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Hi,
I feed Fastrack, but not for hoof quality. Dunno what the farrier's
theory is. Fastrack will help feed efficiency, but I'd suggest feeding
15-20 mg a day of biotin. Feeding more won't improve condition anymore
or faster, as horses don't store biotin, so you're just losing it in the
urine if you're feeding more than 15 mg a day or so. (Yo, Tracy, are
you reading this?)
In our area Paragon's Biotin Plus is the cheapest per mg of biotin. The
recommended dose is a full scoop. Baloney. A third to one half a scoop
(15-23 mg per day) is more than sufficient.
Also, be careful of alot of general supplements that are now coming out
with "Now With Biotin!!!" on the front label. There are quite a few
I've seen that do that, but the back label analysis provides for only 2
mg of biotin per POUND of supplement. I don't think so. Get a straight
biotin supplement (as in where biotin is the primary vitamin
supplied) and ignore the "recommended dosage", calculate it for 15-20
mg.
Also, don't be too much in a hurry to see results overnight. There was
a four or five year study done on 53 Lippizan stallions at the Spanish
Riding School where some got biotin, some did not. There was a definite
improvement in gross (as in visible to the naked eye) and microscopic
keratin quality, tensile strength, coronary band abnormalities, etc.,
but it took over a year for the diffeences to become really apparent.
By the way, feeding biotin apparently doesn't make the hoof grow faster,
just better quality. There's been some other work that has had the same
conclusions more or less. This makes sense, as it takes a year or more
to grow out a new foot (assuming of course that, free-thinking
visionary rebel that you are, you happen to believe that Arabs do, in
fact, possess feet...<vbg>)
Hope this helps.
Susan Evans
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