Abnormally spooky, tense muscles, general soreness, don’t want to be touched, hot headed, even abnormally aggressive – these can all be symptoms of magnesium imbalance.
I’ve noticed a lot of spooky horse problems cropping up on social media – more than usual. That’s because many horses are short of magnesium at this time of the year with short stressed spring grass in the northern part of the world and autumn rains on short stressed summer pastures in the southern part of the world.
But abnormally spooky isn’t the only way that horses can express magnesium deficiency / imbalance. It also shows up as unusual nervousness, they can be hyperactive, stiff and sore, tense muscles, unhappy to be touched (because nerve pain can be one of magnesium deficiency’s symptoms), drastic mood shifts, even abnormal aggression in some horses.
Magnesium deficiency isn’t always a simple deficiency of magnesium.
In my clinic work I’ve also found that the cause of magnesium deficiency can also be an imbalance caused by too much calcium. That includes too much of foods that are high in calcium like lucerne chaff and hay.
Too much calcium adversely affects the bones, because the body is drawing magnesium from the bones to try and balance the calcium magnesium ratio needed for best muscle operation, because the operation of the muscles have first priority. Note: That means that too much calcium can cause as many bone problems as not enough calcium.
Chill out though, I’m giving you a couple of easy solutions to the “how do I know how much to give them?” question further down the page!
Too much magnesium is also just as bad as not enough.
Just like the “too much calcium” problem, too much magnesium and the body takes calcium from the bones in an attempt to balance the calcium to magnesium ratio for muscle operation, which we’ve already talked about as having priority. So too much magnesium weakens the bones too.
Sometimes a little bit of magnesium can produce dramatic improvement.
I’ve always got a story lol!
The most extreme example I had of magnesium deficiency was referred to me by a vet who thought the horse was having a nervous breakdown and needed a different sort of training. Well, most horses benefit from more understanding and a gentler training, but that wasn’t the cause here.
This horse had periods of trembling, followed by sudden mad dashing around the paddock, even running into fences occasionally.
The longer the distressed owner talked on the phone, the more it sounded to me like it could be magnesium deficiency. I asked her if she had any plain unscented Epsom salts in her bathroom – that same stuff you use for soaking tired and aching muscles in the bath.
She did have it. So while I had her on the phone, I got her to spoon some Epsom salts into her horses mouth. And while we talked and observed over the next few minutes, the trembling and the freaky behaviour just disappeared.
Just disappeared – THAT fast – MINUTES. Magnesium absorbs through the mucous membranes of the mouth and you can see the results very quickly.
If you can’t get magnesium into the horse’s mouth, you can put it in feed or water, but the results aren’t as quick to be observed.
Important note about epsom salts
Epsom salts is NOT suitable for magnesium supplementation, it’s too hard on the kidneys. It’s only suitable for one off emergencies like this.
So how can we get the right amount of magnesium into our horse?
The horse with the nervous breakdown in my story had been tested by the vet for magnesium and the test had come back “within normal range”, so clearly that kind of testing isn’t always accurate.
I’m an advanced kinesiologist, so I use kinesiology testing for how much magnesium to give. Anyone can use a pendulum though to test for simple things like this – I’ll put some links below for an article that contains videos for simple pendulum instructions. For those who think a pendulum might be a bit far out, you could check out the explanation for how and why it works on the links below.
Another way to get general magnesium supplementation if you’re inexperienced, is to put some in a second source of water and allow the horses to choose which water to drink. Horses are very sensible creatures when they have a choice.
Is spooking normal for your horse though?
If spooking is normal for a horse, then with some exceptions, you can be fairly certain that the horse is carrying a level of unnecessary fear and anxiety. See… the horse world considers spooking as a normal behavior, but it’s just not.
The vast majority of domesticated horses are carrying a level of nervousness and anxiety that has been caused by the way that they’ve been handled at certain times of their lives.
I’m darned if I’d be getting on a horse who had a tendency to spook – I value my body far too much and the ground gets harder every year lol! There’s even a bigger reason though, to not be riding a horse who has a tendency to spook – because it’s so easily fixable. So why would I take that risk, when that risk is so easily reduced, if not eliminated?
Chia seeds, horses and how to use a pendulum effectively
There’s more information about magnesium and different types of magnesium in this article about stringhalt. It’s a condition caused by magnesium deficiency and giving the horse magnesium is an essential component of the things that need to be done to bring a horse back to full health.
Early stringhalt warning for southern Australia
Today’s photo: Have you ever noticed that the more restrictive and confining gear there is on a horse, the more dramatic their behavior when things go wrong?
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