So if you have noticed that your horse is a little more nervous than usual, then correct the magnesium deficiency before it goes so far as to be an explosion waiting to happen or before it becomes stringhalt. I even saw a whole property full of horses once who were angry with magnesium deficiency rather than nervous.
When it has been dry or cold, with little to no grass growth and we get the sweet rains of autumn or the warmth of spring and the grass starts to grow – that is the time when the grass is most magnesium deficient.
You can give horses magnesium in a number of ways. There are some very expensive complete products out there on the market but it doesn’t have to cost that much and some of them are not that good either.
There are two things to be wary of about magnesium.
- All magnesium is not the same and horses don’t absorb all forms of magnesium, so you don’t want to be throwing your money down the drain with the wrong magnesium.
- And DO NOT GIVE THEM TOO MUCH.
Just like not enough calcium and magnesium can stuff up your horses bone strength – too much of either of those minerals can do exactly the same thing. (Hmmm… I bet most of those people selling you calcium supplements didn’t tell you that hey?
The useful types of magnesium:
- I used to only give my horses magnesium orotate. It comes in tablet form and is very effective. However, it is quite expensive with the amounts that we need to feed a horse. You can melt the tablets in a bit of water and add it to their feed or put one tablet at a time in a piece of apple and give it to your horse. I still use it in an emergency because you can also crush up the tablets and put the powder on the tongue and it will have a positive effect on their behavior within about 10 minutes if the behavior is caused by magnesium deficiency.
- I was very happy to come across a second form of effective magnesium supplementing in the form of magnesium chloride last year, which is much cheaper, easier to give the horses and so far seems just as effective.
The dosages for magnesium:
The easiest way of avoiding over-dosing with minerals is to give our horse free choice. If you are using magnesium chloride put another bin of water in the paddock and add the magnesium to that, so that you have one with magnesium and one without. The horses will drink from whichever bucket they need and balance their magnesium themselves.
You can use a pendulum to figure out the dosage for your horse. Click here for an article that has some video instructions on how to use a pendulum. If you get a dosage of more than 2000 mgs of magnesium orotate per day AND ONLY THAT HIGH FOR A FEW DAYS, then contact me to check your dosage. (You’ll find a contact at the top of every page.) I am a kinesiologist amongst other things. I have had horses test up for higher dosages in extreme situations, but overdosing is a very bad deal, so we want to make sure that you are not over doing it.
Later note: There are some good comments being posted on this article, about what people consider is the best type and sources of magnesium – it’s well worth reading the comments!.
Sources of magnesium chloride
Some of the magnesium chloride out there is coming from China, who have not had a great track record of recent times with food safety for people or even babies or animals generally. I used a Chinese magnesium chloride inadvertently the first time, with no ill effects. Ancient Minerals Magnesium Bath Flakes (they are not allowed to say its edible) is the brand that I used after that and I see it available on e-bay.
Magnesium deficiency is not the only cause of nervousness in horses.
It is useful for us to understand the kinds of things that can make our horse nervous AND how to help them so that they can be the calm and trusting partner that most of us are looking for.
The FREE LESSONS The 9 Keys to Happiness with Your Horse talk about exactly that in quite some detail. They are one of the biggest give-aways in the horse world and you’ll find them at the top of the Training Programs page here
I have used a magnesium supplement for years with excellent success as I barrel race and horses are very nervous and hot anyway. I have not had any luck with a feed additive as I didn’t get any results what so ever. What I do use however is a magnesium bath, MagBath Salts…made by Performance Equine Nutrition. I started to use this to bathe them after their competitive run and could see a huge difference in their attitude the next day. Now, I bathe them b4 loading them in the trailer to go to my competiton.
Do you know if this magnesium bath is made of Epsom Salts Tanya? And have you seen horses get stringhalt in the barrel racing world?
http://performanceequinenutrition.com/
This is the link to the website so u may c of what origin is the bath.
If horses to get tied up, we usually IV electrolytes. Ive had a mare who couldn’t walk after her barrel run and gave her an IV electrolyte shot 2 hours b4 she ran. This did contain a dose of magnesium as well as other components.
I mainly use the bath for a calmness effect as is probably related to muscles not being tight in the summer time. I do not do this bath in the winter time as I have not seen the horses get so nervous, hence the lactic acid build up in the summer sun and heat.
Tying up is an interesting condition that has it’s roots in nervousness. Have you see The Six Keys to Happiness with Your Horse yet? I would expect that application of the principles that I talk about in them, would seriously reduce any tying up.
Hi Jenny,
It is a really small world. My wife, Sally, and I used to live in Rokeby. The white timber house on Old Telegraph Road we bought from Dennis Stoll. It is even possible we bought a mare from you many years ago – Zoe. May be wrong about that though.
Anyway it looks like we are both in the horse industry now and share very similar views on calcium and magnesium. In fact we have unique and patented chelated calcium technology that is making a huge impact here in the UK and we are now having made in Australia and distributed by Trevor Wozencroft (who used to manage the Collian Park Limousin Stud not far from you on the Old Sale Road.
What interferes most with our chelated calcium is too much magnesium and the feed firms in Australia are particularly heavy handed.
We will be in Melbourne in November for Equitana. Hopefully we can catch up with you. In the meantime please email !
Malcolm Green
Well, well well – it really is a small world isn’t it? We are new comers on the road. We’re in the original farmhouse that Henry and Olivia were milking cows from – the brick house quite close to the road. Re Zoe, not me – maybe Jack..? Can’t remember his last name. We bought a horse from him once a long time ago too. His wife still lives further up the road on the high side. Nice old bloke, an old fashioned good kind of a horseman.
I am always interested in something that addresses the balance of calcium and magnesium. I don’t know about the feed merchants, but the supplement people always seem to have the calcium sky high. I’ll email you so I can hear more about it.
Jenny,
How much Mg chloride do you add per what amount of water for the free choice method?
Thanks,
Holly
I usually test up the quantities, but with free choice, i.e. having two sources of water – one with the magnesium and one without – you can’t go too wrong. I used a 500 mg bag yesterday and dumped the whole lot in a big bin of water that is about 2/3 of a metre high and a metre square – but my horses were almost off their faces magnesium deficient yesterday and the stuff I ordered over the net hadn’t arrived yet, so I was putting a lot in. Earlier in the year I was putting about 1/3 of that bag into the same bin.
As you can see, I don’t have a specific formula for this one.
Just remember everyone – that MORE MINERALS ARE NOT BETTER. Apart from being a waste of money over doing minerals, you can actually ADVERSELY effect your horses bones by putting too much of one mineral into their system. This free choice method with two sources of water is one way of making sure that you don’t do that.
Hi Jenny,
Hope you don’t mind me saying here (as you know I am a big magnesium fan). To help clarify for people ordering their mag chloride that the apparently unsafe source is from the Dead Sea.
Ancient minerals are safe, but not Dead Sea minerals where a lot of heavy metals are present. If you are unsure always ask for a certificate of analysis.
🙂 Narel
Thanks Narel. I think I might draw attention to the comments in the article.
Exactly. Another source is Magnesium4horses.com and .au. They can sell in 25kg bags and have a mineral analysis for 2015. This is a food grade version they use as a nigari salt to make Tofu.
Hi Jenny, thank you for this comment about magnesium. I don’t know about in Australia, but here in the UK and in the USA the recommended form of magnesium is OXIDE, and clearly food grade, or pharmacutical grade. The other thing that’s really vital is to be sure it’s a low iron form otherwise other issues esp with liver metabolism may result – esp important in laminitics and EMS horses. I balance how much I give against my hay, so at the moment my guys have about 7gms elemental magnesium/day, but it can go up to 20 at high grass growth times of year. It costs me about £30 for 5kg for 98% MgO. Alison
Thanks for that Alison. When I looked up magnesium oxide for more information after reading your comment, I noticed quite a bit of passion around some of the forms of magnesium hey? With all that information it seems like making sure that the horses can take it up or reject it, seems to be even more a good idea.
And yes we are at a high growth time of the year here at the moment and the horses are getting a bit touchy because of that. Has your spring not started yet?
Mag Oxide doesn’t have the trace elements neither does Epsom Salts. Mag Chloride if from a natural source and not refined should have some trace elements in it. Another thing you could try is buy good quality sea salt and water the grass the horses eat so the plant takes it up allowing it to deal with the high sugar grasses here in Australia. Obviously if you put too much salt on the lawn it will die so try 0.5-1% concentration to start with.
Thanks for the extra info Daniel! 🙂 I’m not sure that I would want to spray my grass with salt, even diluted – we have such a rising salt problem in Australia. I know the sea salt is a different kind of salt, but it would still add to the adverse salt burden wouldn’t it? Couldn’t the horses just have access to a high quality and mineralised salt? With out it actually being on the grass? I use sea salt myself and buy naturally sourced mineralised salt for my horses.