A horse with a really rich, glowing coat is a lovely thing, but it’s not just vanity. It’s an easily trackable measure of overall health. Poor coat quality is not something you want to ignore. Colour in horses is an indicator of underlying health issues, often related to nutritional deficiencies, particularly in trace minerals.
Trace minerals don’t only support coat health, but a whole host of other crucial functions in the body. Fading is a symptom that other bodily functions are not being nutritionally supported, which can result in much more serious conditions. A horse that has a rusty or dull coat is more likely to suffer itch, have poor wound healing, weak and flaky hooves, and have trouble combatting a worm burden - amongst a range of other issues.
We want our client horses to have a rich, glossy, vibrant coat all the time. It’s not just aesthetically pleasing, but an indicator that you are avoiding a plethora of other health issues. A horse with balanced minerals generally needs less feed overall, which is saving you every day. You’re not buying topical treatments, shampoos and sprays that are not solving the problem long-term, because nutritional deficiency is the problem - and most importantly, every time you don’t call a vet you are saving thousands.
Here's a detailed look at how the balance of trace minerals affects a horse's coat colour and overall health:
Key Trace Minerals and Their Roles
Copper:
Function: Copper is essential for the production of melanin, the pigment responsible for coat colour. It also plays a role in connective tissue health, immune function, and red blood cell formation.
Deficiency Signs: A lack of copper can lead to a dull, faded coat, loss of hair pigment, and overall poor coat condition - you can see that. You can’t see how your copper deficiency is negatively impacting connective tissue (joint health), or blood health, until those symptoms become severe.
Zinc:
Function: Zinc is crucial for skin and coat health, as well as immune function and wound healing. It assists with managing parasite burden.
Deficiency Signs: Zinc deficiency can result in a rough, dull coat and most obviously, brittle, flakey hooves and skin issues - rain scald, greasy heel, and Itch. These are hell for your horse, and a nightmare to treat. It is avoidable. As soon as you see problematic skin issues, it’s worth looking at whether there is enough zinc in their diet (and for people!).
Iron:
Function: Iron is vital for oxygen transport in the blood and overall energy metabolism.
Too much of a trace mineral can be as disruptive to overall health as a deficiency. For example - it’s much more common for horses to have an iron overload than a deficiency with our iron-rich soils - but, since iron competes with copper and zinc for absorption, an imbalance in the opposite direction (excess) with other minerals can also affect coat colour and health.
We have done analyses of pastures that supply 5 x the recommended daily requirement of iron. As a result, horses on those pastures will need more copper and zinc to combat too much iron. Even if you appear to be supplementing adequate copper and zinc, poor coat colour shows us that trace minerals are still out of whack.
It is impossible to know - just by looking - the ratio of trace minerals in your pastures, hays and hard feeds. There are businesses that will conduct pasture and hay analyses and balance your diet against that, but the trouble is, as soon as you get a new batch of hay, or a change of season, you have to start over. Even if you buy hay in bulk - to accurately balance, you need to conduct an analysis several times a year.
If your horse has a devastating chronic illness, it might be a good path to go down until they become more stable. It's more accurate, but it’s labour-intensive and time-consuming, which makes it difficult to sustain individual analysis in the long-term.
This is why here at Sound Advice we use symptoms of deficiencies to tweak diets for individual horses. Colour is a window into whether your trace minerals are balanced.
Improving Coat Color and Health
Balanced Diet: Providing a diet that includes the right balance of trace minerals is crucial. We have conducted analyses of hay and pastures over many years and our Sound Advice Trace Mixes contain the optimal trace mixes on average.
We then rely on you - the horse owner to observe symptoms of deficiencies - of which coat colour is a primary indicator - to adjust supplements according to your horse’s individual needs.
Please take pictures often. Get in touch. If you see a change, we can adjust supplements to meet your horse’s individual needs.
If you are not supplying additional copper, zinc and iodine (iodine is a mineral we’ll talk about in another article), and no - pellets don’t count - then our Trace Mixes are a great place to start. Then, over time we can adjust different supplements to your individual horse.
Your horse can be glossy, shiny and radiantly healthy all the time. If you commit to optimal nutrition from the get-go, your horse can be sound and productive well into their twenties and even thirties.
Colour is trackable, and an easy place to start taking control of your horse's overall health. Don’t ignore it.
We offer Trace Mix at 25% discount in our 10kg Stud Pack which is a year's supply for one horse. If your horse is a fussy-eater you can try NEW Sounds Yummier - improves palatability and has health benefits of its own.
We have recently made a change to our Trace Mix. We are now using Himalayan salt as a base. While, at the end of the day, salt is salt - pool salt is designed for pool maintenance with a focus on compatibility with pool systems, while Himalayan salt is valued for its mineral content and use in culinary and health applications. We like it because it is less processed.
This Himalayan salt is sourced from the Khewra Mountains in the Himalayas. It is food grade, and we are also selling it on its own. You can feed it to your horses, or you can use it in your own cooking.
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