• Vitamin E
• Hay
• Disease from a holistic perspective
  

Vitamin E
Vitamin E levels in horses tend to be low when they do not have good access to green grass. When there is a drought, pastures that are normally green are poor quality and the hay is poorer quality than usual. Vitamin E deficiency has been liked to several serious equine diseases and may be linked to other less obvious immune system problems. Vitamin E is critical for a healthy immune system. A simple blood test for vitamin E levels can be done by your veterinarian. Supplementation with a natural source of Vitamin E is the most effective way to improve vitamin E status. If your horse is deficient in Vitamin E it is best add about 1,000 IU or more per day. This will need to be done without added selenium, since most vitamin E and selenium products contain much lower levels of vitamin E than you need for deficient horses. Selenium, which is a mineral deficient in many parts of the country, can also be checked by a blood sample.

Natural vitamin E is absorbed at a higher and more complete rate than synthetic E. When you examine your supplement to see which type you have look for “d-tocopherol” as this is natural source vitamin E. if you see “dl-tocopherol”, look for different brand next time.

Hay
During a drought, hay quality often becomes poor, the availability of it is reduced and the cost goes up. Hay may be brought from other countries or other areas of the United States. During extremely wet conditions, the same facts are true, but with the added issue of mold in improperly cured hay. A recent trip to a nutrition conference in Europe, where data was presented examining the various types of hay substitutes revealed some useful information.

Hay cubes, not small pellets, can be an effective substitute for regular hay. Transporting hay cubes from an area where the wheather was excellent is cheaper than transporting the bales themselves, making quality fiber more accessible.

Haylage, a moist bale made in a similar fashion to silage fed to cows, is becoming popular in some northern states, but has not been fed to horses in many states in the USA. These are the plastic wrapped round bales seen by the side of hay fields in many places. However, in Europe, haylage has been fed ands studied extensively. If made and stored properly haylage is very safe for horses. When feeding haylage, it has to remembered that it is heavier than hay, so if you weigh your hay, you will need to feed more weight to equal the same amount of feed. The extra weight is water. There does not seem to be any increase in obesity when haylage is fed, even though it is thought to be higher in energy or protein, however each horse has to be monitored as an individual, since the haylage could be made from a higher quality field than you may have chosen in the past for your easy keeper. There is no problem adapting horses to eating the new feed.

Preparation and storage are very important, so buy from people who are accustomed to making a quality product and store it away from areas where the plastic wrap can be damaged. Examine bales when you open them, as botulism is a possibility if air or mold has gotten into the bale. The incidence of botulism seems to be low in Europe, but must be taken into consideration.

Disease from a Holistic Perspective
One of my favorite statements is that the blessing and the curse of holistic medicine is that each animal is an individual and must be treated as such. It is a blessing because finally your veterinarian wants to listen to all aspects of your horse’s life and personality and all that information is important. The curse is that there is no one simple answer to each horse’s problem. If you are really interested in treating your horse with natural medicine, it is important that you realize it is not a simple process. Since each is an individual, the approach
There are three major stages of dis-ease when you look at all levels of health. The earliest stage is when there is an energetic disturbance where the Qi (energy) of the acupuncture system or the vital force of the homeopathic system is disturbed. At this point you will not see changes in the blood work or x-rays, but the animal is not totally healthy. This is the easiest stage of disease to treat with acupuncture or homeopathy, but the hardest stage of disease to treat with drugs because there is nothing to diagnose from a western medical standpoint.
The next stage of dis-ease is a functional disturbance where the organ or body part is not functioning optimally, but it has not yet started to degenerate. There is an entire branch of human medicine called functional medicine where diagnostics are being performed that defines how well an organ is functioning. If poor function is seen, treatment can begin long before the organ has degenerated. The human laboratory tests have are not available to the veterinary world, but the holistic veterinarians can use the information from the human data to help understand at what stage our horses are. We can also pick up problems at this stage with techniques such as thermography or sometimes scintigraphy (bone scans). Disease at this stage is relatively easy to treat using holistic techniques.

The last stage of dis-ease is the one we are most familiar with which occurs after the body part has degenerated enough for the symptoms to be seen either in the blood or with x-rays. For blood work to show a problem the horse will usually have 2/3 or more of an organ sick or degenerated. So, for a liver problem to show up in blood work the horse needs to be pretty sick. And for a sore joint to show degenerative changes on x-ray there needs to be significant joint damage already present. This stage of disease is the most difficult to treat because there is often permanent damage present that no form of medicine can reverse. We can make the horse more comfortable and in many cases with regular treatment, nutritional, herbal or homeopathic support we can keep them comfortable and performing well for many years.
The bottom line to this is that you want to discover imbalances at the earliest stage of disease as possible. If your horse’s coat is not right or there are some other small symptoms, it is best to try and figure out what is not right as soon as possible rather that waiting several years to find out what serious problem he/she may have.

Skunk Shampoo
this is a fabulously simple and effective remedy for those times your dog meets up with a black and white pussy cat of the smellier persuasion. And since most of us own dogs, it will come in handy at some point in our life.
1 quart hydrogen peroxide
(3%, from the store)
1/4 cup baking soda
(any brand)
1 tsp. liquid detergent (The soap is needed to cut the natural oils in the dogs coat. (shampoo, dish soap, etc)

Mix and apply. Often, you only need to wipe it on the surface of the coat, if you catch it before your friendly canine has rubbed it deep into his coat. You can make up a 1/2 batch if this is the case.

Getting Swished in the Face
Have you ever had the annoyance of getting swished in the face with a well-aimed equine tail? This simple solution will earn you brownie points with your farrier, veterinarian, tail braider and many other helpful people who would like to keep their skin and eyes intact.

All you need is a hair clip or clamp of any description. It should have a strong enough clip that it will not fall off. Then all you do is clamp it into the hair on the dock of the tail (the part where the bone is). No need to pull the hairs very tight.
If your horse has an itchy tail the clamp may make him want to itch more, otherwise I have seen no problems. An occasional horse may be worried about something heavy on the tail, you can always take it off.

Quick tip for halter, muzzle rubs
If you are using a muzzle or crib collar and your horse�fs skin is irritated in the hot weather, or anytime, cover the offending parts with real sheepskin. You can get halter covers and adapt them to the shape you need. The real sheepskin will breath and not matt when it gets wet and oily. Also you can clean it easily and put it right back on, even if it is still wet.

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