Hoof Supplement for Horses - Deep Dive

Keeping your horse’s hooves healthy requires more than just picking any ol’ horse hoof supplement. We will demystify the hoof supplement market and educate you on how to choose the right hoof supplements for your horse. 

Article Highlights

• Answers to the most common questions about horse hoof health;
• Explain what makes a GOOD horse hoof supplement;
• Discuss why most horse hoof supplements are a waste of money;
• Offer an overview of supplements and nutrient absorption;
• Share our secret for unlocking your horse's full potential with Organic Superfood Supplements.

 

Common Horse Owner Questions:

What is the best product for horse hoof growth? 

Most hoof supplements boil down to very similar ingredients. So, what makes some products better than others? It comes down to two things: 1) The product's ability to deliver those hoof-essential-nutrients into the horse’s bloodstream and make them available to the cells of the body (i.e. bioavailability); and 2) the “wholeness” of the supplement. Nutrients do not work in isolation. In order for the body to “use” a vitamin for biologic functions it needs a myriad of cofactors, enzymes, phytonutrients and synergists (more on this later.) Think of it like an orchestra, listening to a single violin is a much different experience than listening to Beethoven’s Fur Elise at the New York Philharmonic. 

 

Do hoof supplements really work? 

Healthy hooves require adequate levels of key nutrients. Over supplementing however, can cause the very issues you are trying to avoid. Things like too much selenium and too much methionine can cause hoof issues. Lacking key nutrients like zinc, magnesium, copper, iron, biotin, and yes, even a lack of selenium and methionine will also result in defects and poor hoof quality. The short answer is it depends. It depends on the horse's diet, nutritional status, toxic load (and other environmental stressors) and what type of supplements you use (i.e. isolated, lab-made supplements or whole food supplements. More on this later).

 

What is the best feed for horse hooves?

This is a complex question, there is no single feed that is best for horse hooves. Instead, you need to take a holistic approach and critically assess your horse's feed and diet. Things you need to be aware of: 

Reconcile everything that your horse ingests

1. Know the type and quality of hay, grass and other forage material available for your equine. Use concentrates to balance what the forage does and does not provide. Supplements are for fine tuning your horse's nutritional needs. Even the chemical and mineral content of your horse's water needs to be taken into account.  

 

Know what nutrients are available in adequate levels and which are lacking

1. In an ideal world, our horses would not only survive but thrive on a simple forage only diet, you know, like they did in the olden' days. The reality is, some geographies cannot sustain adequate forage for our beloved equines. Moreover, modern agricultural practices have stripped the nutrients from our soil so even the best intended, natural diets are lacking in key nutrients. The reality is, supplementation is essential for optimal health in the world we humans have created. Know what nutrients are readily available in your horse's base diet and know what nutrients need to be supplemented. 

 

Be aware of the chemicals and toxins 

1. Know what chemicals and toxins are present in your horse's environment, learn how to minimize them in your horse's diet and how to safely remove the toxins already ingested
2. Heavy metals are ever present in the air, water and food systems of the United States and their negative impacts on health are far ranging, including impaired nutrient absorption which can lead to poor hoof health (1). Agricultural chemicals like glyphosate will prevent your horse from absorbing essential nutrients even if they are present in the diet. Glyphosate is also known to disrupt protein synthesis (2), an essential process for healthy hoof growth. 

 

Be cognizant of how nutrients will interact with each other

1. For example, too much zinc will displace copper (3). Both of these minerals are essential for many physiologic functions, including healthy hooves. Finding the right balance can be tricky. 

 

Note: We are about to get nerdy in this next section, but feel the science discussed is necessary for understanding the whole story. We firmly believe knowledge is power and will do our best to explain everything in a way that is both tangible and digestible. That being said, If you just want the answer to the question you came here for, ‘what is the best horse hoof supplement’ feel free to skip to the end and ignore the musing in this next section. 

 

What makes a GOOD horse hoof supplement?

Two Things: 

1. Bioavailability of the nutrients. 

1. In simple terms, the degree to which the nutrients in the supplements make their way into the bloodstream and are made available to the cells of the body.  

2. The “wholeness” of the supplement.

1. Referring back to our orchestra analogy, you want all of the instruments playing in unison not just a single violin.

The concept and importance of what we described above as “wholeness” may seem obtuse and trivial, but we assure you it is anything but. Let us explain… 

 

Reductionism vs Systems Thinking - Overview

In the western world, our academic system is grounded in reductionism. It stems from Newtonian physics and asserts that in order to understand how something works all you need to do is break it down into its smallest parts. If you understand how the smallest parts work, you will understand how the “whole” works. You can make the case that this is true in cause and effect type reasoning and other linear phenomena. We will admit, it is a nice theory in that it ties everything together in a nice little bow and attempts to explain the complexities of the universe in a way that is relatively easy to understand. 

The problem? Reductionism cannot explain the whole story. For example, mothers having an intuition or a sense that something is wrong with their child, even when their child is in another state, country or continent. How you can be thinking of someone, seemingly out of the blue and then the phone rings and it's that person. The fact that the energetic frequencies of our thoughts (and the words we say) have the power to influence and change our biology on a cellular level (4). The story of a man who was in a severe bike accident, suffered six compressed (broken) vertebrae and was told he may never walk again; Then, through the power of meditation, he completely healed his injuries without surgeries or western-medical intervention (5). Even the simple notion, and really the crux of this blog post, that eating an orange offers more health benefits than taking the equivalent amount of a Citric Acid (Vitamin C) supplement. 

Perhaps one of my favorite examples of the differences in Reductionist vs Systems Thinking analysis is the interpretation of the placebo effect. 

If you aren’t familiar, the placebo effect is when a participant in an experiment is told they are receiving a treatment or an intervention but the truth is they are given an inert or neutral treatment/intervention. And, despite the fact the participant was giving something that had no chemical or biological power to help the participant heal, they got better anyway, their system improved. 

The reductionist way of thinking wants to eliminate this miraculous healing from the experiment and discredits this phenomenon as “not important” or “happenstance.” A reductionist will “throw out” any placebo effect healing because it’s “not real.”  A Systems Thinking approach looks at the placebo effect and says: “So, you are telling me that the experiment participants received ZERO medical intervention, they just simply BELIEVED they were getting treatment and they GOT BETTER!?! Why are we not studying this more? How can we use this to help people heal and get better without the cost and risk of medical intervention?”

The modern western world, our entire educational system and even our noun-based language fundamentally guide us to look at and understand our world as if it's just a bunch of Lego blocks stuck together. And if a red block breaks, you can just put in a new red block or even an orange block in its place as long as it has the same divots and nubs as the original. 

But what if each block in the tower had a voice, and each block needed to talk to all of the other blocks to know what shape and color it needed to be and what if all the red blocks actually needed to be in connection with a blue block, a green block and an orange block in order to do its job as a red block. All of a sudden, the simple Lego block tower gets a whole lot more complicated. Oversimplified analogy aside, this is actually closer to the reality of how our universe and the biology of humans and animals work.

 

Systems Thinking View of Nutrition and Supplementation

What does all of this have to do with horse hoof supplements? we’re glad you asked. Before we get lost down this rabbit hole, let’s get back to the point. 

Our reductionist dominated world has led us to believe that isolated nutrients, like those found in vitamin and mineral supplements, can have the same healing effect as consuming the equivalent amount of whole food. The reality is, that’s not true. 

Over millions of years nature has evolved. Plants, animals, bacteria, fungi and so on, have developed alongside one another. Every species from the smallest single cells to the massively complex 50 trillion cell organisms reading this blog article have developed in harmony and reciprocity with one another. 

Nutrients in nature exist in a complex matrix of many different substances. Vitamins and minerals need cofactors, enzymes, phytonutrients, and other “helper” nutrients in order to carry out the physiologic effects (or healing benefits) we accredit to the vitamin. It is a reductionist interpretation to think that consuming citric acid (vitamin c) will have the same health benefits as eating an equivalent amount of Organic Oranges. 

Systems Thinking says “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Systems Thinking recognizes that there are emergent properties that come into existence only when complex systems are working in concert. Systems Thinking understands that in order to truly experience and appreciate one of Beetovens seminal works, you need an entire orchestra playing together, in unison, as one. A single violin is insufficient. 

 

Whole Food Supplements 

The “wholeness” of the supplements you use matters. Using a man-made, lab-synthesized vitamin or mineral powder does not offer the same health and healing benefits as an organic, whole, unadulterated food. Even if the amount of Zinc, for example, present in the powder and the food are the same. The complex matrix of substances and substrates that accompany the Zinc in a whole food are necessary for Zinc to carry out its function. The whole food matrix accompaniment is required for nutrients like Zinc to carry out its function once it’s inside the body. And, as it turns out, the whole food matrix comes into play before nutrients even enter the body. 

 

Supplements and Nutrient Absorption - Bioavailability

Imagine you are getting a hay delivery. Your barn has a second story loft where the hay is stored. What is the best way to get your hay into the loft? 

 

 

An elevator allows you to efficiently load the hay into the second story loft. Is it possible to load the hay without an elevator? Sure, it's just much harder and it's much less efficient. 

It’s the same with nutrition. Conventional vitamin and mineral supplements are typically made in a lab, are synthetically formed and isolated without the naturally occurring matrix of substances and substrates found in a whole food or superfood. Why does that matter?

Imagine the cells of the body are the loft in the barn, the hay bales are the nutrients. Whole foods and superfood supplements are like using an elevator for getting nutrients into the cells. Conventional supplements are like standing in your truck and trying to throw the bales into the loft. 

 

 

We’re going to get nerdy again, so bear with us…

The Problem with Commercial Vitamin Supplements 

Commercial vitamin supplements can be synthetically formed from some pretty horrific stuff. 

For Example: 

• Vitamin B1 is often made from Yellow Coal Tar (fossil fuel)
• Vitamin C is often made from Corn-Starch or Corn-Sugar (heavily contaminated with glyphosate)

Even “naturally-sourced” vitamins technically only need to contain 10% of the actual plant-derived nutrient, the other 90% can be synthetic. WHY is this practice commonplace in the supplement industry? Because it’s cheap!

There is a lot of complex physiology and biology happening when nutrients in food make an incredibly long journey through the digestive system and into the cells of the body. This isn’t anatomy or biochemistry class, so I'm not going to go through the entire process, but there is one critical juncture we want to talk about: The transition from the external world into the bloodstream.  For *most nutrients, this is the small intestine.

 

Tight Junctions and Nutrient Absorption

This is the point at which most nutrients have the opportunity to transition into the body. All barriers in our body, including the small intestine, have on their surface a protein complex called “Tight Junctions.” These proteins function to control what gets through the barrier and what is rejected. They are the gatekeepers. The barrier itself, whether it be the small intestine, blood-brain barrier, or skin can actually be quite porous without healthy tight junctions. Why is this important?

   

The tight junctions (when healthy) are actually quite intelligent as you can imagine they might need to be. They know when a chain of amino acids (protein) hasn’t been sufficiently broken down to be used by cells, so the amino acids get sent further down the GI tract for further digestion before absorption. Healthy tight junctions know the difference between molecules of food and nutrients and molecules of bacteria or pathogens that would cause harm. Tight junctions also know the difference between the Vitamin C from an orange versus the citric acid formed in a lab from corn starch. Haven’t you ever wondered why some vitamin supplements have 2,000%+ DV of a nutrient in one serving yet it doesn't make the user sick? It’s because the intelligent gate keepers of the body know the stuff is fake and sends most of the synthetic look-alike material packing down the river. Most of the lab-made, synthetic vitamins and minerals are excreted before they are ever absorbed by the body.

Note: The gut microbiome (healthy, naturally occuring bacteria that inhabit the GI Tract) also play a critical role in many physiologic functions, including nutrient absorption. We will save that complex topic for another article. 

 

Whole Food and Superfoods For The Win

Whole foods, and nutrient dense superfoods, are more effective at delivering nutrients into the body because the body is designed to absorb them. 

Superfoods make being healthy easier because they are packed full of the nutrients the body needs. One superfood can contain the same variety of nutrients found in several different commercial supplements. 

Superfoods are cost-effective, what's going to be more expensive, 1 or 2 superfoods or 8 or 9 commercial supplements?

 

"Thank you. Phoenix's hooves have improved and her movement is flexible. We love the cumin cakes." 

 

Unlocking Your Horse's FULL Potential With Organic Superfoods

Improved Hoof Health is Just The Beginning…

Organic whole foods and superfoods like Evolved Remedies’ Black Cumin Seed Press Cake are a different kind of supplementation. Harnessing the awesome power of nature, these potent super seeds deliver the essential nutrition your horse needs to thrive in the perfect whole food complex mother nature has spent millennia designing. Our superfood supplements contain the key nutrients your horse needs to support healthy, strong hooves. And, by delivering these essential nutrients the way nature intended, as a part of a whole food complex, you can rest easy knowing your horse's physiology is perfectly designed to recognize, digest, absorb and utilize every ounce of goodness these magical plants contain.  

 

 Wouldn't Go Without It! - Annie B, Washington 

"This product has been a staple in my feed routine since i tried it! My horses and mules are healthier than ever, their coats and hooves look absolutely fantastic!"

 

Black Cumin Seed Press Cake Additional Benefits 

Horse Coat

Supplementing with organic superfoods comes with side effects… more health benefits! Organic Black Cumin Seed Press Cake also helps to improve the quality and richness in color of your horse's coat.

 

"Since starting the Black Cumin Seed Press Cake, our horse and donkey coats are so shiny! ..."

 

Skin Health

Organic Black Cumin Seed Press Cake also helps to improve skin health and has even been reported to help mediate skin issues like allergic reactions and welts.

 

 

Natural Fly Repellent for Horses

This versatile superfood also works like a feed through fly control. The bitter substances contained in the seeds repel flies. After a couple months of consistent use, those bitter substances will be excreted in the horses sweat and in the oils on their hair and … viola your horse now has a natural fly repellent coming right out of their skin! The flies also avoid the manure of animals that are supplemented with Black Cumin Seed Press Cake. When flies cannot lay their eggs in the manure, the fly population naturally decreases over time.

 

Thank you So Much! - Machel J, New Mexico

"Usually at this time of year i've got fly traps, fly spray, fly masks and fly predators all working together. Some flies still light on the horses, including the corners of their eyes; HOWEVER, it's drastically reduced! Plus, no flies landing on the manure!"

 

The benefits continue,

Organic Black Cumin Seed Press Cake also: 

- Supports the horse's natural detoxification pathways;

- Provides a mild calming effect; and

- The robust nutrient profile allows you to replace many of the common supplements many horse owners are already using.

Imagine replacing all of your vitamin/minerals supplements, and skin, hair and hoof supplements with 1 organic superfood. Making your feeding routine so much easier while also helping your horse, not just survive but, thrive.

Bonus: if you are looking for gut health support and a way to level up your horse skin, hair and hoof health even further, try adding in Evolved Remedies Flax Seed Press Cake. This potent 1,2 combination is the perfect superfood supplement duet for most horses. This is the combination of superfoods we recommend for *most horse owners and once you try it, you will never look back.

 

"...With the Flax Seed Press Cake, their gut sounds have never been better and manure always looks fantastic!"

 

Choose Organic Black Cumin Press Seed Cake for healthier horse hooves

If you want to experience the next evolution in equine nutrition, stop wasting your money on man-made, lab-synthesized, low quality supplements and instead, trust that mother-nature has already designed the perfect superfood to complement a healthy, holistic horse diet. 

 

"My vet says my 32 year old horse now has the bloodwork of a young colt!"

 

Ready to take your horse's wellness to the next level? 

Shop Full Connection of Evolved Remedies Superfood Supplements here 

Shop Organic Black Cumin Seed Press Cake

Shop Organic Flax Seed Press Cake

Have performance horses? Want to improve their stamina and speed recovery time following exercise? Try our groundbreaking performance horse superfood supplement, Organic 5-Seed Press Cake.

Learn why not all press seed cakes are the same and why our superfood supplements stand in a class by themselves. Blog Post.

Still not convinced, read more about our first in-class Organic Black Cumin Seed Press Cake here. Blog Post.

 

Citations:

1. Balali-Mood M, Naseri K, Tahergorabi Z, Khazdair MR, Sadeghi M. Toxic Mechanisms of Five Heavy Metals: Mercury, Lead, Chromium, Cadmium, and Arsenic. Front Pharmacol. 2021 Apr 13;12:643972. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2021.643972. PMID: 33927623; PMCID: PMC8078867.
2.  Gildea J, Roberts D, Bush Z. Protective Effects of Lignite Extract Supplementation on Intestinal Barrier Function in Glyphosate-Mediated Tight Junction Injury. Journal of Clinical Nutrition & Dietetics. 2017 Vol.3 No. 1:1. DOI: 10.4172/2472-1921.100035
3. Hall AG, King JC. The Molecular Basis for Zinc Bioavailability. Int J Mol Sci. 2023 Mar 31;24(7):6561. doi: 10.3390/ijms24076561. PMID: 37047530; PMCID: PMC10095312.
4. Lipton B, Biology of Belief, New York Times Best Selling Book
5. The Dr. Joe Dispenza Story. Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpqVezKradg