It was a Supplement Mystery

While most our systems around the barn at the Rosepine Ranch run like a well oiled machine due to years of fine tuning, the odd thing can cause a break down.

It was a mystery that needed solving and a case study that came along without planning.

We had three new rescue horses in the barn. Each of them seasoned show horses now starting their lives over after a period of neglect or total abandonment. Strangely, all of them are bays, nicely expanding our ‘Newport Bay Club’. That’s another story however.

As the usual course of action with a new horse, their diets and supplements were improved as part of their road to soundness.

Being seasoned, they all showed joint wear in the form of arthritis. I decided to try out a new brand of combination joint supplement by Select that was designed for senior horses. It had the combo of all ingredients that I liked for an equine in this state of rehabilitation. You know, Yucca, MSM, glucosamine, vitamin C, all tried and true, they worked.

I gave a new pail of it to the gal that mixes each horse’s special blend of feed supplements and told her it was for all 3 of the new horses. That same day I also decided to start a Hyaluronic Acid feed supplement by Corta-Flx on my two older lesson horses. Prior to that, they had been on the inject-able source of the HA. I gave her that new jug and asked that it be given to the lessons horses.

Somehow my darling supplement mix master took it to mean the new Select joint supplement was only for the three new rescues and not the senior lesson horses. While the three rescues improved in joint function over the next six months the other two started showing all the classic signs of arthritic soreness. Wow, they were crabby, slow to warm up, and really thought the extended trot was asking just too much.

I was mystified by what was going on. Here I had added the HA to the feed and by all measure the lesson horses were not moving well at all. I decided that the feed HA wasn’t working and resigned to the fact that I would go back to injections.

With the next new pail of joint supplements given to the mix maven, I instructed that all the horses would now be on the same one as the rescues because they were doing so well. She asked if the two school masters would start back with a loading dose.

HUH? Why no I told her, they already had the basics from the last round. “OH,” she replied, “I wasn’t giving them any of this joint supplement, I thought it was just for the new rescues.”

“WHAT! I yelped. No wonder!”

The mystery was solved in a moment. We are back on track and the school masters are acting like themselves again. Now I’m doubly sure that those supplements truly work. As a matter of fact I think it’s time to start oiling my own machine and add them to my own diet.  Maybe the extended trot will be easier for me too.