Heal thyself

I have joint pain and inflammation.  That's the kind of thing I've been managing for ages in my horses and it occurred to me that I should be able to manage that in myself.  Hell, it should be easier since I know exactly where it hurts and what makes it worse.

Wait, give myself a fraction of the care and maintenance my horses get?  That's crazy talk!

I've got myself on a daily supplement routine that echos what I've used with my horses, right down to having little baggies all set up so I don't have to think about it or try to remember things in the morning.

What's in there?

• Glucosamine/Chondrotin/MSM joint supp
• Turmeric
• Devil's Claw
• Probiotic
• Multi vitamin gummy (because I'm an adult) that are hard to see because they're dark

The Devil's Claw stuff works surprisingly well.  Probably shouldn't be a surprise since it's the supp that allowed me to take Allen off of his maintenance dose of bute once he was retired from competition.  I take 960 mg twice a day.  The Devil's Claw doesn't upset my stomach while getting the job done (when paired with a lidocaine patch, it's not a complete answer to my pain management on its own).

The probiotic is something I've been on since I did my run of doxy.  Antibiotics are not picky on what kind of bacteria they kill.

The turmeric is because the hubby swears by it and he's a nutty mountain biker so he does have some experience with jarring joints.  It will reportedly kick in after about two weeks.  It's already in the cabinet so sure, I'll pop it in.  I'll skip the willow bark he uses, though, my stomach is way too sensitive.

'Gravity assisted' mountain biking at the local mountain bike park last weekend

The joint supp is the obvious one.  I know I'll need to keep taking it for it to do me any good, it's not going to make me feel better out the gate.  And it's just helping me not grind my joints down more, not really repairing what I've already done.  But MSM is another anti-inflammatory I swear by for my horse so in the bag it goes.

Maybe I'll learn from this and go see the chiro for myself.  I'm sure Theo would be pleased if I was a more balanced, supple rider.  His chiro noted a locked up spot in his back right under my right seat bone, the side where I'm having SI problems.  Hm, I wonder if that's related . . .

Supplement Shuffle Episode Three: Electric Bugaloo

New digs, new routines, new feed.  The current barn was on Blue Seal for a long time, but swapped to Poulin about three months ago.  I rebuilt his supplements and diet to use those grain options.  The new barn is on Nutrena.  Thank goodness for feedxl.com or I would be losing my mind.  I spent quite a bit of yesterday with charts and feed labels, once again balancing Theo's diet.

I can't figure out how to add a salt lick, so ignore the red sodium bar and I'm leaving the selenium since I don't have a hay analysis for the new hay yet

Nutrena is not the friendliest brand in terms of NSC.  They do like that sugar.  The lowest one I found was 15%, SafeChoice Special Care.  For comparison, Theo's currently on Carb-Safe with 5.4% NSC.  Carb Guard comes in at 11% and he was on that with great results for years.

Theo doesn't have any metabolic concerns, his low carb lifestyle originated from some of his bad behavior.  Way back when he was a lesson horse they had him on a cheap grain that had a lot of corn and molasses, something like 33% NSC.  I swapped him to Carb Guard to see if that took down some of the fizzy, reactive behavior.  Sure enough, we had less trouble under saddle so we kept with it.  He's enough of a bratty toddler without adding a bunch of sugar.

The new barn's default grain is Nutrena ProForce and while it's not crazy sugary, it's a lot more than Theo's seen in years.  I really don't want to see him hit the rafters and act like a child that was left unattended in a candy store.  Or colic.  His system just isn't used to it.  He'll also be seeing less fiber and more protein.  He'll be on free choice hay so I'm not that concerned about the decreased fiber, but I'm eyeballing that protein while figuring out just how much demon I might create with a feed change.

Not to be trusted

So the current plan is to bring over a couple bags of his current stuff and very gradually shift him to the SafeChoice so he gets used to the sugar.  Probably take a month to transition him.  Excessive?  Yes, but I like living and this is the time of year when Theo's prone to losing his little pony mind anyway.  He only gets 4 lbs of grain a day so its not like I'm dumping pixie sticks in him.  I'm just paranoid. 

Once he's settled, I'd like to move him to 5 lbs of grain a day and see how that works.  With 5 lbs of SafeChoice, I can actually take him off the multi-vitamin he's on and reduce his supplement bill.  SCORE.  I'm thinking about moving him to Cosequin ASU, his selenium supp, MSM, and biotin.  That's it.  With 5 lbs of SafeChoice, I'd actually have all of his bases covered.

This is totally normal, right?  Spending most of a working day balancing your horse's diet?

Life after Smartpak

My last Smartpaks are being used up and it's time to move to life without my auto-order supplements.  As someone prone to disorganization, this is kind of terrifying.  I haven't had to put together supps since . . . 2004?  Wow.  I'm kind of old.

I'm also transferring my shopping behavior which has been quite hard.  Rider's Warehouse is getting quite a bit of love from me right now but man their website makes me nuts.  Filters, folks, it's all about the filters when shopping!

Anyway, supplements.  First step was to pick my new supps.  For the curious, I settled on:

UltraCruz Equine Wellness/Joint Performance Supplement - This is a combo multi-vitamin and joint support supplement that I found on scahealth.com while pricing out supplements.  I test drove it through my XL Feed account and it filled in a lot of the gaps in Theo's feed program.  It also gave me all the stuff I look for in a joint supp.  Since it comes in pellet form, it's an all around win for me.

UltraCruz Equine Probiotic Supplement - For show season, I find a probiotic useful for keeping Theo happy.  I use omeprazole when trailering but I want to make sure his gut is in tip top shape when he's stressed.  Couldn't argue with the price (150 days for $30) so I tossed it in the cart.  Powder but I'm not as worried about him getting all of it into his system.

Vita E & Selenium Crumbles - Same supp he's been on for ages since there's no selenium in New England.

Vita Flex MSM - Just pure, powdered MSM.  Boring but helpful in bug season for a certain someone that blows up like a pineapple as soon as the horse flies spot him.  This is also a powder but I've found most horses accept it well since it has zero taste and sticks to pellets pretty easily.

Horseshoer's Secret Concentrate - Hello, biotin!  Theo's feet are not fantastic and grow very slowly.  25mg of biotin a day helps to keep his feet in the best shape possible.  Also helps him grow that amazing tail that I have to spend hours maintaining.  Wait, why am I supplementing this again?

My buckets of supps arrived in two boxes.  I am so that horse mom.  I tested some tuperware containers I had in the house and found that the 2 cup size was perfect.  I ordered a stack of them off Amazon and filled them up based on a 28 day schedule.  It should help me to stay on top of things if I use the four week cycle.

I got the ones with screw top lids so I don't have to worry about the lids popping off if they don't seal completely and they'll be easy to manage come winter when people are wearing gloves.  Black sharpie didn't show up on the blue lids so I had to get a bit blingy.

I don't know why people think my horse is spoiled.  It's not like I bring him his supplements in royal blue containers with his name in gold or anything.

I'm not expecting any changes in Theo from all of this.  According to my FeedXL account, this will be very similar to what he's on now.  There are a few things different between the UltraCruz and the SmartPak multi-purpose supplement so it's possible he'll notice.  But not likely.  With the powdered supplements now part of the picture he'll also be getting an ounce of wheat germ oil to make everything stick.  That's more likely to cause a difference and I'm hoping for more gloss on his poor summer coat.  The bugs really got him while I was away and I'm gooping him up with everything in the cabinet to help with the itching.

According to my worksheet, I will be saving between $15 and $20 a month with this so that's an extra couple of lattes.  Go me.

Fingers crossed that this system will work.  I don't want to become one of those boarders that never seems to have their supps ready for feeding.

Nutrition update

So what do you do after you put your horse on a B vitamin supplement and he suddenly has energy coming out of his ears?  First you take him off the damn energy supplement.  Then you figure out that there might be something missing and you start to chase it down with all possible determination and resources.

I saw a review of FeedXL over on A Enter Spooking and thought that would be the perfect way to get Theo's supps in line.  I entered what he was on (minus the Ultrafire) and hit run.

Looks like I've been making some rookie errors.  His four pounds a day of CarbGuard isn't covering his basic vitamin and mineral requirements, especially in winter when there's no grass.  Apparently a horse his size and in his level or work should be getting more grain than that if that's the source of vitamins.  Whoops.  This includes his B vitamins, his E vitamins, and selenium.  I did a lot of emailing to find the vitamin and mineral content of everything he eats, right down to his alfalfa pellets.  I'm pretty confident that I've got the full picture now.

After a full day of tuning and adjusting, I managed to turn every line green.

I've added a multi-vitamin to get his vitamins in line (SmartVite Perform).  That meant I needed to dump his combo supplement because it was over supplementing minerals.  Instead he's on a focused joint supp (SmartFlex Ultra) and hoof supp (Smart Hoof) to get his glucosamine, chondoritan, and biotin in line with the recommended values.  I left him on the muscle recovery because he is coming out less sore these days (SmartMuscle Recovery).  I added a vitamin E and selenium supp (VitaE & Selenium crumbles) since my region is infamously low in selenium and Standlee confirmed their alfalfa is from a selenium depleted area.  I also added an ounce of loose salt since his salt block keeps melting in the rain/snow.

Avoiding over supplementing is pretty much impossible for some things.  Why does every sup include potassium?  Seriously.  Zinc is also in every single hoof sup and multi-vitamin, so you're going to go over no matter what.  Doesn't do him any harm, just gives him some expensive pee.  This rebalance did almost double my supplement bill.  I'm going to look into Sunshine pellets as a ration balancer, see if I can get this bill back down.  Ouch.

I like the FeedXL app.  It's not free, but well worth a one month membership if you want to really dig into your horse's diet.  Most of the supps from SmartPak are already loaded and I found all of the feeds that are popular in my area.  There are some gaps in their data, but if you email the manufacturer to get the missing data, the developers will add it to the app very quickly.  It's fantastic for doing the math to figure out what ppm turns into and displaying it with the daily recommended allowance.  They have interactive graphs so you can see how much of each vitamin is coming from which source.  When looking at things like selenium and iron where toxicity is a concern, this made me much more comfortable that I hadn't missed a source.  They flag fields were they might not have data for a nutrient source so there are no surprises.

Their 'suggest a supplement' tool turned out to be really weak since it doesn't pay attention to the recommended serving size.  It will suggest supplements, but then you need to go see what a serving size is and see if it will actually fill in the gap at the recommended dose.  It was frustrating until I figured out that the tool was suggesting a double dose so entering a single dose didn't take care of the gap.

This might be the first time in Theo's life that he's getting everything he needs across the board.  Let's see how this plays out.  I may have to re-calibrate his workout schedule if having all of his vitamins is all it takes to turn him into a snorty beast.