Scott Cieslar: Simplifying Equine Nutrition

*** This transcript was created by AI and has not been proofread ***

[SPEAKER 2]
Welcome to the Equestrian Connection podcast from wehorse, the online riding academy. My name is Danielle Kroll, and I’m your host. On this week’s episode, we’re talking with Scott Cieslar, the founder of MadBarn. Scott has 20 plus years experience as a professional nutritionist, receiving a master’s in science in physiology and nutrition from the University of Guelph. He started working on a PhD, but he actually put his degree on hold to run Mad Barn. Now Scott has nutrition down to a science, but he’s not just book smart. He’s got horse sense too. Growing up surrounded by horses at the Bee Tracts of Ontario, Scott has dedicated his life to better understanding the nutritional requirements of horses and helping horse owners put the latest research into practice. So before we begin, I just want to say that this podcast is in no way sponsored by Mad Barn. However, you will hear my excitement for the company and their products. While I personally am a paying customer and use their products for my horses, the reason that I’m such an advocate for Mad Barn is because of the support and guidance that they give to horse owners for free. Mad Barn is more than a supplement company. They are a knowledge resource for equine nutrition and help give horse owners a sense of independence and self-sufficiency that many of us lack, myself included, when it comes to what to feed our horses for optimal health, what their diets may be lacking, et cetera. I’m super excited to share this podcast with you all. So together we can learn all about equine nutrition and ensure our horses feel, look, and can perform their best. So let’s dive in. Scott, welcome to the We Horse podcast. As I was saying earlier, thank you so much for being here and thank you for the education that you provide to all the horse owners. And we’re going to be talking about that a little bit tonight is the the education that is missing from a lot of the horse ownership, the equine nutrition, and all the things related to feed. So let’s dive in. And I want to start at the beginning. How did you get into horses? And what made you decide to pursue a career in horses?

[SPEAKER 1]
Well, first of all, thanks for having me on, Danielle. I really appreciate it. And what got me into horses, I guess, must be cliche, but I think a lot of people have the same story where the first time you’re introduced to a horse, you just instantly fall in love with them. I don’t know what it is about horses. I think dogs come a close second to having that ability to just capture you, I guess. I don’t know, for lack of a better word. Mine was maybe a little less glamorous than some. It was my father taking me to the racetrack when I was really young. It was really my first introduction to it. And then, um, he ended up buying a broodmare, breeding our own race horses. And that was, uh, how I got into it really through the standard bred industry and the B tracks. But, uh, fortunately I had the privilege to work with some really great trainers, uh, even though they’re on the smaller tracks, uh, that introduced me to, you know, just, um, horsemanship in general and how to really care for a horse well, and the importance of taking such good care of these animals. Well, in terms of pursuing a career in horses, it was a bit of a long, winding road. I mean, I went to university, and I always knew I wanted to be involved with horses. I just didn’t know how to make a career out of it. I didn’t want to be a trainer with racehorses as a career. It interested me, but I was like, it’s a hard life, and a little bit insecure as well. And so I, and then I also got into research in university, which I really loved. And I was like, okay, how do I integrate these two things? And it took a while for me, I guess, to kind of figure out and put it all together. And ultimately culminated here in, uh, I guess the starting Mad Barn is how I landed on it because for it, I was away from it for quite a while, never out of it completely, but not really. It was always just kind of on the side. So I wasn’t fully immersed. Like I said, like I certainly am now in the horse industry.

[SPEAKER 2]
Now, what’s the story behind the evolution of MadBarn? How did that all come about? Because it’s one thing to get into research and it’s another thing to decide to start a large company.

[SPEAKER 1]
I certainly didn’t start as a large company. I have a few people that I’m sure they would love to sit around with a glass of wine and tell stories about me back in the day. I legitimately was a side hustle even before I think the term side hustle existed. I had mineral and electrolytes in the trunk of my car and I was doing other things because I was always in the feed business or the ingredient business and the animal agriculture side. I would have the horse stuff and make a stop, you know, and drop off some minerals for somebody or some electrolytes for people. And that’s all there really was at the time. And again, it was kind of as I guess I was learning, progressing and growing. you know, learning more and more about, uh, business. I had a great opportunity to work for a company that gave me just tremendous business training, like an MBA level, not that I actually got an MBA, but, uh, that level of business training, that’s really, really helped in terms of putting the whole idea together. And this idea of how can you bring all your passion together into a career of, you know, I want to do this research. I want it to be in the equine industry and the nutrition business. And how can I make this all work together? And that’s basically how it evolves. You have this side hustle going on, cause you know, you want to do it and you just, you need to kind of over time, you may figure out a way to make it happen. And then it just kind of kept growing and growing. So you get the sense that, okay, I’m on the right path. I’m doing the right things. People are gravitating towards it. And so now we just need to make it bigger. And, You know, there’s a lot of mistakes along the way. Fortunately, when you’re really small, they don’t really get noticed as much. But you learn so much from those mistakes and it’s on a blog post somewhere. But the original formula I call the fat man performance formula, which everybody thought was just ridiculous. So somewhere along the way I learned, I was like, I should probably enlist somebody in marketing that knows a lot more about marketing. Maybe we should change the name. So we can, you know, that’s where the kind of Madburn came from to keep the kind of the quirkiness of the original, um, I guess, iteration of it. And then it just, you know, honestly, I think you do have to be a little bit crazy to do what we’ve done and how we’ve done it and what we continue to do in terms of what we offer, what we fund, um, in terms of primary research and whatnot. And so that side hustle now has turned into what you see today as Madburn, which really came into existence about seven years ago, I guess, when I was right in the middle of my PhD. And so anybody listening that’s maybe in grad school right now, a strong recommendation to finish grad school before you start the business up. Otherwise, it gets in the way and maybe causes you not to get it finished. Yeah. And then from there, it was really just those two products, you know, mineral, you know, and we’ll kind of get into this as we go through the podcast a little bit, you know, very fundamental, just nutrition. You see things that, you know, basically the market needs, the horses need it, the market needs it. And I was like, we can supply this. I have the expertise, the supply channels to supply this, uh, effectively. And, uh, uh, want to call low cost, but, you know, for the lowest cost we can to consumers and then basically, you know, that’s where we are going and how we kind of keep going. And then, you know, from there, just that simple beginning, we expanded the product line, seeing, you know, gut health was such a big issue. You can have this really great nutrition program, but the horse’s gut health is compromised. It may not work. It may not get the results that you’re hoping for. And so, and again, I had some expertise in that area as well from multiple species. So we expanded the gut health line and then, I guess the last step in the last couple of years, most significant change in the evolution of MadBarn was bringing on a business partner that knows a lot more than I do about web development, marketing. And she’s just been a tremendous asset to the company in terms of really helping us get exposure and makes sure people, you know, our message and what we’re doing is getting out there. And because before, I think, you know, if you just looked at us from, a fire, you’d say, well, it’s just another supplement company in the horse industry. And that’s probably the last thing the horse industry needs is another supplement company, uh, because there’s so much out there and she’s really helped drive the message that we’re, we’re here to fund the research is primary research is so desperately needed. to get funding from the nutrition standpoint. And that’s basically, when you purchase our products, that’s what we’re driving on the back end. And we provide an entire staff, and again, back to evolution, this entire staff to provide this information to horse owners, to help them with diet formulation. We built a nutrition model already online that owners can access for free, so they can see the information firsthand. They don’t just like, It’s not just us telling them, feed this, feed that. Here, look at the numbers and what does it mean when you put these diets together? And is it balanced or is it not? And then we provide the expertise to help owners because we don’t expect everybody to be nutritionists. That’s a really long evolution of Madburn.

[SPEAKER 2]
And as we were, I mentioned to you before we had started recording, I have found that The assistance that I’ve received from MadBarn has been foundational in getting me started with proper nutrition for my horses. You know, I always just kind of gave them what other people were giving them and what the barn was feeding that I was at and, you know, just jumping on, OK, well, you’re providing this shirt, you know, based on my horse’s weight, give them two cups a.m. and p.m. And I, you know, you don’t know. And you don’t know what you don’t know. And so listening to, first of all, you on other podcasts was a big breakthrough for me because I realized that you weren’t just pushing products, you were truly educating horse owners. And that made me start to investigate, okay, well, what’s this Mad Barn all about? And the support that I’ve received from the nutritional consultations on Mad Barn, and like you had mentioned, they’re absolutely free. You just go on, you put in your horse’s information, what you are looking for. So for example, whether it’s like building top line, adding weight, whatever it may be. And then you get results based on that, based on your specific horses. And my horses look better than they’ve ever looked. They seem happier and less behavioral. All of the things that you want to see as an owner, my horses have. And I just It has been so wonderful seeing a company that’s not just pushing products randomly at any horses. You’re truly educating the owners and finding a feed plan that works for each specific horse. So I think it’s wonderful. I’m so on board with what you’re doing with Mad Barn, and if you can’t tell, I’m a big fan.

[SPEAKER 1]
Thank you. We do appreciate it. I mean, it’s a lot of work, but I mean, this is really what it’s about. It’s about improving the welfare of horses and ultimately improves the welfare and well-being of their owners, right? Nobody’s happy when their horse is not doing well.

[SPEAKER 2]
Oh, it has saved me so much mental energy. I now sleep at night. all of the things that you were losing so much precious brain power over, wondering, why am I feeding my horse X, Y, and Z, and they’re just still not gaining? Or why are their feet still cracking? Why is their coat not shiny? All of those things that you really have to look at in terms of a nutritional standpoint. So speaking of which, what have you found that most horses are actually missing in their diets?

[SPEAKER 1]
So shameless plug here. Like if you’re really interested to get the in-depth stuff, I’ll give you the Coles notes version here. There is a blog post about 6,500, some just under 7,000 diets. We evaluated last year that would nicely outlines this exact question.

[SPEAKER 2]
Um, I’ll link that in the show notes. Um, if I can find that, uh, I’ll get that link from you and I’ll link it in the show notes. Do you wish you could have a better partnership with your horse but aren’t sure where to start? Do you want to advance your riding or horsemanship but don’t have access to the ideal resources in your area? Does the idea of learning about horse training whenever and wherever and at a price that won’t break your horse bank sound appealing to you? Check out WeHorse.com to access over 175 online courses with top trainers from around the world. We have courses on everything from dressage, to groundwork, to show jumping, to bodywork. And as a member, you get access to everything in our WeHorse library to watch whenever you want. Oh, and we also have an app, which means you can download a course or video to watch without Wi-Fi, which is perfect for those days at the bar and when you want a quick dose of training inspiration before your ride. So what are you waiting for? Go to WeHorse.com and check out our free seven day trial to access our WeHorse library and see if it’s a good fit for you. We can’t wait to see you in there. And now back to the episode.

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, you bet. So what is mostly missing salt, and I know this will come up again, and you know, it’s not even something we sell, nor And it doesn’t have to be special, like Himalayan salt or from Salt Flats of Utah or anything crazy like that. Just good old salt is like the number one thing we’re not feeding enough to our horses. And I think we’re gonna ask a question about it later, so I’ll leave the details of the salt. But if you do nothing else and take nothing else away from this, like any podcast I ever give, forage selection and salt are the two biggest things you can do for your horse that can improve the wellbeing and welfare. And you don’t have to go to a supplement company or a tax store to buy either one of those things. The second one would be minerals and vitamins. Honestly, the vast majority of diets we see that come across, like we’re well past 7,000 for this year. I mean, it’s, I was actually just talking to the nutritionist this morning and I said, you know, at no other company could you get to see this many equine diets in this shorter period of time and get this much experience, like just to see exactly what everybody’s feeding and how we’re doing it or how the, I guess the industry is doing it. And it, honestly, it mimics a bit of the North American diet in humans. There’s too much protein. There’s too much energy. There’s not enough nutrient density when it comes to minerals and vitamins. So, uh, and this is why we have basically 30% of the equine population being succumbing to metabolic syndrome, or at least being something like heading in that direction where they’re overweight, insulin resistance can be an issue. And, you know, ultimately that culminates in laminitis and like, um, a lot of other poor outcomes. And again, it’s just, it’s the way we’ve been feeding them. And it has a little bit actually to do with our pastures and our forages too, and just like lifestyle too, like probably lack of exercise. Again, a lot of things very common in the North American human population as well, or we’re seeing in the horses. But the two biggest things I could drive home to anybody is the salt and get the minerals and vitamins balanced. It’ll make such a world of difference. The big thing with it is you don’t see an immediate impact when you get the minerals and vitamins. It’s not like, sometimes a horse that’s on, say, a really poor quality forage, if you add oil to the diet, they get a bloom to them very quickly. get a shine to them because they’ve been really low fat intake and just low caloric intake. Whereas the minerals and vitamins, like if your horse is just a little bit deficient in zinc and selenium, it doesn’t really show up like in an overt or macro sense. And so when you start doing it correctly, you don’t see this dramatic change. You don’t always associate the same, but over time, what you will see is just much improved health, health quality will be greatly, greatly improved. And you’ll just have less issues with the horse, whether it be digestive issues, behavior issues, even just having a balanced mineral and vitamin program will go a long way. So those are the two biggest things. We need to, for most horses, cut back on the amount of energy we’re giving them, which would be, I would say, mostly in the form of grain needs to be reduced and increase the nutrient density by increasing the minerals and vitamins. It would be easy to say, Hey, Scott, you say that because you sell minerals and vitamins and you don’t sell feed. But I would throw that in the reverse. We sell mineral vitamins for that exact reason. And we don’t sell feed for this exact reason, because this is the major issue that needs to be rectified, uh, in the horse in most horse nutrition or horse feeding situations we see.

[SPEAKER 2]
That’s a good point. I remember hearing you say that and immediately feeling like, but my horses have to have grain. It’s almost in our culture of needing to feed them grain. And my mare specifically, taking her off grain has been absolutely wonderful for her. And she still, of course, gets her vitamins and minerals. I choose the pelleted form because that way she feels like she’s getting something. But it has been wonderful for her. She is like, she looks amazing, but she also she seems happier. She’s less moody, she’s scratching less, all of those different things that you kind of just start to assume, oh, this is just her, this is just her personality, whatever it may be, and making that change in the feeding. Again, doing it based on the nutritional consultation. This wasn’t just me thinking, okay, I’m just going to willy nilly change everything on my own. This was doing the nutritional consultation.

[SPEAKER 1]
But

[SPEAKER 2]
it has been huge. So that’s been a large shift in terms of a mindset, you know, thinking, okay, well, they have to have grain morning and night, along with everything else.

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, and I don’t even know where it came from, honestly, this idea that we have to feed grain or process feeds to them. You say morning and night, the same thing, like a horse really, their feeding schedule is not morning and night, it’s all the time, essentially. And the more we can do that, kind of fit a feeding program to them of feeding all the time, and it really comes down to a forage-based feeding program, then the healthier and happier they’re going to be ultimately. And I know they’re… And I can imagine like there’s some people who are like high performance horses, and I think this is coming up later as well, but like, well, you have to feed some grain to, you know, these really hard working horses. They’ll never maintain their weight. And there’s been numerous studies where they’ve done all forage diets, you know, even with race horses and were easily be able to maintain their weight. It’s just a matter of forage selection at that point and refining the feeding program to suit the needs of what the horse is actually doing.

[SPEAKER 2]
Let’s go to, before we get to the sport horse, let’s go to easy keepers. So the horses, as you had mentioned earlier, the ones that have potential metabolic syndrome, laminitis, all of those things, they are on the cusp of the easy keepers that you look at and think they are not hungry. What are your nutritional recommendations for them?

[SPEAKER 1]
So I’m gonna sound like a broken record. I’m sure people must get tired of listening to me, but the two things for easy keepers, most importantly, exercise, like just exercise the horse more, particularly ponies that tend to seem to live on air. You just need to increase the amount of exercise they get. People are doing wonderful things with things like they call these pack paradises or these trails, track systems they’re putting in packs versus just shoving them in a big, rectangular field somewhere to help encourage more movement and train like just stuff but at the same time it’s you know it’s great for the person too to get out and do some activity with their horse. So exercise number one and then select the appropriate forage right if you have an easy keeper is not working that hard you want the lower quality forages possibly even feeding strong to maintain an appropriate weight for that horse because what Once you start heading down the road of metabolic syndrome, it gets harder and harder to correct it. It’s easier to not get there in the first place and just avoid it altogether. And so it really becomes about just selecting a low quality forage for that horse. And again, back to a good balanced mineral and vitamin, loose rechoice salt, and you’re done. Like that’s the horse’s diet. Keep them eating all day, keep them moving, get them as much exercise as possible. And it doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.

[SPEAKER 2]
And now what about hard keepers?

[SPEAKER 1]
Well, hard keepers is, yeah, it’s no different. Again, you want to select the appropriate forage. So whether it’s a hard keeper or a horse that’s in really heavy work, that you’re having a tough time keeping weight on that horse, you want a higher quality forage. So it’s going to be more nutrient dense, the more calories you can get out of the forage. So you just want to select essentially a younger, less fibrous forage base for that animal, and then The other thing you really want to look at is gut health. So like, why is that horse a hard keeper? So is it environmental? Like, is there something that’s stressing the horse out consistently in the environment they’re in? Uh, is there, are there health issues, whether it be, uh, you know, a gut health issue, whether it be dentition or something that’s stopping that horse from gaining weight because. Realistically, meeting the caloric needs of even a hardworking horse is not that hard. So if they’re unable to maintain weight, you probably want to start looking at other issues that may be there that you’re not cognizant of. And this is where diet formulation and working with the nutritionist becomes very, very helpful. Because just switching between feeds, and you see this a lot where somebody’s like, well, I’m unhappy with this feed. I’m gonna switch to this company and maybe my horse will gain weight. And there’s always testimonials. You can find a million testimonials online that will basically confirm that whatever scenario you want or that bias you have for switching feeds. And what you really wanna do is just look, okay, here’s the caloric intake of my horse today. If I increase it, is the horse gaining weight? And if I increase it by 20% versus 10%, Does that hard keeper gain weight? And quite frankly, you rarely ever see where people would have a forage analysis in the first place to be able to even sit down and do that math. And so there’s a lot of switching of feeds going on. Meanwhile, you have this forage base, you have no idea what the nutrient content of that is. It may be something as simple as you went from a feed that, you know, a hay that was 48% NDF and the new one was 62, it looked identical, but the NDF content’s considerably higher. So the energy content’s dropped and your horse just won’t gain weight or won’t keep its weight on. It has nothing to do with any other feed you’re feeding at the time, it’s just the nutrient density of the hay you’re feeding is different. The biggest thing is figure the forest quality first, first and foremost. And then, yeah, look at other things like gut health and Titian. If you do have a hard keep, there’s otherwise like, it’s just, it’s not as easy as calories in, but it is like, you should do be able to do the math on and say, okay, this is how many calories and then we just need to increase the caloric density of this diet. And the horse should be able to gain weight. Otherwise it’s something else is going on.

[SPEAKER 2]
Now, where would you recommend that somebody starts if they want to have a hay or forage analysis done on the hay that they have? So most of us are aware, okay, we’re feeding first cuts, second cuts, things like that. But if I want to know the actual breakdown, where should I start?

[SPEAKER 1]
So the best thing would just be to take a forage sample, like take a sample of your hay. You can even take samples of pasture, we’ll touch on that in a second, but like say hay for instance, ideally you have a forage probe, you go in and you sample about 10 to 15 bales and you send that off to an accredited lab. Again, on the website there’s a, There’s a posting on how to take a hay sample and it gives you a whole list of labs through Canada and the US you can select from to send that sample. And this is actually a service we’re putting together to kind of try and make it easier for people that will just kind of look after everything for you. It’s not up yet, but so for now you just send it to lab and they’ll give you your full composition of what’s in that hay. And from there you go, you move forward and balance to the hay essentially. Barring not having a forage probe, you can actually just take them by grabbing hands full of hay and taking a pair of scissors and cutting the hay off on each side of your hands so you get that four inch hay sample and do that again 20 times, drop it in a baggie and you send it off to the local lab. And then just send us the forage analysis and we can help you put together the feeding program based on what type of hay you have and the nutrient content of that hay.

[SPEAKER 2]
Yeah, I found that really interesting because it’s not just saying, okay, my horse just has free choice hay. It’s like, well, what kind of hay? So that’s going to be very fundamental in finding out what else they need in terms of supplementation for their diet. So that’s, yeah, that was really interesting. And when I started learning about hay, it’s a whole other world. Hay is, you can easily go down a rabbit hole of all the different things. It’s something I was not even aware of. So best to send that to a lab if you’re not interested in figuring that all out yourself like me.

[SPEAKER 1]
Just to drive this point home again, because I do find that people want to be their own horse nutritionist. And that’s great. People want to have this information. But the amount of knowledge, just like you just mentioned, just in this entire textbooks, talk about carbohydrate breakdown and all the components of, Hey, how you analyze it, how it’s digested, how do you know how it interacts in the digestive tract of, you know, an animal and things like that. It’s a, it’s very in-depth. So it’s, you’re, you’re better off engaging somebody that has some expertise in the field than just trying to go it alone and hoping for the best.

[SPEAKER 2]
Absolutely. So let’s go back to the sport horses for a second, the different nutritional requirements for the sport horse versus the pleasure horse. And maybe we already discussed it a little bit, but if we can just kind of add to that or wrap that part up with a little bit of a bow.

[SPEAKER 1]
Well, I mean, as a horse works harder, their intake naturally goes up. So let’s say you are feeding free choice forage or pasture. Until you get into kind of that extreme end of hard work, the horse will compensate for the increase in energy and protein demands just simply by consuming more feed. assuming it has access to it. And that doesn’t mean you have to give it more grain. That just means they’re going to consume more forage. So obviously, as a horse works hard, their energy requirement goes up, their protein requirement goes up a little bit. Not as much as people think. I think people overestimate how much the protein requirement goes up. It’s not substantial over maintenance. And like I said, it can be easily covered just by the horse consuming more. And then there’s a modest increase in mineral and vitamin requirements as well. The biggest one you’ll find between horses that are working relatively hard and a pleasure horse, for instance, is actually electrolyte supplementation. And again, this comes back to salt. You can just do a whole podcast on salt. Horses, because when you look at a horse’s diet, when you analyze it, potassium is in excess, always in forage. So they’re getting a ton of potassium. So if you look at sodium and potassium being the two major electrolytes that are going to be lost in sweat, then calcium and magnesium to a lesser extent. But if you just kind of focus on those four, Calcium, magnesium, and potassium, forage alone will meet the requirements, so they’ll get enough from that. Sodium will never be met from natural feeds, forages, or anything they’re eating, just because unless you live right on the coast, close to the sea or something, then possibly it might happen. We’ll call that the rare case, but it’s unusual for it to happen. The biggest thing you want to do is ensure that your salt intake and electrolyte supplementation program is meeting the needs of that horse as they work harder. Like I said, it doesn’t take a whole lot to, again, meet their nutritional needs from an energy and protein standpoint. And even as they get into heavy work, basically the way I recommend supplementing is, okay, If your horse has exceeded basically your forage program and level of work it’s doing, the first thing we’re gonna start adding in is B pulp, flax, and oil. So basically what the feed industry has done is gone to fat and fiber feeds. And if that’s more convenient for you to pick up a fat and fiber feed from a reputable feed company, then by all means, go do that. But again, just make sure you get the minerals and vitamins balanced and you increase that. But I think like, it doesn’t even, it’s not even take that much. And I would lean more towards just increasing the oil. I think people underestimate how much oil or fat you can put into a horse’s diet. Like, you know, they start thinking, Oh, I put this like one or two ounces and you’re like, well, you could put two cups in. You have to work up to it gradually. Um, it’s not something you just start doing, but the horse can easily tolerate it, uh, the level of fat in there. And it’s actually quite beneficial from a performance horse standpoint. So. It really, in a nutshell, as you move up the level of work, you’re really just adding more digestible forms of fiber, a little more fat into the diet for more energy, and you can possibly look at a little higher quality protein sources for the horse. With time nutrition, there’s things you can do in terms of recovery. We won’t go into that too much. And then the last thing, the biggest one would be absolutely ensuring that your electrolyte supplementation program is adequate for the level of work and the environment. So a horse working hard, say in Florida, for instance, is going to require a lot more salt than a horse in Ontario in the middle of winter. Because the sweat rates can be highly different.

[SPEAKER 2]
Let’s talk on this salt and why it’s such a topic. I feed my horses loose salt, which I know was your recommendation. And why is it so important that horses have loose salt in their diet? Why loose salt over salt block? And anything else you want to add to that?

[SPEAKER 1]
So I guess the first reason for the salt is we’ve already touched on, they’re not going to get it from their natural diet. So they’re just simply not going to get the sodium. Where potassium will be 500% of requirement from forages, sodium will be at point, you know, like maybe 10% of the requirement from a forager pasture. And so they don’t get very much in their diet. And then you take the horse that has the highest sweat rate, basically, of any mammal. And then on top of that, their sweat composition is highly concentrated. So if you compare human sweat to horse sweat, The electrolytes in horse sweat is much, much higher than it is in human sweat. In human sweat, they call it hypotonic, where there’s more water, basically, than there is electrolytes in the sweat compared to inside the body. In a horse, it’s almost equal. Sometimes they say it’s hypertonic, but it’s pretty much equal. The amount of electrolytes in the sweat is about equal to what’s inside their body. So they push out. a ton of sodium or salt when they sweat. Combine that with the highest sweating rate in the animal kingdom, combine that with the ability, this high volume to surface area ratio, I guess, low surface area to volume ratio in a very metabolically active animal with such a huge muscle mass and such oxidative capacity. And you just set up for, they have a high requirement for salt and we simply aren’t providing enough of it in any of the manufactured feeds and then they don’t get it in their natural diet anyways, which comes to why we always recommend loose salt. So what’s the difference between a block? Because the requirement is so high, it’s hard for them to get enough off of a block without physically biting it. And you’ll see this a lot of times, particularly in barns where they’re not feeding enough supplemental salt and the horses are working hard in a hot humid environment. well, they’ll grind their teeth down a salt block. And that’s just them trying to physically get enough salt off that block. Why not just make it easier for them and provide it loose? That way it’s easy for them to consume as much as they want. They don’t have to work that hard at it because some horses just simply won’t spend that much time working with a salt block. And it’s so inexpensive and it’s so easy for you to regulate how much you’re giving them. with loose salt. Like you don’t, I suggest not even mixing it in the feed, like mix like say a tablespoon or two in your feed, depending on how much actual stuff you may be giving it to in a bowl, being deep pulp, alfalfa cubes, whatever it is you’re feeding in the bowl will dictate kind of how much you can mix in. Because if you mix too much in, they’ll start, they may stop eating the feed. So you don’t want to do that. But then you put like an ounce off to the side, basically of what they’re feeding. And when they’re done and all the salt’s gone, add more next time. And keep adding more until they leave some behind. Then you know you’ve reached basically adequate sodium-slash-salt intake.

[SPEAKER 2]
That’s interesting. I’m not doing that. I’m just mixing it directly in. So that’s good to know. I’ll, um, I’ll start doing that. I already drive my husband crazy. Every time he goes in town, I’m like, get more salt. So I’ll, uh, keep adding it to the list.

[SPEAKER 1]
So again, just to, just to clarify, like, you don’t want to keep cranking them on up. You’re mixing into the V because eventually it will turn them off and they’ll just stop eating it. Uh, so you just, yeah, set it off to the side essentially so that they can choose to eat the rest of it or not.

[SPEAKER 2]
That’s a good tip. Okay, ulcers. We had talked a little bit, you had mentioned gut health a little earlier. And I know myself coming from boarding barns and just seeing different things around the horse world. Gut health and ulcers is a huge topic right now. How can we as horse owners help prevent negative gut health or ulcers from occurring? And then what’s your advice on treating them and preventing reoccurrence?

[SPEAKER 1]
Advice for avoiding them in the first place is as much as possible, you know, try and let the horse be a horse outside, room to move. their social structure as much as possible. I think we really underestimate what, or we don’t appreciate what horses, what stresses horses out. Like I think everybody understands what’s, you know, when we really stress a horse out and they tense up and freak out. I don’t think we appreciate kind of the low grade stress that changing, you know, paddock mates and things like that does. When you look at horses in the wild and how very socially structured they are, and then you look at kind of what we do to them, and you’re like, okay, I can understand why all of this might be causing low-grade stress, which I think is a major cause of gastric ulcers. I mean, there’s also just the Evolutionary adaptation to chronically secrete acid in their stomach, and we turn them into meal feeders a lot of times. They go in a lot of barns, you know, they may do night check, eight, nine, 10 at night, and it’s one flake in, and you come in in the morning and it’s clean. There’s nothing in the stalls, so it can be long periods of time. So there’s a lot of management practices we can implement just to help avoid ulcers in the first place. And then some of it’s unavoidable, right? It’s just what we do with horses in modern society, whether it be racing, um, you know, competing, so trailering somewhere, competing that, I mean, it’s just going to be a stressor on the horse. So then you come to your next question. So what do you do to prevent it? You know, one of the common things gastro guard is the only, I guess that’s treatment, not prevention, but is the only like, I guess, proven, or how do you say this? Um, the one with the patent for treating from a veterinary standpoint for treating gastric ulcers. With that, the mode of action of that and the mode of action that most supplement companies take is this whole idea of we want to raise the pH of the stomach basically to stop the acid erosion in the squamous region of the stomach. So Although it can be effective, you’re essentially fighting biology, right? The pH of the stomach is supposed to be around 2. There’s a reason it’s there. It’s to activate enzymes, it’s to create a barrier to pathogens, to kill pathogenic bacteria, to help the digestion of the food. So when we do things that combat that, again, it’s like pushing a rope uphill. You may have some positive benefits, but there’s also some negative consequences. And I certainly don’t have all the answers to this. I mean, we took a tact of saying preventative, instead of like trying to fight the biology, let’s try and work with it a little bit. And, you know, things that kind of coat the gut, promote some active mechanisms within the gut, promote cell turnover and that kind of thing. So from, you know, From a management and prevention standpoint, there’s lots you can do with the feeding strategy in terms of even little things like feeding a little bit of alfalfa before you put a horse on a trailer, before you even go out and work the horse. It acts as a bit of a natural buffer, which I just got done saying is not ideal, but because it’s an actual feed buffer versus using minerals or pharmaceuticals to achieve it, it’s a little more effective, I think, and a little more natural to do it that way. And then treatment, if you do have ulcers, like I said, GastroGar is really the only veterinary approved pharmaceutical that does. There’s lots of off-brand stuff in terms of Miprazole off-label that people use, but it goes down that same pathway of inhibiting nitrile acid production. And again, it can be effective. But then once you stop using it, which anybody that’s, uh, had to give their horse gastro guard probably wishes they could stop because it’s just the sheer cost of it. Uh, but when you stop, you get things like acid rebound, which almost invariably guarantee the ulcer is going to come back. And like, when you look at some of the studies looking at different, uh, also supplements or treatments they’ve used in the past one, you know, this off on thing with the treatment effect when they go back off, they almost all recur, particularly if they’re still in training, the ulcers come back. And so you do need something to, uh, if you was particularly coming off a gas scar, members, all treatment. to help prevent the recurrence again. And that’s not to do any product promotion here, but that’s where Visceral came from was to really stop that recurrence. And it can be used as a preventative as well before you even get ulcers. But I think at this point, the way we keep horses, it’s just, it’s a bit of a fact of life that you’re gonna have to deal with it for the most part and do preventative strategies in terms of feeding strategies, the environment you keep them in. looking at supplementation to help just prevent the issues that are invariably going to creep up with their current management practices.

[SPEAKER 2]
So I had heard that if a horse gets ulcers, they’re more likely to get ulcers again. Once it happens, it happens. Is that true or is it just the way that we treat them that makes that true?

[SPEAKER 1]
I would, I would say yes to both things. I mean, your horse, what’s the saying goes when you have a bad manager, then this isn’t to say your horse, it gets altered. So you’re a bad manager, but you’ve got a bad, somebody managing a situation that creates a problem. You’re like, Oh, I can fix your problem. But the problem you’re still going to be here. Your horse is still in that situation. Right? Like you’re, So your horse got ulcers in the environment that you’re keeping it in, whatever you’re doing with it. So somewhere in there is that cause, you know, is the cause of effect in there. So unless you change something drastically in how you’re managing that horse and keeping that horse, feeding that horse, yes, you’re more likely once you get one to see them come back. And then, yes, absolutely, when you treat them with pharmaceuticals, you’re gonna get recurrence afterwards when you come off the pharmaceuticals. It’s almost invariable, or inevitable, not invariable, sorry, that they rebound again. You can do a survey, I’m sure people have used GastroGarden, and when you stopped, did you start to see problems again? Yeah, and so we kinda, you see these repetitive treatments. which then leads into its own set of problems. Honestly, long-term use of proton pump inhibitors is not without long-term effects that they’ve shown in humans, not as much in horses, more because humans live a lot longer. So there’s a bigger concern about long-term effects, and there’s decreased mineral absorption with these types of things. So it’s not something to be taken lightly to have your horse on it all the time, but it is certainly, A difficult thing, ulcers are a difficult thing to manage and nobody has like the magic solution as much as again, you go in the supplement industry and everybody’s like, oh, this’ll do it. I’m sure there’s a testimonial to it saying this is the perfect thing. I mean, we like to think we have the best, the leading one in terms of what we’re doing. Could it be better? Absolutely. I think there’s still work to be done and areas to improve for sure overall. But again, We can probably improve a lot of things just from management feeding too on that end as well.

[SPEAKER 2]
Absolutely. Now, if someone was brand new to supplements and creating a feeding plan, what is your advice to get started?

[SPEAKER 1]
My advice to get started, stay out of the supplement aisle in the feed store. It’s the last place you want to go. Honestly, if anything, more often than not, you see horses just getting too much. It happens all the time. you see like 10 supplements in a diet, and that’s an exaggeration, but it does, it gets up that high on occasion. And that diet’s still imbalanced. And you’re like, oh, why? Why do we have so many supplements in here? And then we still don’t have a balanced diet. So my advice for anybody is get the basics right first. Get your forage program correct. Get the right forage for your horse so that they’re consuming forage for at least 10 to 12 hours a day. First and foremost, before you ever step foot in the feed store or a supplement store, make sure they have salt and get the minerals and vitamins balanced. Then if there’s particular issues you’re trying to address, absolutely pinpoint what the issue is and what might be causing it. Try as many management things as you can before you run out and buy a supplement, because quite frankly, there’s just a lot of stuff on the market that is not going to help. It’s a lot of wasted money. for the most part, better off avoiding it than taking a stab at all the different things you can do. Now, that’s not to say there aren’t some good ones out there. There certainly are. And there are some very proven things in terms of digestive health products you can use, a few single ingredients that do have an impact. And again, this is where you really want to involve your vet and a qualified nutritionist to help you. Why are we feeding the supplement? What is the expected outcome? You want to monitor it and you want somebody who’s non-biased because the number one thing you’re going to get when you spend money on a supplement is you’re already biased because you spent the money. And so you’re going to want it to work. So you want somebody who has no vested interest to do some of the monitoring for you to make sure you are spending the money wisely and you are getting the expected outcome that you’re hoping for. Um,

[SPEAKER 2]
That’s a good point. The price, what’s that when you like buy something and then you have guilt that you’re buying it so you try to like talk yourself into why you need it.

[SPEAKER 1]
All the reasons it was a good decision.

[SPEAKER 2]
So what are some of the most common questions that you receive as a supplement company?

[SPEAKER 1]
That’s a good question, Scott. Like, help, you know, again, a lot of times it’s people have gone down the rabbit hole of, like, there’s been an issue and they start trying a whole bunch of different things. And it’s not that you get lost, it’s just that you have all these things in the diet and you’re kind of like, how did these things end up in the diet? And they may give you a list of the reasons why or how they end up there. And then you almost start from, let’s just start from a blank slate again. Let’s balance this thing appropriately. Just minerals and vitamin salt and hay or forage. They keep saying hay, like forage, anything that’s forage-based basically is ideal. Yeah. It’s more like issues, I guess. It’s, you know, how do I deal with ulcers? I mean, gut health issues are probably top of the list. And you talk about colic is a very generic term for anything related to gut health or gut disturbance that comes across a lot of just like recurring issues there and how to optimize that and joint health and. respiratory issues that come up. And again, a lot of these issues you look at, it’s like respiratory issues in particular is how we manage the horses. It’s from them being indoors, it’s from lack of ventilation in a lot of these barns. I’ve been in a number of brand new, some of the most amazing, beautiful facilities. C, and it’s like nobody even thought about how to move air through the barn. They become very, very stagnant in the wintertime and you get a lot of ammonia buildup, which leads to a lot of irritation in the lungs, which the horse, which then just basically lung disease. You’re going to get lung disease from that, just from chronic exposure to the ammonia levels and poor ventilation in a lot of these barns. So you get back to Have them outside as much as possible, exercising as much as possible is the ideal situation for the horse. And then it’s totally getting off track with some of the common questions we get.

[SPEAKER 2]
But… I mean, it’s a good answer for a lot of things, like allow the horse to be a horse at the end of the day. It’s going to solve a lot of the problems.

[SPEAKER 1]
It really will, honestly. I mean, again, it’s… Sometimes we want to find answers where the easy answer is right in front of you. You just choose not to do it or want to do it, I guess. And usually that’s the best one is the easy answer. An exercise in fresh air will solve a lot of problems.

[SPEAKER 2]
Like you said, it’s interesting that a lot of our horses issues are in North American human issues as well. It’s almost like you hear all the time of people saying the horse is a mirror and it’s like, well, in good and bad, apparently, you know. It definitely can be for sure. So, common industry myths. Are there any that you want to address, debunk? Here’s the time.

[SPEAKER 1]
I remember this from being at a stable with my daughter actually riding horses and it was really hot that day. And I told her to sponge it off with cold water and you would think I had asked her to shoot the horse. And I don’t know if this is still common, this is from a few years ago, but the belief that you can’t put cold water on a hot horse is absurd.

[SPEAKER 2]
I do remember that from Pony Club days. You had to put it in certain areas, you had to avoid certain areas. I do remember that from Pony Club.

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, everybody that says that I want to drag them out to an endurance race and watch them put buckets of ice water on these horses. I mean, if your horse is overheated, the number one thing you want to do is drop its body temperature back to normal as quickly as possible. Uh, like without question, like, so these endurance horses do a hundred miles right in the heat. Uh, they’ll do them over the, you know, like the UAE. and extreme heat, literally ice buckets of water on these horses to keep their body temperature down and keep them going and keep them comfortable. Um, no, that’s not to say, I mean, it’s cold environment. The horse really isn’t that hot. You don’t want to necessarily be dumping cold water all over them, but definitely, uh, when it’s extremely hot, it’s, I don’t know where it came from. It has nothing to do with tying up, um, anything like that. I think that was cold water on horse. They would tie up. But the biggest thing is you want to get the horse temperature back down. That’s one myth. Another one, I guess, that horses in hard work need grain. They don’t. What they need is appropriate nutrition for the work they’re doing. It can be a little more difficult, certainly a little more challenging to get into forage selection, hay selection, making sure it’s the right balance for them, but it certainly can be done. And it’s to the benefit of the horse. And honestly, the benefit of the rider will be less expensive than buying complete feeds. Anything else?

[SPEAKER 2]
My horse has fecal water syndrome. Is there anything I can be doing with his feed to help it? And if you want to also, just for anybody that’s wondering, address what fecal water or free fecal water syndrome is, just to give a little background.

[SPEAKER 1]
Uh, yeah, it’s a, you know, it’s fascinating because I didn’t really think, no, I was unaware that it was as big of an issue as it is. And then I found a Facebook group totally dedicated to free and fecal water.

[SPEAKER 2]
So I think there’s a Facebook group for everything, but there’s a lot of people in that group.

[SPEAKER 1]
I was like, Holy cow. So, and I can’t imagine like, if you’re an outsider coming into that group, it’s just a lot of pictures of, uh horses asses with a lot of like poopy bums yeah wet bums and stuff and i understand and i get it why people are playing the pictures on me like if you had no idea you’d be like what is this website what is this uh so essentially you like Fecal water syndrome is where you have well-formed manure, but in between basically just water coming out of them. So it’s not like necessarily diarrhea per se, which is kind of a separate issue. You can have like normal manure balls, but then you get this expulsion of water afterwards as well. And it’s, nobody really knows honestly why it happens. There’s definitely different remedies, like things like adding psyllium fiber in there, talks about things like probiotics or gut health, but there’s certainly, not a one thing fixes it. I know that for sure. Like we’ve, when we first got introduced to it, we’ve tried a few different things and like we’ve had success with it, but this is the thing. Sometimes you have to experiment with it and quite honestly, anybody with ortho fecal water syndrome is usually open to experimentation just because it’s just, It’s unpleasant. It’s not necessarily like the horses can look great. They don’t look like there’s anything wrong with them. It’s just, yeah, they have a dirty behind all the time.

[SPEAKER 2]
So it’s a lot of work for the owners to always cleaning. And then you want to make sure there’s no skin irritation with the horses. And yeah, it can be a really big hassle.

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, for sure. And so, and then like, again, back to forest selection, sometimes you get away to a softer type of hay, like some of these stemmy hay seem to irritate someone’s guts. We’ve kind of, we had one thing we call the gut bomb, which is, I shouldn’t even be saying this on the podcast necessarily, but it’s an old school thing they used to do, they used to do with, basically you feed really high levels of zinc and copper to them as a kind of antibacterial effect in the gut. And it actually was quite effective in some horses as well in helping clear that up, which would indicate that some of the fecal water syndrome issues are from some dysbiosis going on in the microflora. And if you can get that corrected, Sometimes it can make it go away. But again, I certainly have not found a one solution for it. So I encourage people to kind of experiment again. Don’t experiment blindly. Like this is a, you know, what happens a lot of times is people will just run out and start trying a whole bunch of different products. And that’s super expensive way to experiment. Um, what you want to do is take your current diet. So whenever it started, or maybe it’s been an ongoing problem, take that diet and have it evaluated. So, you know, what the exact chemical composition of your diet is, then you can look at, you know, uh, you know, is there yeast in the products you’re feeding or the bacteria probiotics and these things that you’re feeding now, But then as you make changes, they’re informed changes. So, you know, okay, we changed this from here to here to get worse, to stay the same, to get better. And then you can kind of work your way through dealing with the issue versus throwing darts at it and hoping it works.

[SPEAKER 2]
That’s a really good point, because I feel as though many of us as horse owners, when there is an issue, the first thing that we do is go and grab a whole bunch of stuff that says it’s going to help it, and then we throw it all at it. And you don’t know what worked and what didn’t. So it’s always best to take one thing at a time, see if it works. If it didn’t, OK, stop that, try something else, and do it slow. Am I correct in saying that?

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, no, absolutely. Now there are times when compounding different things may be the answer, but again, you want to do it with like what I call educated guests. So again, working with your vet and a nutritionist would be ideal in this situation because they’re going to have, everybody’s going to have a different kind of perspective and understanding of the way things work. And so trying to integrate the knowledge, like the physiology of what it is you’re doing and how you’re anticipating that it’s going to help, um, maybe like you see a slight improvement, we’re going to leave this in, but we’re going to add, you know, this on top. So like the example I just gave you where we were using basically yeast probiotics and fibers to try and help with it wasn’t really helping all the cases that you’d see small improvements, but it wasn’t getting those really tough cases. And then we stacked a high level of zinc and copper um, into that mix and that really helps. So I think, you know, in which case, if we just dropped all the other stuff and just went zinc and copper, I think we probably wouldn’t have got the same benefit that we got by doing, I’m going to get inundated now with requests for this, but, um, so I think it’s important. I think it’s like most important is just the thoughtful process that goes into it and then you’re monitoring and recording and, uh, Because our memories will fail us, I guess, in terms of our perception of how much a change is a difference. And so really recording day-to-day the changes I think is really important.

[SPEAKER 2]
That’s a very, very good point. And I think that applies to more than just nutrition with our horses. With so many different aspects, training, behavioral, all the different things. I think us keeping like a little journal or logbook or whatever works for somebody else on their phones, voice notes, whatever. Because our memories do fail us and sometimes We even go back, like we tell ourselves a certain story. And so, you know, we may make something seem better than it was or worse than it was. So keeping a logbook as an equestrian, I think, is extremely important for nutrition and beyond. So that’s a really good point.

[SPEAKER 1]
And everybody has one in their pocket now with a camera on it, like taking pictures, particularly when you’re talking about body condition, top line and things like that. I think it’d be very, very valuable to have like quantitative aspects of what you are hoping to change or you see change can really add to the, I can agree more about the journal, but that can really add to it to have your pictures to look back on to really see if there is a big change.

[SPEAKER 2]
Yeah, yeah, good point. So the next question is, my gelding has quite sensitive feet, and I’m wondering if there’s anything I can be doing nutritionally speaking to help harden his feet.

[SPEAKER 1]
Again, really just a balanced diet, like you said, I think you mentioned prior feeding hominid, so like biotin is a big one in terms of like additional, but the hominid has the whole 20 milligrams in there, so there’s no need to add any more. But then, you know, essentially make sure things are balanced using copper, by to be big ones, and then just ensuring your sugar levels essentially in the hay, or even low grade over consumption of calories. So getting back in them, it doesn’t have to be full blown metabolic syndrome or insulin resistance to start having things like just being a little bit sore in the feet, or this is just strictly nutrition. I mean, there’s lots of things you get into trimming and different things like that. It’s not my area of expertise, so I won’t touch it, but, you know, just, you know, measuring the caloric consumption to see, are you like kind of just over all the time? Is the horse kind of slowly gaining weight? Is that part of the reason for the sensitivity in the feet? It can be things like leaky gut. If there’s It could be compounds, say, by leaky gut that could be causing issues, just this chronic low-grade inflammation that may cause some of the issues in the feet. Or even, like you see a lot in the springtime, right, when horses get out on fresh grass, they’ll get a little foot sore. Again, that’s usually from excess sugar or just a little, the caloric intake jumps up and can also combine with significant change in forage intake, disrupting the hindgut and the microbiota, combine that all together. So balancing out the diet and ensuring you have a good stable microflora by keeping the diet consistent should, from a nutritional standpoint, be the best way to go about it. And then just ensuring all the nutrients they need are in there.

[SPEAKER 2]
Now, you had mentioned sugars. in that and it kind of brings me back to when you were saying about testing your pasture. I’d only ever thought about doing like hay analysis but can you also do a pasture analysis to look at the nutrients in like the grass that they’re eating?

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, absolutely. And we again, we encourage people to do it because I mean, ideally, that would be your horse’s main source of calories and forage is pasture if it’s suitable for them. Now, unfortunately, for metabolic horses, a lot of times it’s not. But yeah, you can take clippings. So essentially, You want to clip it off about where the height the horse would eat it, which is like fairly low to the ground. Try not to get any soil contamination into it. And if you’re doing it like in a very defined method, you would go out and take like a rectangle and just take, you know, four or five, up to 10 different spots and then clip the grass. And you just put that in a sample baggie. Now the one caveat to taking fresh grass samples and sending them to the lab is, You’re essentially, even after you cut the grass, it’s still alive. So there’s still respiration going on. And there’s also a lot of water activity. So you’re gonna get a lot of microbial activity in that sample if you keep it at room temperature or above. And so you need to freeze it right away. One of the biggest things that’ll happen is those bacteria will start fermenting the grass and they’ll take that sugar and essentially turn it into volatile fatty acids. What you’re concerned about mainly is sugar levels in your pasture, and that’s what you’re looking at. You definitely don’t want that to happen. You want to know what the sugar level is. So you want it frozen right away until it gets to the lab. Or if you want to dry it yourself, you can do that. You can dry it in a microwave. If you do it in the house, it’s going to stink. So I don’t necessarily recommend that. Or if… I guess nobody’s going to have a drying oven. The best thing is just get it frozen and send it to the lab. Make sure you’re getting the correct values.

[SPEAKER 2]
Now with the nutritional, I’m trying to think, do you call them nutritional consultations with Mad Baron? Like what is the name of it when I submit, like an analysis, I guess it is.

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, we consider it a consultation because again, it is us just consulting with the horse owner. best way I mean from a chemical standpoint of like your horse needs you know these nutrients that’s you know fairly straightforward but then you have to meet the needs of everybody’s feeding situation as well right and that’s different for everybody so you do need to have a discussion about you know what’s going to work for your setup.

[SPEAKER 2]
Now do you offer I know that you offer um Like, you look at the hay analysis, but you also look at pasture analysis as well, if I was to submit, like, the grass that they’re on and things like that.

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, absolutely. So any analysis you have of feeds, and then we will include in, and on top of that, I mean, we do our own, like we have our own feedback to now exceeds like 3,000 commercial feeds, forages, different things that, data bank wise, it may even have more information than you get off, than you could get off a feed tag. And we’ll use that data as well. Cause we do a lot of internal sampling to fill out our feed bank, to make it more robust. to get the information that isn’t included on feed tags in a lot of cases. So, but the more information you have in terms of your own direct lab analysis, that’s fantastic. We’ll input it all. Like if you go on in Mad Barn Feed, you can see it’s like, everything’s fully customizable so that you can put the complete nutrient specs for every feed that’s going in there. And again, the more information we have, the better, the better we’re going to be able to balance it and know what we’re doing.

[SPEAKER 2]
Interesting. I didn’t know that about the pasture samples. So I’m going to, uh, I’m going to get on that. That’s interesting. So with, um, our wee horse podcast, we have four questions that we ask every guest. Um, and we’re going to dive in if you’re ready for them.

[SPEAKER 1]
Do I need to grab a drink for this? I don’t know.

[SPEAKER 2]
Do you want me to ask the questions first and then you can decide? So the first one is, do you have a motto or a favorite saying?

[SPEAKER 1]
I just did it when I was talking to the nutritionist this morning and it’s not my model. Well, it was, don’t worry about getting it right, just get it going. And it’s not about doing things incorrectly. It’s about, sometimes we get bogged down in the details and just don’t get things going. And it’s more important to just make sure action happens. And that’s mostly because there’s some recency bias in that model, I guess. The other one would be invest early in yourself. I’ve done a number of presentations, particularly when it’s a group of young people about the power of compound interest and making sure you put money aside for your future, I guess, and allowing that money to compound, particularly in the horse world, because we have a tendency to spend a lot of money on horses.

[SPEAKER 2]
That’s very good. That’s more than a saying. That’s just good advice.

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
The second one is, who has been the most influential person in your equestrian journey?

[SPEAKER 1]
Equestrian journey? That’s the most influential? He’s not even an equestrian journey. Honestly, it’s Dr. John Kane. He was my master’s and PhD advisor, and he’s a ruminant nutritionist in modeling. But he’s just from, I guess, ability to look at things analytically and just, I guess, his view on things that he’s probably been the most influential person. And I guess, like I said, it’s not, you said equestrian, but I think it feeds over into it.

[SPEAKER 2]
Yeah. He doesn’t have to be an equestrian. It’s just in your journey in general. So if he played a part, then, then yeah, that’s, um, that’s good. If you could give equestrians one piece of advice, what would it be?

[SPEAKER 1]
Let your horse be a horse.

[SPEAKER 2]
I like that. That’s been crucial in my journey. So I second that. I really like that advice. So the last one is complete this sentence. For me, horses are.

[SPEAKER 1]
For me, horses are. Well, now they’re my everything. I mean, they basically encompass my whole life now. Business, pleasure. Yeah.

[SPEAKER 2]
Is there anything else you’d like to add for our listeners?

[SPEAKER 1]
Everything, but again, to kind of summarize the main points, lots and lots of water, salt and get the correct for it. So lots of eating time for your horse, make sure they’re eating, not all the time, obviously, but as much as possible. They have the correct forages in front of them and well balanced mineral vitamin program. A lot of everything else will fall in place after that.

[SPEAKER 2]
And like I said earlier, I can’t recommend enough to go on to Madburn and enter in. your horse’s information to get your own customized nutrition plan for them. It’s so easy, it’s free, and you’ll get lots of really good advice. And it’s quick, too. I couldn’t believe how quick I did it and how quick my response was. So I highly recommend doing that. Where can people find more about MADBURN and how can they get their own? Okay, I just answered my own question. How can they get a free customized nutritional consultation? Go on MADBURN, but how can they find out more about it?

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah, so talked about my business partner, she’s done an amazing job with the website. So there’s just a ton of information on there. It’s a pretty easy follow through to it. And even if you don’t want to fill out all the information on the form on the website, we have a toll free number, call, you know, send a carrier pigeon a message, somebody will get it. Or just email info at Matt Barnwell. We’re more than happy to help out. There’s a whole team of nutritionists working their way every day, helping horse owners to Get it right.

[SPEAKER 2]
And your blog is wonderful as well. There’s a ton of free resources on the blog. They cover like every topic you can imagine. So I highly recommend going on there also. I should be a spokesperson for Mad Barn. I can’t thank you enough, Scott, for coming on and chatting with me tonight. Like I had said, I love everything that you do. I love all the education that you provide. And I hope that our listeners got as much out of this as I do every time I listen to your podcast that you’re always on. So thank you so much.

[SPEAKER 1]
Yeah. Again, thank you for having me on. It’s always a pleasure. And like I said, if anybody needs anything, reach out. We’re here for us, here to help.

[SPEAKER 2]
Perfect. Again, thank you and have a wonderful rest of your evening.

[SPEAKER 1]
You too. Thanks. Cheers.

[SPEAKER 2]
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Equestrian Connection podcast by wehorse. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a rating and review, as well as share us on social media. You can find us on Instagram at wehorse underscore USA, and check out our free seven-day trial on wehorse.com, where you can access over 175 courses with top trainers from around the world in a variety of topics and disciplines. Until next time, be kind to yourself, your horses, and others.