(upbeat music) - Welcome listeners. Despite the fact, in his feed room, got my Sparky chandelier out, which is a really special feed room, because I have persuaded Delightful, Nia O'Malley to come back and join me. She has taken a rest from her busy, busy, busy day work with comedy's Red Mills, who I'm delighted to say continue to support the feed room. They are absolute stars there, big fans of them. And Nia, you have a very, very posh job as technical support for USA and Europe. Clearly too good for the likes of us in UK and Ireland, but that's fine. Welcome back to the feed room. I've got my Sparky chandelier out, so nice and special for you. And within, what are we gonna talk about this episode? Well, what we're gonna talk about is, feet, hooves and skin is my topic for this one. Nia looking absolutely delighted that I've just sprung this on a note, so it's more well planned. Don't worry about it, listeners. So Nia, what we wanted to talk about, and we touched on it, and the last time you were in the feed room with me, it was how through supplements and through feeding, we could support horses, hooves. And I thought it was really important that we could do an episode on it. So welcome, welcome. Um, where should we start? Where should we start with this? Let's start by saying, as a massive disclaimer, let's hopefully not upset any farrows that have listened. Let's do feeding in the winter, 'cause we're feeding in the winter to support hoof quality, 'cause we did just touch on it on a previous feed room episode. So let's go. How are we gonna do that to help? What are the challenges for horses, feet and hooves in the winter? - Thanks for having me, great to be here. So, um, yeah, feeding for hoof health. Um, it is important that we continue this. So we might have a horse as poor hoof health, we've recognised that. Um, what we tend to do in the winter when the horses off work is we throw them out in the field, we throw them, you know, give them a bit of a pailage. Um, we tend to pull back in a lot of the supplements for giving, and because, you know, they're not in work, um, the focus is sort of off them in a little way. And I think that's really important to maybe not do that. And if we have, so, you know, I mentioned in the last one, if we have a gut issue to really work in the winter months, if we have a top line issue to work in the winter months, but hoof would be the same. Um, it's really important to maintain that hoof quality and try and prove that hoof quality over the winter months. Your horse does not work, they're not, you know, they're not having the same sort of wear and hair on their hoof, and they're not having, you know, the same amount of multiple shootings throughout the winter months. You know, the same, there's the same workload on the hoof. So there's a good time there to maybe catch up on hoof health. Now we do have the challenges, it's wet, it's muddy. They're obviously going to have an effect on hoof health, but then we do have the benefit that it's not dry and hot and the hoof aren't, the hoof aren't cracking in the hard ground. So it is a really good time to keep up on this. It's not just about maintaining that hoof health through regular care, regular visits from the farrier, but it's very much from the nutrition side of it too. So we can dress the hoof outside and we can use our oils and our corner cressings outside and we can have the farrier working on the hoof capsule, but a lot of the hoof growth is coming from within. So it's very important that we are feeding the horse a balanced diet and that we are ensuring that they've good protein in their diet, that their mineral profile is balanced in terms of your copper and your zinc, that their amino acid profile is important, that they're meeting their lysine and methionine for healthy hoof growth. So it's really a balanced diet, it'll be really important. You know, it seems very simple, but a balanced diet will be crucial during the winter months because the hoof and the skin are sort of a reflection of what's going on in size. So if you're noticing that you've got poor skin or you've got poor hoof quality, it's kind of letting you know their diet is missing something. That's, and if this has been reflected in poor hoof and poor skin quality, what else is happening inside in terms of the horse metabolism to the horse's soft tissue formation? So it's something that you should really address. So suppose before you start going in with your hoof supplements, I think it's really important to go, okay, I have a hoof problem, there's something going on with the diet of the horse. So I think the first step would be to start feeding a balancer. So when you feed a balancer, you're getting your amino acids, you're getting your vitamins, you're getting your minerals, and you get a lot of other goodies in there for muscular and digestive health. But that balancer, at least you can, you've checked the box, my diet is balanced, the horse is getting everything they need. So if you have noticed that your horse has poor hoof quality and you're feeding a balanced diet, true balancer, there will be a long-term catch-up that you need to rectify. You have a long-term deficiency, that's caused the hoof problem in the first place. So it'd be important to kind of address that, and it would normally come down to either a deficiency of biotin, a B vitamin, it could come down to a deficiency in quality proteins, methine, and a lysine. It probably a lot of the time would come down to a deficiency or an imbalance in the mineral profile of the horse's diet, that is affecting copper. Copper would play a huge role in terms of that whole characterisation. So that would be something I would address, maybe. And the copper, it's a very easy one to identify, because you'll also see it in the coach. The coach will also have a poor condition, poor colour, poor structure, not shedding out well. So my advice would always be to maybe once, twice a year, supplement with copper, just boost up the reserves. They'll go through periods of time where they'll use a lot of copper, when they're shedding their coat, when they're growing your coat, when they're growing your hoof. There'll be periods of time where they would have a higher requirement for copper, and that tends to deplete the reserves. So yeah, just doing them like once, twice, three times a year, giving them a little copper top-up, I think would really help. I think the other thing I was just going to touch on there as well, is I think it's really important to establish with the farrier about where our issue is with the hooves, isn't it? I think you definitely get the horses that struggle with their coronary band to the hoof growth and the coronary band down. So you can tell whether that is a healthy structure, and then what the initial hoof growth higher up. And then, but then equally, then we have the issues where you have the foot breaking up round nail holes and things like that. And I think that's about understanding that there's a different approach to it. So, you know, lower the lower you go down in that hoof capsule, you might be dealing with more issues, maybe some white line issues or anything like that that might be more of a topical effect. But, you know, the things that near is very eloquently discussing there with what the nutritional support does for the horses hooves is really improving that strength of horn that's coming out of the coronary band. So, for example, what we'd be seeing here, we'd be seeing things like, you know, thickened growth rings coming down from, you know, those sort of from the coronary band, dry, scaly coronary band that's not healthy. But speak to your farrier, they'll tell you, they'll say, "This is your horses in a great, great horn, or is it that we've just got weak feet lower down?" But it is all interconnected, but it's just about where we're targeting with what we're trying to achieve, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the farrier can only work with what he has. So, the farrier, you know, we've had some farriers, and we're very lucky in these two countries that we have. He can work with what he has, so it's up to you as the owner of the horse to feed your horse correctly and ensure it, and you can see those, you know, as you were saying there, you can see what's coming then from the coronary band, and that indicates whether it's healthy hoof. So, you know, if you do incorporate a dietary change or if you start supplementing with a hoof supplement, you will start seeing the difference between kind of the eight to 10-week mark. That's where you'll start seeing new hoof growth coming down through the coronary band. If you don't start to see it, if you've, you know, started introducing you hoof supplements and you're not seeing that, then it might be a case of changing the hoof supplements. I'm finding one that works together all different. Some have higher metabolism levels, some would have extra minerals in there, a copper, your zinc, some would have extra amino acids in there. So, that would be sort of important to kind of assess what's growing down from the coronary band, that it is good, healthy hoof growth, because if it isn't, it means the farrier really has his work cut out for him to try and improve on that hoof capsule with a weakened hoof. It's also up to the owner to, you know, to schedule the farrier regularly. It's no point kind of letting it stretch out to sort of, you know, four or five, six weeks and then expecting the farrier to come and work miracles. You know, it's up to you as a winner. So Farsi Nair, you would love me sitting me on the earth. My take is that I don't think a sport horse should ever be overdue showing, because if you get to a stage where that shoe is not sitting, where it should be under the hoof, under the hoof wall, then it's actually being detrimental to the hoof, back into the foot balance. So, yeah, and I see it, you know, up and down the levels, you'll see horses that will sadly be overdue showing. And I just don't think there's an excuse for that. Poor farrier can only do the job lasties there, and then over the weeks between the showing cycle, the football gradually grow more, you know, out of balance, because that's just how they grow. And I think engaging with the farrier is so important. You know, there's definitely the farriers out there that tell you that everything that's wrong with your feet with horses feet. And there's also the other ones that turn up, do a job, deal with what they're going to deal with and move on. And I think it's making sure that we're engaging with these guys, they're all brilliant, they're trying to do the best job they possibly can. And if you say, are these feet any good? Is there anything I can do differently? Is there anything I should be trying to talk to someone else about, about trying to make this an easier job for you? So, yeah, it's that communication, isn't it? That sort of teamwork. And the farrier would be the best person, like, if you are, you know, find that you are supplemented with the hoof supplements. He'd be the first person to tell you, you know, within that, say, first or second-shoeing after you've started your supplement to tell you if it's working. So do get that feedback. Yeah, really let them know, hey, I've started feeding the balancer. Are you seeing a difference? Or I've started on this new supplement. Are you seeing a difference? He'll be the first one to tell you. So it is, it's very much engaging with your farrier on that. It says, you know, he has his role, but you also have your role as the owner of the horse and the person feeding the horse. And you've touched on it already. And I'm going to really kind of dig in deeper now because it's something that I know we both wanted to talk about on this episode. But the skin, you know, there's quite a lot of animals. But it's the skin, particularly in the winter months, or whichever hemisphere you happen to be in, but can often be very challenging. And what can we do about helping our horses skin? I see so many horses with dermatitis, classically, in January, February, March, more February, March. So you start coming out of the winter months and the temperatures start fluctuating and horses are in work again now and they're doing some sweating and then they're being rubbed or not rubbed or under rubbed or over rubbed and it's an absolute nightmare. But I will go from yard to yard to yard and everyone thinks they're the only ones struggling with skin conditions. And they're not because it's a really difficult and challenging time of year for it. But I know Yuri wants to sort of pick up on certain things that we can do from a nutritional perspective on what we can do to support the horses. Yeah, I mean, it's tough. It's not natural what we're putting our horses through, you know, reaching, rogging them up. Some are rubbed up way too warm. Some are, you know, we're clipping them. We're washing them. We're using lots of sprays on them. So we are really messing with them. It's like our own skin. It's the same, you know, products we use in our skin can react. So I know a lot of us where, you know, we're kind of limited to what we can do because we need to clip. You know, we are performing. These are athletes. So there's a lot that we're kind of stuck with and we need to rug them up. We need to work them in the winter. But if we can maybe work on helping the horse internally to have a better skin. So the skin, you know, it's the outer layer of the body. It's reflecting what's going on inside. So if we have poor diet or we're nutritionally deficient in the way we're flexing the skin. So again, back to a balanced diet. So feeding that, I'm a big fan of top dressing with a balancer, such as a former carer or the likes. Any of your feed brands would have a good quality balancer. The balancer, it sort of checks all the boxes. Like you might feed a 10 or 12% protein feed, but depending on the feed manufacturer, you don't know how good that quality of protein is. It's a 10% protein, but it's not really telling you about the quality of the protein. By feeding a good quality balancer, you are ensuring that the last horse is getting all of the essential amino acids it needs. By feeding a good quality balancer, you're ensuring that they're getting all of the minerals they need in the balanced fashion, that they're getting all the vitamins they need. So I'm always a fan of feeding a balancer, whether it's a low level, just like a cup a day or two cups a day. So like 250 grams, 500 grams a day. The lighter the amount of feed you're giving, maybe increase the balancer to 500 grams a day. I like that, it's a good checklist. It means that the horse is getting everything it needs, and that will be reflected in the skin. You will see an improved quote quality. The skin is stronger, the hair follicle is stronger, the color is better, it's more vibrant. So that would be my first port of call would be that. I would again go back to the oils. So everyone would think, "Oh, you give oils to your horses, they're nice and shiny." If you're given an oil, I would always recommend that you've given an omega three oils, such as your caran oil, your flaxseed oil, your linseed oil. So I think taking the boxes, which are protein intake, ensuring that you've got good hair structure, good hair growth, giving the oils will just help as well. But I, and it's again going back to the copper, a huge fan of copper, we do run into our areas with Ireland in the UK, that we would be very copper deficient. But also what's happening is that we, we tend to have a lot of iron in our feeds, in our, the feeds are always balanced for iron, but we tend to have a lot of iron in our forages. And high iron can interact with your copper. So you might have good copper in your hay, you might have good copper in your diet. But if you've got high iron, it's interfering with the copper and it's going to affect your copper uptake. Copper plays a huge role in hair quality and hair color. So if you start to see that, that your horse is like not shedding out well, or has straggly hair, your poor quality hair coat in the winter months, or has a kind of a rusty orangey coat tinge. So it might be a nice bay or a nice black, and they just have this kind of rusty tinge to the coat. That will be an indication that your horse is copper deficient. And so it's really, it's very much reflected in the coat. Or what you'll find another sign of this is you'll have sort of lots of pigmentation, kind of like little pink motley around the muzzle, along, you're kind of under the tinge. Sometimes around their eyes as well, they can get a little bit of that. Yeah. And that's classic indication that your copper deficient. So, okay, maybe coat condition, coat color is not top of our priority list. But for me, that indicates that there's copper deficiency and copper would have placed so many other more important roles in the body, such as bone mineralization, bone strength, bone density, soft tissue elasticity, red blood cell production. So for me, that will be, I think, if you see that your horse isn't coating out well, or that they have poor quality coat, or that they have a poor color, I think definitely go in and top dress with a copper supplement for just a couple of weeks. You can use a copper tonic, like copper vise, where you're just supplementing for a couple of weeks. Or you can go in like with a copper syringe, where you just give them one syringe, come back a couple of months later, give them another. Interesting. Is that linked to sort of old-fashioned horsemanship? They look well on the outside, they're well on the inside. But I think, but so be able to then link that to the science of particularly what electrolytes are we short on, what minerals are we short on? And I'd definitely echo your thoughts and the facts there on copper deficiency. And just to repeat them, what's the best way of adding copper to the dye? It's not easy to do that, because it's not particularly bioavailable, it's my understanding of it. Yeah, you give a, so just check that it's chelates, and that just means that it's attached to an amino acid, so just it's better absorption. I love the copper vise. I think if you're feeding your horse daily, it's very nice to give that. It's just like a little tonic, it tastes nice. And you can just add that to the feed, like just 30 mils to the feed. And you just give that maybe over two, three-week period. That I really like. Can you do that sort of once, twice, three times a year? It really depends on your horse. You know, we have horses traveling back and forth from Europe to the US, and they're going over there for the winter months, back to the summer months. Now you can imagine they're leaving Europe in the winter, they're heading over there for the summer, or for the, they're heading over to Florida for the winter months, but it's, it's hot weather, as we know it. So they're clipping, so those horses have come from hairy, shaggy, coats, cold weather heading over to Florida for hot sunny weather, constantly being clipped, constantly sweating, constantly being washed. And that hair, there's huge, the hair is struggling, it's growing, it's been clipped, it's growing, it's been clipped, and then suddenly it's shedding, it's been clipped, it's shedding, it's been clipped. That is a huge, that's putting huge requirements for copper on the horse's body. So there's going to be periods of time where the body needs more copper, and that's when they're going to deplete their reserves. So that's when you would boost the reserves before they travel, so that they have a good reserve of copper when they go over. So when they are shedding their coat and growing their coat, that they have the copper there to hand. But the same will be here that for here in Ireland in the UK, you know, as you kind of come out of the winter months when the horses start shedding and they're growing their nice sleek summer coat, there's an higher requirement for copper. You might find as you are bumping up your conditioning program for your horses, and they're now building a lot more bone, they're improving bone density, you're doing a lot of conditioning on the horse. So there's a lot of work on the soft tissues on the tendons and ligaments just improving elasticity. So the requirements for copper are going to be higher again during that period. So that's when your horses, you start to see the coats maybe getting poor, poor quality coat again, and that's reflecting, oh, the horse is using a lot of copper, so they're depleting the reserves. So they're, the horses, it's starting to be reflected in the coat condition. So there's going to be periods of time throughout the year where the horse is going to need more copper. And it's going to preempt those into supplemental copper, but that's where the coat, the coat is a brilliant indication. As a horse person, you can just look at your horses, coat and go, okay, something's going on here, I need to supplement. So yeah, those, I think in terms of coat, a balance, it reflects whether your diet is balanced, so just ensure that you are feeding a balanced diet. So a good quality feed or a good quality balancer, and then the other side of it would be just to top up with copper if you need it. That's fascinating. And potentially, almost as a sort of a pre-emptive, you know, as we start increasing that workload in January, February time, and you're clipping them, and then, you know, actually a three-week course there in a supplement with copper, maybe a silver, maybe a three. You might be preventing those horrible skin rashy kind of scenarios that we can get ourselves into. Definitely be going to store in that a way to use this winter. I think the other maybe another sort of two cents to add on in there, we definitely see a group of young horses, don't you know, I kind of almost call it a bit like teenage acne, you know, the six-year-old, the five-year-olds or six-year-olds that definitely get more significant sort of skin dermatitis, bacterial dermatitis often. And I think that's often because their skin immunity is probably a little bit weaker or a little bit more, you know, a bit more naive than some of the older horses, so making sure supporting their immune system is probably really sensible as well. Some of those horses actually need little bits of time off work, definitely to stop sweating as well and help settle those skin conditions down, but they are a challenge. There's no getting away from that, and there's anything, you know, with people listening here that, you know, take on some of those preventative, hopefully preventative tips that it's a big problem in the winter, you know, coming out winter into the spring. We said the fluctuation in temperature, I mean, you can go from minus three or minus four at night to 15, 16 degrees in the day, it's like a 20 degree temperature sweet, you know, we're trying to get the horses to be suitably rather than the right temperature, so it's not easy, it's not easy out there, is it? Yeah, that was brilliant, thank you, thank you very much. I've been, I think I've been very well educated there on storing stuff away, I think I'm going to put this down as a bit of CPD for me as a vet, thank you very much. Listeners, I hope you've enjoyed it, I love bringing a bit of science and a bit of technical knowledge into this, and also linking it to that horsemanship, that's a multiple horsemanship which I think is also so important. Nia, you're a star, definitely keeping you in my little black book of people to ring for another episode, and would you be happy coming back, can I steer you again? Absolutely, amazing, great to enjoy it by the end of this. Nia, thank you, thank you Connolly's Red Mills for your ongoing support, can't thank you guys enough, and we'll be back with another feed room, really soon.
