A Nutrient-Dense Superfood to Benefit the Health of your Horse
Ideally, a horse should be in a natural environment with ample room for running and grazing and have companionship. A horse should have access to plenty of high-quality forage, receive a feed to compliment the forage and be offered frequent feedings. The equine digestive system is designed to process frequent small amounts of food. Then the horse would be happy and healthy.
We don't live in a perfect world, and reality often looks a bit different. Some horses don't have access to high quality forage because of the varying nutritional quality of pastures. Others are confined to stalls with lack of access to pasture, and may be fed a poor quality hay, or commercial feed. Instead of a continual input of food from grazing, horses often receive infrequent feedings, or just receive a once a day feeding of possibly unbalanced, large quantities of feed.
Whatever the circumstances might be, horses often are kept in an environment that is far from a natural state, and the feed they receive often does not provide the nutrients needed to promote and maintain optimal health. Poor quality feed that is not balanced, and does not meet vitamin and mineral requirements, can cause a host of health issues including horse diarrhea, colic, ulcers, laminitis, and more.
Gut health is just as important for horses as it is for humans because it affects the entire body of the horse. Once a condition called leaky gut (also referred to as dysbiosis) occurs, it opens the door to many more equine diseases such as colitis, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, and liver disease, and more. Aside from the aforementioned digestive disorders, leaky gut can also cause health issues that appear to be unrelated such as arthritis, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Heaves), Cushing’s disease, behavioral issues, autoimmune disease, and even cancer.
A very effective way to naturally supplement horse feed to make up for nutritional deficiencies is by incorporating a small amount of the right nutrient-rich vegetables. Some of the most potent ingredients to fuel our health and the health of our horses are found in colorful vegetables, which are functional foods provided my Mother Nature. Root vegetable like carrots in particular, are filled with nourishing vitamins, rich minerals, and phytonutrients that promote optimal health. Carrots have long been used for their health benefits and natural healing powers.
Carrots for Horses – More than just a Treat!
Most horses love carrots! However, carrots are primarily given to the horse as a treat, and horse owners do not realize the full potential of health benefits this bright orange vegetable has to offer. While vegetables are not an essential nutrient, phytonutrients from functional carbohydrates offer a number of health benefits that cannot be obtained from other foods, including protection against disease and certain cancers. Feeding a small amount of carrots in the correct form daily can actually make the difference between a horse just surviving and thriving.
Feeding whole carrots to your horse could actually cause choke when a big chunk blocks the esophagus. Slicing the carrots into long slivers will help prevent choke.
How much your horse’s health can benefit depends on the amount of nutrients in the carrots you offer. Carrots, like all root vegetables, start losing nutrients from the time they come out of the ground at harvest and are exposed to light, air and moisture.
So the next time you see carrots out in the open air at a farmers market, or under the light in the produce department of the grocery store, think about how much nutrition is still left in those carrots!
Discover the difference Olewo Carrots can make in the health of your horse
