horse for extra calories but only if he`s not eating barley or wheat hay and only if extra Vitamin E is being added and only if he`s got a penchant french fries. Or stay up at night and worry about it.
If you`re forced to feed wheat or oat hay, be sure to have your razors ready to shave off the beards, otherwise you`ll stay up at night worrying that your horse will catch one in his throat.
If you live near a golf course, let them eat there.
If you live near the ocean, too bad. Most horses will not eat seaweed.
If you live in the desert, too bad. Most horses will not eat cactus.
Give shots of Adequan every three days, just on general principles. I`d suggest every day shots, but someone would claim I was being elitist.
If your horse doesn`t "improve" with the Adequan alone, combine it with Coseqan, Bute, Selsun Blue, and Preparation-H.
That about covers it, right guys?
Mike Sofen
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1) Hire highly-paid equine nutritionist to live in your barn, spending 24 hours a day weighing out feed via gram scale and tweezers, analyzing hourly feed samples and pulling large blood samples from horses eighteen times a day to explain mysterious progressive anemia. Horses later die of blood loss, but nutritionist publishes scientific paper on the event, blaming it all on Southwest-grown alfalfa and rice bran.
2) Owner loses all sense of perspective when lab feed analysis shows lysine to be deficient by .000001 micrograms. Goes on tri-state killing spree and spends rest of life drowsing happily in institution for the Criminally Insane And Also Endurance Riders subsisting on massive doses of thorazine, mumbling incoherently about enteroliths and the best prices for Adequan.
3) Owner maintains sense of The Big Picture and does the right thing for his horses by selling home, car, his left kidney and all possessions other than horses and tack to finance the daily feed analysis and live-in nutritionist now living in Owner`s former home. Lives in cardboard box outside horse`s stall, serene and content in the knowledge that Muffy`s nutrition level is the best to be had. Neighborhood kids feed persimmons to horses throught the fence, cause impactions and all the horses die, anyway. Owner moves on to scenario described in #2.
4) Owner comes to senses midway through selling left kidney and beats nutritionist to death with the latest copy of NRC Nutrient Requirements for Horses. Buries body in pasture, where additional soil supplementation provided by dead body tissue decomposition causes a bumper crop of rich, lush pasture grass, rich in amino acids. Horses win North American Championship and proud owner writes best-seller "Nutrition for the Endurance Horse---a Guide to Dealing with Pesky Children and Amway Distributors".
Susan Garlinghouse
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