Everyone wants to see their horses with a sleek, glowing coat and supple, healthy skin. If you browse through the product selections of any supplement supplier, you'll likely find at least 10 products devoted to skin and coat care, sometimes more than 20! Before you rush out to buy a specialty supplement, though, let's take a look at all the things that contribute to a healthy exterior on your horse.
Key Nutrients
The health of your horse's coat and skin reflects overall health in many ways, and especially the quality of the diet. Horses turned out on abundant spring pastures often have coats to rival any you will see in an A-circuit show ring-and without the hours of grooming and expensive supplements or coat conditioners. The "magical" ingredients in pasture are therefore a good place to start.
Essential fatty acids (EFAs): Essential fatty acids are fats that your horse is not able to manufacturer inside his own body. They must come from the diet. All foods and oils have some essential fatty acids, but most in very small amounts. Fresh grass is 3% to 5% fat, most of it in the form of omega-3 essential fatty acids. The ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats is at least 4:1. Unfortunately, when grass is cut and baled, these fragile fats are destroyed.
The only common feed ingredient that matches this and supplies generous amounts is freshly ground flaxseed or ground, stabilized flax.
Fat does more than just coat the skin and hair. The omega-6 fats are most important for maintaining healthy immune responses for resistance to skin infections, while the omega-3s guard against allergies and exaggerated inflammatory reactions. Feeding 4 to 6 ounces per day of freshly ground flax or ground, stabilized flax will give your horse the same essential fatty acid benefits as grazing fresh grass. Feeding the right fats will get you both the glow you are after, and healthy skin.
Protein: Skin and hair are primarily composed of protein once the water is removed. Insufficient protein intake may be related to poor resistance to skin infections, coats that do not lie smoothly, and brittle, slow growing coats.
However, significant protein deficiencies are unlikely in most equine diets. It is most likely to be a factor in animals with very high protein requirements, such as lactating mares, growing horses, older horses and horses with serious illnesses or injuries. Horses on a diet of mature grass hays only, or getting only small amounts of a fortified grain, may also have borderline protein deficiency, or adequate total amount of protein but a deficiency of specific amino acids (the building blocks of protein), including the sulfur-containing amino acids methionine, cystine and cysteine.
