Topic:Minerals
Minerals are inorganic elements that are essential for various physiological functions in horses. They are involved in numerous biological processes, including bone formation, nerve function, and enzyme activity. Key minerals required by horses include calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium, and trace elements such as zinc, copper, and selenium. The balance and bioavailability of these minerals are important for maintaining optimal health and performance in horses. This page compiles peer-reviewed research studies and scholarly articles that explore the roles, dietary requirements, and effects of mineral imbalances on equine health and performance.
Bioaccumulation of Mineral Elements in Different Biological Substrates of Athletic Horse from Messina, Italy. The objective of this study was to evaluate the levels and the potential bioaccumulation of vanadium (V), chromium (Cr), cobalt (Co), copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), and bismuth (Bi) in horses from the industrial risk area of Sicily (Italy). Different biological substrates (whole blood, serum; tail and mane) and samples of hay, concentrate and water provided to the horses were processed by means of Thermo Scientific iCAP-Q ICP-MS spectrometer for mineral concentration. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was applied to show the differences in various trace elements in the bio...
Applications, challenges, and strategies in the use of nanoparticles as feed additives in equine nutrition. The rapid expansion of nanotechnology has been transforming the food industry by increasing market share and expenditure. Although nanotechnology offers promising benefits as feed additives, their usage in equines is primarily geared toward immunotherapy, hyper-immunization techniques, drug delivery systems, grooming activities, and therapeutic purposes. Nanoparticles could be engaged as alternatives for antibiotic feed additives to prevent foal diarrhea. Gold nanoparticles are proved to provide beneficial effects for racehorses by healing joint and tendon injuries. Because of the poor bioavai...
Variation of Hematochemical Profile and Vitamin E Status in Feral Giara Horses From Free Grazing in the Wild to Hay Feeding During Captivity. Wildlife protection and management are important priorities for landscape identity and biodiversity preservation. Feeding practices of fauna confined in facilities during temporary captivity are fundamental to support animal health and natural behavior. Appropriate provision of feedstuffs appears to be necessary to support the best practices in respect of animal species-specific natural diet. This investigation explored the variation of the metabolic profile by means of selected metabolite and respective circulating levels in a group feral Giara horses undergoing the change of the diet, moving...
Relationships of inflamm-aging with circulating nutrient levels, body composition, age, and pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction in a senior horse population. Similarly to aged humans, senior horses (≥20 years) exhibit chronic low-grade inflammation systemically, known as inflamm-aging. Inflamm-aging in the senior horse has been characterized by increased circulating inflammatory cytokines as well as increased inflammatory cytokine production by lymphocytes and monocytes in response to a mitogen. Little is currently known regarding underlying causes of inflamm-aging. However, senior horses are also known to present with muscle wasting and often the endocrinopathy pituitary pars intermedia dysfunction (PPID). Despite the concurrence of these phenom...
Evaluation of dietary trace mineral supplementation in young horses challenged with intra-articular lipopolysaccharide. Sixteen weanling Quarter Horses (255 ± 22 kg) were utilized in a 56-d trial to evaluate the effects of trace mineral (TM) source on intra-articular inflammation following a single acute inflammatory insult. Horses were stratified by age, sex, and BW and then randomly assigned to dietary treatment: concentrate formulated with Zn, Mn, Cu, and Co as inorganic sources (CON; n = 8) or complexed TMs (CTM; n = 8). Added TM were formulated at iso-levels across treatments and intakes met or exceeded NRC requirements. Horses were offered 1.75% BW (as-fed) of treatment concentrate and 0.75% BW (as-fed) ...
Nutrient content changes from steaming or soaking timothy-alfalfa hay: effects on feed preferences and acute glycemic response in Standardbred racehorses1. Soaking hay and steaming hay are strategies that are used to reduce respirable dust particles for horses but may result in variable nutrient losses, including nonstructural carbohydrates (NSC) and minerals. Since these losses have not been quantified in Canadian hay yet, the first aim of this study was to identify nutrient losses from first-cut timothy-alfalfa hay grown in southern Ontario, Canada, after soaking for 30 min or steaming for 60 min. It is uncertain whether horses prefer hay when it is dry, soaked, or steamed. To address this, 13 Standardbred racehorses were offered 2 of these hay...
The total content of toxic elements in horsehair given the level of essential elements. Elemental status of 214 mares aged 3-7 years from 11 breeds was studied: Arabian purebred (n = 20), Bashkir (n = 20), Kabarda (n = 20), Vyatka (n = 20), Tuva (n = 19), Yakutsk (n = 30), Mezenskaya (n = 20), Thoroughbred (n = 20), Akhal-Teke (n = 20), Russian trotter (n = 15), Soviet Heavy Draft (n = 10) bred in 13 regions of Russia. The research objective is to study the content of chemical elements in hair from the horse's mane, depending on the sum of toxic elements in animal hair expressed in moles. The elemental composition of the hair was defined by atomic emission and mass spectrometry (...
The content of essential and toxic elements in the hair of the mane of the trotter horses depending on their speed. A study on the Russian trotting breeds was conducted to assess the impact of horses' sporting results and the degree of accumulation of chemical elements in the hair. In the first phase of the research, the elemental composition of the mane hair of trotter horses (n = 215) was studied. Based on these studies, percentile intervals for the distribution of concentrations of chemical elements in the hair have been established, and the values of 25 and 75 percentile adopted as a "physiological standard" have been defined. In the second stage of the research into clinically healthy Russian trott...
Morphology and elemental analysis of free range and stabled Polish Konik horses hair using Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Hair is a more biologically stable material than other tissues and contains a relatively constant level of minerals, drugs or toxins. The content of essential elements in hair depends on dietary and non-dietary factors. The aim of this study was to assess and compare the effect of diet on the elemental composition and morphological properties of the hair of healthy Polish Konik horses. Mane hair was collected from 19 horses living in The National Park in Popielno in Poland. Six of these horses were free-ranged all year with permanent access to pasture, while 13 horses were kept in the stable a...
Effect of exercise on apparent total tract digestibility of nutrients and faecal recovery of ADL and TiO2 in ponies. Exercise and physical training are known to affect gastrointestinal function and digestibility in horses and can lead to inaccurate estimates of nutrient and energy digestibility when markers are used. The effect of exercise on apparent nutrient digestibility and faecal recoveries of ADL and TiO2 was studied in six Welsh pony geldings subjected to either a low- (LI) or high-intensity (HI) exercise regime according to a cross-over design. Ponies performing LI exercise were walked once per day for 45 min in a horse walker (5 km/h) for 47 consecutive days. Ponies submitted to HI exercise were gra...
Impact of Micronutrients on the Immune Response of Animals. Vitamins and minerals (micronutrients) play an important role in regulating and shaping an immune response. Deficiencies generally result in inadequate or dysregulated cellular activity and cytokine expression, thereby affecting the immune response. Decreased levels of natural killer, granulocyte, and phagocytic cell activity and T and B cell proliferation and trafficking are associated with inadequate levels of micronutrients, as well as increased susceptibility to various adverse health conditions, including inflammatory disorders, infection, and altered vaccine efficacy. In addition, most s...
Advanced nutritional and stem cells approaches to prevent equine metabolic syndrome. Horses metabolic disorders have become an important problem of modern veterinary medicine. Pathological obesity, insulin resistance and predisposition toward laminitis are associated with Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS). Based on pathogenesis of EMS, dietary and cell therapy management may significantly reduce development of this disorder. Special attention has been paid to the diet supplementation with highly bioavailable minerals and mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) which increase insulin sensitivity. In nutrition, there is a great interests in natural algae enriched via biosorption process with...
Biochemical analysis of some serum trace elements in donkeys and horses in Eastern region of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Little is known about the serum levels of trace elements in donkeys and horses in Saudi Arabia. This study aimed to investigate the levels of some trace elements in these two species in the eastern region of Saudi Arabia and to compare the obtained results with the reference values. Methods: Seventeen Arabian horses and twenty eight Hassawi donkeys were randomly selected for this study. All of the studied healthy animals were kept under a uniform feeding protocol without any minerals supplementations. Atomic absorption spectrometer is used to estimate the serum concentrations of selenium (Se),...
Influences of different dietary contents of macrominerals on the availability of trace elements in horses. In this study, influences of a reduced macromineral intake on the trace element metabolism in horses at maintenance were investigated. Background of this study is the revised recommendation on the macromineral supply for horses (GfE ). Balance studies on three adult pony geldings with body weights of 405 / 348 / 384 kg were performed to obtain data on apparent digestibility (aD), retention and serum concentrations of different trace elements (Cu, Zn, Se) at different dietary macromineral levels. A mineral supplement or a complementary feed-with a reduced macromineral content-was added to a ha...
Trace elements in struvite equine enteroliths: Concentration, speciation and influence of diet. Equine enteroliths ∼1.5cm in diameter were collected from an Arabian horse in Louisville, Kentucky, United States. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and light microscope imaging of a sectioned enterolith showed two distinct regions of concentric growth outward from the central nidus, a small pebble. After initial growth, acidic colonic fluids permeated the stone inducing recrystallization and alteration of crystals closest to the nidus. A second growth event, when mineral crystallization was again favorable, produced an outer region of unaltered crystals at the rim. The mineral was identifi...
Interlaboratory trial for the measurement of total cobalt in equine urine and plasma by ICP-MS. Cobalt is an essential mineral micronutrient and is regularly present in equine nutritional and feed supplements. Therefore, cobalt is naturally present at low concentrations in biological samples. The administration of cobalt chloride is considered to be blood doping and is thus prohibited. To control the misuse of cobalt, it was mandatory to establish an international threshold for cobalt in plasma and/or in urine. To achieve this goal, an international collaboration, consisting of an interlaboratory comparison between 5 laboratories for the urine study and 8 laboratories for the plasma stud...
Effects of Different Oral Doses of Sodium Chloride on the Basal Acid-Base and Mineral Status of Exercising Horses Fed Low Amounts of Hay. The provision of NaCl, according to current recommendations, to horses in moderate work has been shown to induce immediate postprandial acidosis. The present study aimed to clarify whether this NaCl induced acidosis i) persists beyond the immediate postprandial period, and ii) is still present after a 2 week adaptation period. Six adult warmblood mares in moderate work received daily 1.00 kg hay per 100 kg body weight (bwt) only together with 0.64 kg unprocessed cereal grains/100 kg bwt.d as fed basis. Using a 3x3 Latin Square, either 0 (NaCl-0), 50 (NaCl-50) or 100 (NaCl-100) g NaCl/d were fe...
On the mineral core of ferritin-like proteins: structural and magnetic characterization. It is generally accepted that the mineral core synthesized by ferritin-like proteins consists of a ferric oxy-hydroxide mineral similar to ferrihydrite in the case of horse spleen ferritin (HoSF) and an oxy-hydroxide-phosphate phase in plant and prokaryotic ferritins. The structure reflects a dynamic process of deposition and dissolution, influenced by different biological, chemical and physical variables. In this work we shed light on this matter by combining a structural (High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) and Fe K-edge X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS)) and a magneti...
Phosphorus digestibility and phytate degradation by yearlings and mature horses. Inorganic P is often added to growing horse diets because organic P, or phytate-P, is believed to have lower digestibility. If horses can efficiently digest organic P, then the need for inorganic P may be reduced. Much of the P in grain-based concentrates fed to growing horses is in the form of phytate-P. Little is known about the ability of growing horses to degrade phytate-P or whether horse age affects mineral digestion in horses. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of age on P, Ca, and Mg digestibility as well as phytate-P degradation. Four yearling geldings and 4 mature ...
Organic matter and macromineral digestibility in domestic rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) as compared to other hindgut fermenters. It is generally assumed that animal species differ in physiological characteristics of their digestive tract. Because investigating digestive processes is often labour-intensive, requiring lengthy adaptation and collection periods, comparisons are often made on the basis of data collated from different studies. We added a new data set on dietary crude fibre (CF) and macromineral (Na, K, Ca, P, Mg) composition and apparent digestibility (aD) of organic matter (OM) and macrominerals in rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus; a total of 180 measurements with 12 individuals and 10 different diets) to a li...
Bovine and equine peritubular and intertubular dentin. Dentin contains 1-2μm diameter tubules extending from the pulp cavity to near the junction with enamel. Peritubular dentin (PTD) borders the tubule lumens and is surrounded by intertubular dentin (ITD). Differences in PTD and ITD composition and microstructure remain poorly understood. Here, a (∼200nm)(2), 10.1keV synchrotron X-ray beam maps X-ray fluorescence and X-ray diffraction simultaneously around tubules in 15-30μm thick bovine and equine specimens. Increased Ca fluorescence surrounding tubule lumens confirms that PTD is present, and the relative intensities in PTD and ITD correspon...
Effects of added chelated trace minerals, organic selenium, yeast culture, direct-fed microbials, and Yucca schidigera extract in horses. Part I: Blood nutrient concentration and digestibility. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that feed additives such as chelated minerals, organic Se, yeast culture, direct-fed microbials, and Yucca schidigera extract would improve nutrient digestibility when included in an equine diet. Horses (Quarter Horse geldings 4.5 to 16 yr of age; mean BW 522 kg ± 46 kg) were acclimated to 100% pelleted diets formulated with (ADD) and without (CTRL) commercially available sources of the aforementioned additives followed by a 14-d collection period of feces and urine. Chelated sources of Cu, Zn, Mn and Co were utilized versus sulfated form...
Influence of laxatives on gastric emptying in healthy Warmblood horses evaluated with the D-xylose absorption test. The use of laxatives is crucial in the treatment of horses with large colon impaction. To reach the impacted mass, the laxative must leave the stomach and pass through the small intestine. The aim of this study was to determine whether the most frequently used saline and lubricant laxatives influence gastric emptying. Six fasted normal adult Warmblood horses were used in a randomized study design with five laxative trials (1.8% sodium sulfate [1.8% Na2SO4], 4.2% magnesium sulfate [4.2% MgSO4], mineral oil [MOil], 25% sodium sulfate [25% Na2SO4], 25% magnesium sulfate [25% MgSO4]) and two trial...
Fresh and preserved green fodder modify effects of urinary acidifiers on urine pH of horses. Hay stabilises urine pH in horses. It is unknown whether this is an effect of structure or of chemical composition. In this study, four ponies (230-384 kg body weight [BW]) were fed six different diets with either a structure or a composition similar to hay with and without acidifiers in a cross-over experimental design in amounts to maintain body weight with the following main compounds: Fresh grass (GRASS), alfalfa hay (ALF), grass cobs (COBS), grass silage (SIL), straw (STR) or extruded straw (STRe) for 2 to 10 days. Urine pH was measured in all trials, blood pH, blood base excess and bicar...
Phosphorus balance and fecal losses in growing Standardbred horses in training fed forage-only diets. This study examined the P balance and fecal P losses in growing Standardbred horses in training fed a forage-only diet with or without P supplementation and assessed the magnitude and proportion of the soluble, inorganic P (Pi) fraction in feces. Fourteen Standardbred horses (aged 20.0 ± 0.3 mo) adapted to ad libitum intake of grass forage containing 0.25% P were used in a crossover experiment investigating 2 dietary treatments with (high-P) and without (low-P) mineral supplementation for 6 d. Daily feed intake and refusals were weighed. Spot samples of feces were collected twice daily on d 4...
Effect of sea buckthorn berries and pulp in a liquid emulsion on gastric ulcer scores and gastric juice pH in horses. Sea buckthorn berries (Hippophae rhamnoides) are rich in vitamin C and E, carotenoids, flavonoids, fatty acids, plant sterols, lignans, and minerals. A feed supplement containing sea buckthorn berries might have efficacy in treatment and prevention of gastric ulcers in horses. Objective: To test the efficacy of a commercially available formulation of sea buckthorn berries and pulp (SeaBuck SBT Gastro-Plus) for treatment and prevention of gastric ulcers in stall-confined horses. Methods: Eight Thoroughbred and Thoroughbred-cross horses (3-10 years of age, 5 geldings and 3 mares, 380-600 kg body...
A survey on the feeding of eventing horses during competition. This study aims at the comparison of the actual feeding of horses with the recommendations from the literature, and it studies the effects of feeding and exercise on several blood metabolic parameters before and after exercise. Blood samples were collected from 25 horses during one-star eventing competitions and evaluated for blood glucose, insulin, lactate, free fatty acids and triglyceride levels. Questionnaires on the feeding practices of the horses were evaluated. The questionnaires revealed that during training, and on tournament days, horses received on average 4.3 kg of concentrate per ...
[Seasonal and national differences in the selenium supply of horses across Europe]. Evaluation of the differences in the selenium supply to horses across Europe. Methods: Serum samples from 137,152 horses all over Europe, which had been sent by veterinarians to IDEXX Vet Med Labor between January 1st 2006 and December 31st 2011, were routinely analyzed for the selenium concentration by means of ICP-analytic. Results: The selenium content of the soil appears to play a key role in the selenium supply to horses. Countries closer to the ocean provided a better selenium supply than countries in central Europe. The best selenium supply can be seen in Denmark and in the Netherlands....