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Title: “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster

When this was discussed many many moons ago back in '98 I was having problem with the Jbird. His muscles just seem too stiff. He never tied up but his muscles just didn't seem to loosen up properly. I had him tested he was about 170 pbb. I calculated the Sb he was getting in  his feed - ignoring the hay and foliage since the Fl soils has virtually no Se. I supplemented so he was getting about 8 mg/day. Six months later I retested and he was running 220. In another six months I retest and he was running the same.

In about two months after starting the supplementation he was a different horse. His muscles were much looser. He warm up much faster and his stride was more fluid.

I think some of the soil in the SE is okay for SE - like over toward Northern AL and Northwestern GA and Western Tennessee. But FL is like the NW - what you get in your horse you put in either by using foliage you buy from other areas or supplementation.

Truman

Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVM wrote:

 

If a horse is having significant selenium-deficiency issues, then you generally see issues related to muscle tightness, tying-up symptoms, overly stiff muscles even when the intensity of exercise is appropriate to their level of conditioning, etc.  There are lots of muscle myopathy issues that show up the same way, and just upping selenium supplementation generally won’t be a silver bullet, depending on exactly what’s going on.  But many horses improve when assorted dietary issues are addressed, including selenium.  For horses that are generally doing well, but get some additional selenium anyway to boost them into the 200-250 range, usually just perform a little better---better recoveries after work, capable of harder work without sore-muscle problems, smoother movement, better extensions, that sort of thing.  When I upped my dressage guy’s selenium a year or so ago, his dressage score for extended gaits all of a sudden really improved, and we could really increase his work level without some chronic soreness problems that had haunted us a bit before.  Maybe a coincidence, but it was enough to boost him into the national top five for his division, and a national championship for another division, so I’m pretty happy either way. J

 

Sometimes good nutrition isn’t just dealing with active problems, it’s also making ‘normal’ into ‘better’, eh?

 

Susan Garlinghouse, DVM

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“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”  Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

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