Summer 2008
Well summer is finally here, and to borrow from the song, the "living is easy"! Long summer days mean plenty of time to ride our horses and hopefully enjoy their company. Even mucking out becomes a joy on a beautiful summer morning, when most people are still in their beds and only the birds are up and about! It is a long way off the dark days of winter!
Most of us get around to doing some form of show or event during the summer and as is so often the case ensuring your horse's diet is right can help to ensure his or her performance is at their best. Katie Williams, our head of nutrition explores how you can get energy into your horse for the show ring, but without the side effect of silliness! It is a little known fact that even "low-energy" coarse mixes often have between 18 - 22% starch and some competition or conditioning mixes can go as high as 57%. All that sugar can be counter productive when you are trying to get a calm and responsive dressage test or jumping round out of your horse so read Katie's article to get some helpful advice on how to achieve the performance but avoid the fizz!
With summer often comes hard ground which can cause havoc with your horse's feet – Horn that is brittle is particularly susceptible to problems in these conditions and even simple things like the early morning dew on the paddocks followed by hot and dry heat of the day can lead to cracking. Tracey Hammond has some useful advice on how you can easily tweak your horse's diet to ensure his feet will cope with what ever summer throws at them.
Don't forget to look out for the free prize draw – this quarter we are giving away a Membership Ticket for two to Burghley Horse Trials for one lucky Dengie Club member, as well as the chance to get £5 off Dengie Natural Vitality Supplements when purchasing a bag of one of our Alfa-A products – so you can really ensure your horse will be best in show this summer!
Emma
