Your Horse Has Guts
Good health starts from within, supporting your horse's gut can have a huge impact on their overall well-being and vitality. Your horse's digestive system connects to many other systems in your horse's body, including fertility, body condition, immunity, cognition, hoof health and energy, among others.
Modern day management can cause disruption to the digestive system, resulting in gastrointestinal issues having an adverse affect, on all the systems linked to the digestive tract. Gut Microbiota is very delicate and can be upset easily by a number of things, from medications, such as antibiotics or wormers to stress, environmental change and even alterations to the diet.
Feeding your horse a digestive supplement is an effective way of supporting your horse's gut. A supplement such as a pre and probiotic helps to encourage normal digestive function and efficiency. It may also help horses who may be struggling from poor digestive function, this can be shown through symptoms such as loose droppings, bloating or gassiness, all of these can cause discomfort and have a negative impact on performance.
Digestive supplements are beneficial for all horses to help promote digestive health and support the gut microbiota, by providing a mix of prebiotics and probiotics.
What is the difference between prebiotics and probiotics?
Prebiotics
There are two types of prebiotic commonly used within horse feeds and supplements. These are known as Mannan-oligosaccharides (MOS) and Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS). Prebiotics are a non-digestible feed ingredient which limit the number of harmful microbes, and aids the digestive environment for beneficial microbes.
MOS are non-digestible compounds that come from yeasts, they work by helping to reduce the risk of harmful bacteria causing disease. MOS act like a mop as they help to clear up harmful bacteria, by preventing bacteria from sticking to the gut lining, instead the bacteria sticks to the MOS and is removed from the digestive system.
FOS works in a different manner, providing the gut's microbes with a source of energy, this allows them to reproduce, resulting in less opportunity for bad bacteria to thrive, as the good bacteria's population increases.
Probiotics
These are a live bacteria, commonly referred to as live yeast. Probiotics help to "top-up" the population of good microbes within the gut. By increasing the quantity of good bacteria within the gut, there is less scope for harmful bacteria to multiply. Live yeast can also have a positive effect on the hind gut, as it helps promote the optimum conditions for the existing microbial population, in turn this increases the efficiency for fibre digestion.
In conclusion, feeding a gut supplement is a great way to help support your horse's digestive system and aid overall health. You may notice positive changes to your horse in a variety of areas from coat shine, hoof health, increased energy levels, reduced stress related behaviours and improved performance. There are many pre or probiotic supplements to choose from, if you want help finding the supplement that's right for your horse contact a member of our friendly team today.
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