NUTRITION
Nutritional strategies for a shiny show horse Nutritionist LARISSA BILSTON on keeping your horse cool, calm and collected through the show season.
Good nutrition will reward you with rich coat colour and shine (Main image courtesy Karli Colman, inset from Pixabay).
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roducing a show horse in optimal health with the natural gleam of inner health and the calm disposition needed to concentrate on the rider or handler does not happen overnight or by accident. It takes expert attention to detail, focusing on daily diet, gut health, grooming, rugs, training and exercise management to create a glorious and naturally healthy show horse.
Creating coat colour and shine
Nutrition is of critical importance to produce intense coat colour and a natural shine. The most important nutrients for coat condition are copper and zinc (needed to produce melanin pigment), biotin and vitamin B6 (needed to produce keratin, the protein from which hair and hooves are made) and oils (for skin health and shine). In spring and autumn it’s common to see horses shining with apparent good health, but are they really in optimum condition? Green grass is rich in natural fats which make the coat shine even if the horse is mineral deficient. Horses always need mineral supplementation to balance the mineral deficiencies from their forage-based diets and to correctly balance critical mineral ratios. A mineral deficient horse can be ‘healthy’ (in that the horse is not unwell) but it cannot be in optimum health 26 | H O R S E V I B E S M AY / J U N E 2 0 2 0
without a well-balanced diet supplying all nutritional needs.
Minerals Feeding enough copper and zinc will allow the body to make the pigments that can give your horse its best natural coloured hair. The levels of these two minerals also need to be balanced in relation to total dietary iron and manganese intake. When the levels of
copper and zinc are not balanced with the iron status of the forage, a horse’s coat can appear lighter than normal, faded or ‘sun-bleached.’ Many horse owners recognise that horses grazing poor quality pasture need supplementation but it is not well understood that even the best quality pasture possible doesn’t give a horse the ideal balance of minerals. Providing the correct balance of minerals
