Did you know? Electrolyte supplements are designed to replace the minerals lost in sweat – sodium, chloride, potassium and magnesium. It’s a particularity hot summer so far and good quality electrolyte supplements are important to replace lost minerals for your #sweatybetty so #shopsmart. Some commercial electrolyte products contain a lot of filler (e.g. glucose) to improve palatability. This…
What Is Rice Bran? Rice bran is the outer brown layer of the rice kernel that is removed during the milling process, which yields white rice. Rice bran has become increasingly popular as a feed ingredient in the equine industry due to its fat content (around 18-20%). However, rice bran is also very unstable and…
There is nothing worse than trying to handle – let alone ride – a spooky, hyper-reactive horse who just won’t listen. When it comes to the spooky horse though, there are a couple of things you need to remember. First, it’s in a horse’s nature to follow its “flight” rather than “fight” response, and secondly,…
Saying goodbye to summer means we’re leaving the hot, dry weather behind and saying hello to the wetter conditions of autumn. While this will bring some relief for our horses, the change in weather provides an ideal environment for gastrointestinal parasites. Just think, when the grass is growing so will the worms (well, they will…
Daily aches and pains are something every horse (and their owner) experience at some point in their lifetime. However, even low-grade lameness could be indicative of a bigger problem such as Osteoarthritis (OA). OA is a complex, progressive disease that affects a large proportion of the horse population. In fact, studies have shown that more…
When exercising, the horse’s working muscles generate heat… The body heats up… The horse sweats… Excess heat is then dissipated through evaporative cooling. As simple as that! Right? Unfortunately, this isn’t the case for all horses. Picture this – it’s a typical Summer’s day in Australia. Hot. Humid. Plagues of flies and other bugs. Cicadas…
The muscle fibres of a horse are a huge asset to the racing or performance horse. Without them, there’s not much to work with – so as well as building muscle mass, the muscles also need to be protected! Low intensity exercise at an easy pace, allows for oxygen to replenish the muscles as he moves. In…
What you feed can have a huge impact on how well your horse performs. Nutrition, supplies the protein to build muscle and the energy to fuel muscle, but there is much more to feeding the performance horse than just providing energy and protein. Let’s be clear though, nutrition is never going to improve a horse…
Chelated (Key-lated) minerals are minerals already bound to a small piece of protein. For minerals to be absorbed they need to be attached to a protein or a sugar which is easily absored in the small intestine. Chelated minerals don’t rely on this ‘attachment’ happening by chance, as they are all ready to be ‘smuggled’…
The preparation in the lead up to riding at the prestigious Melbourne 3 Day Event is intense for any rider but doing it while juggling a ‘normal job’, a professional stable full of horses, a burgeoning saddlery business plus everything that goes with being mum to a busy two year old, and we’re talking a…
Most riders never reach a level where they earn the right to represent their country, but Sue-Ellen Lovett is not most riders! The dressage rider from NSW is blind, a hereditary disease called ‘Retinitis Pigmentosa’ having slowly robbed her of her vision since the age of 12. But Sue-Ellen has never considered her condition a…
Gut Health Proves Pivotal to Remy’s Recovery When Mandy Eaton’s young Palomino Stock Horse sustained a serious stifle injury just five weeks after she bought him, she thought things couldn’t get any worse. Then he developed an infection and came close to death. While ‘Remy’ did eventually turn the corner, the effects of weeks of…
