Vitamin E deficiency can lead to distinct health conditions; Shivers can occur in the front limbs, but only if the hind legs are also affected; A horse’s brain weighs 1.5 pounds, but is still one of the largest brains among land mammals...

Vitamin E is a fat soluble vitamin that is an essential nutrient in equine diets. Vitamin E functions largely as a biological antioxidant in the equine body, protecting tissues from the oxidative effects of free radicals. Free radicals are a natural outcome of cell metabolism but they can become excessive during conditions of hard work or injury.

Buying hay for your horse can be a challenge whether you buy it a few bales at a time or purchase a year’s supply when it becomes available in the summer. Supply, price, and quality have always been important parameters to consider when buying hay for horses, but now, more than ever before, horse owners are becoming aware of the importance of the nutritional components of the hay they feed.

Everybody loves to see a donkey! With their large fuzzy ears and soulful eyes, they naturally tug at the heartstrings of horse lovers everywhere. Donkeys were first domesticated in Africa around 3000 BC. They evolved in desert areas and, consequently, developed as browsers that can adapt to poor quality feed and irregular water supplies. Their easygoing nature and hardiness made them ideal as beasts of burden in the hotter, drier parts of the world. Coming in a variety of sizes, donkeys and their hybrid offspring, mules and hinnies, range anywhere from Miniature donkeys of less than 35 inches in height all the way up to Mammoth Jack donkeys that can exceed 15 hands.

Horse owners have been wetting or soaking hay as a feed management practice for many years. Soaking hay for horses can be invaluable when feeding a hay that is a little dusty as a result of soil contamination or where it was stored in the barn. Horses that have allergies and are sensitive to the natural dust and particles in hay can benefit significantly from wetting or soaking hay.

Managing Nutrition for Safe Growth in Young Horses - For any horse owner, the birth of a foal is always an eagerly awaited event. That baby, the product of the carefully planned mating of two superior parents, can elicit a range of emotions for the owner, including excitement and awe, but often anxiety and worry as well. One of the concerns the owner of a newborn foal may have involves the risk of the foal developing developmental orthopedic disease (DOD), which is a name applied to a group of conditions that can affect the growing foal, including physitis, acquired angular limb deformities, flexural deformities, cervical vertebral malformations, acquired vertebral deformities, and finally, osteochondrosis (OC).

Why choosing hay for fibre content can be important - Horse owners are becoming very familiar with maneuvering their way through a lab report describing the nutrient content of hay. Terms such as dry matter (DM), crude protein (CP), water soluble carbohydrates (WSC), and non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) are routinely assessed by horse owners looking to buy a hay that works for their barn.

What does it mean for Canadian horse owners? Are you aware that a Code of Practice for the Care and Handling of Equines (CPCHE) was published in Canada in 2013? Did you know that Equestrian Canada, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA), and the Canadian Feed Inspection Agency were among the many partners involved in the development of the CPCHE under the National Farm Animal Care Council (NFACC), and that they remain part of the team that supports the industry-recognized recommendations and requirements established within the Code for good equine husbandry? Let’s look at what exactly this equine Code entails.

How many of us remember the days when the only way to find out the facts on a subject was to go to the library and look it up? Answers to questions we had about the care or feeding of our horses might have been found in one of the many reference books we all owned. Or, maybe we would find the information we were looking for by perusing the many equine magazines we kept “just in case.”