Look around any barn and you’ll see the evidence. Do you know a feed room that doesn’t have a collection of jugs and buckets, pails and little plastic scoops, pellets and powders in a rainbow of colors? The ingredients range from high-tech chemical formulas, to “all natural” mixtures of herbs. And their presence next to the bags of grain and bales of hay says that we don’t believe that our feed programs are delivering all the nutrition our horses need.

What motivates us to go out and buy supplements to add to our horse’s diets? Usually, it’s an honest desire to make sure that our equine companions are taking in the best nutrition available. But while the motivation might be noble, many of us decide to feed a supplement based more on a “gut feeling,” or a recommendation from a friend, than on an actual analysis of what our feed program supplies, and what might be lacking in it