HorseSense p 1

A Practical & Natural Horse Management Handbook

Featuring DYNAMITE® Specialty Products

by Rowan Emrys

Published by

Rowan Emrys, Fort Collins, Colorado

HorseSense p 2

Cover & Section Frontispiece photos: © Sandi Evans Photography - www.sandievans.com - used with permission

—— Cover: HorsePower Pete - Tom Evans’ DYNAMITE® gelding

Section Frontispiece photos: DYNAMITE® Quarab mare & Big Mac Tivio daughter, JD Tsilken Ayissa (Missy) owned by Sandi’s mother, distributor Norma Helliwell

—— These photos, and others, are available for sale as wall art, note cards, or computer wallpaper & screensavers

www.sandievans.com

HorseSense Copyright © 2005 Rowan Emrys

All rights reserved. Printed in the USA. No part of this Handbook may be used or reproduced in any manner

whatsoever without written permission of the author/publisher. Discount given with purchase of 10+.

WWW.TARRYALL.NET

This handbook is written as a source of information only. The information contained in this book should in no

way be considered as a substitute for the advice of a competent professional holistic health care provider.

The author/publisher hereby disclaims any liability for any adverse effects arising from

the use or application of information contained herein.

1st Printing ▪ September 2005 2nd Printing ▪ November 2005

Dedicated to all our Equine Teachers

present either in body or spirit.

Title Page Big Mac Tivio - drawing by Ronald May Owned by Rowan Emrys & John Hanna

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Contents

Preface 4

Part 1: Basic Nutrition 5 Equine History . . .6 Digestive Tract . . . 7

Water . . . 9 Forage . . . 11 Minerals . . . 14

Supplements . . . 17 Grains . . . 18

Detoxing . . . 20

Part 2: Important Considerations 21

Breeding . . . .22 Oral Health . . . 28 Hoof Care . . . 32

Lodging & Education . . . 35 Beyond Grooming . . . 38 Parasite Control . . . 41

Vaccines . . . 45

Part 3: What About . . . 49 Allergies . . . 50 Attitude . . . 51

Breeding . . . . 52 Chewing & Cribbing . . . 53

Colic . . . 54 EPM . . . 55

Founder, Laminitis & Navicular . . . 56 Geriatrics . . . 57 Gelding . . . 58 Hauling . . . 59 Injuries . . . 60

Overweight & Cushings . . . 61 Race & Competition . . .62

Tie-Up & EPSM . . . 63 Ulcers . . . 64

Underweight . . . 65 Unthriftiness . . . 66

Water Additives . . . .67 Worming & Vaccinations . . .68

Wound Care . . . 69 Various Health Challenges . . . 71

The Very Last Word . . . 79 Resources . . . 80

Interesting Facts . . . 81 More Quotes . . . 82

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Preface My husband, John Hanna, and I bred AQHA horses for over 40

years. In all that time, we found ourselves explaining over and over

again our more natural approach to the care of our horses, much of

which was built on our involvement in human health and nutrition. It

was in explaining those needs for basic care and nutrition over many

years that this Handbook was born in its earliest forms.

Many people have asked us why we use the DYNAMITE® Specialty

Products. To determine appropriate nutritional requirements, Jim

Zamzow, Founder & CEO of DYNAMITE® Marketing, learned from

the horses themselves by following wild herds in a helicopter and

analyzing their diet. The very positive rewards of using these

formulations, and other DYNAMITE® Specialty Products, with our

own, and hundreds of other horses with which we have dealt, is the

answer. They work.

As Jim’s grandmother, Carmalita Zamzow, who, along with her

husband August founded the original Zamzow’s Feed Stores in Boise

ID back in 1931, said: “the proof is in the pudding!”

Now, with over twelve years of DYNAMITE® experience under our

belts, and my attaining the rare Gold Director level in the

DYNAMITE® organization, I believe that it is in the interest of the

total health and good of the horse - its mental, emotional & physical

health - to make this latest Handbook incarnation available to all.

However it is important to remember that working with horses is as

much an art as a science. Each horse is an individual with individual

needs; therefore variables abound and mechanistic approaches are

bound to fail. Because of this, please use this information as only a

guide; ultimately depend on your own eyes and perhaps newly

educated instincts.

Rowan Emrys

September 2005

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Part 1: Basic Nutrition

Part 1

HorseSense p 6

H orses, equus caballus, developed on the stark, windy Eurasian

steppes over hundreds of thousands of years. As prey animals

that lived in a herd society, they became ideally suited to their harsh

environment with distance vision, keen hearing, an almost

miraculous ability to read both their environment and their fellow

herd members, and legs and hooves made for running swiftly away

from danger.

Humans have been associated with horses for at least thirty-five

thousand years, originally for food, then transportation, and always

for art and myth. Exactly when a human actually first dared to climb

on the back of a horse is lost in the mists of time, but when it did

happen, the history of both horse and human changed forever. The

added height and speed enabled ancient humans to expand their

territory, view distant sights, and wage more effective warfare. Over

a period of time, various regions became famous for their horses and

their training methods and thus was born the art of horsemanship.

As humans relied more and more on horses for partnership in their

endeavors, handling techniques grew more sophisticated. Two

thousand years ago, the Greek horseman Xenophon wrote the earliest

treatise on horsemanship that has survived into the present. And it is

still valid in the present, reading much like a modern resistance-free

educational text with sound management practices.

In all this time, the basic physiological & psychological needs of

horses have not changed even though modern breeds have diverged

widely in both appearance and temperament. With all of our dealings

with horses, we must never forget their basic, intrinsic needs and

natures or we will pay the price in unthrifty, unhappy, and perhaps

dangerous horses requiring constant specialized care to keep them,

perhaps futilely, from breaking down physically and mentally. Al

Grandchamp of Montana, one of Ray Hunt’s teachers, said it best:

Horses: ...are governed by the law of self-preservation.

...resist pressure.

...are creatures of habit.

...have elephant-like memories.

...have one-track minds.

...are animals of instinct, not logic.

Horses are horses.

Their behavior is such and not anthropomorphic.

Lest we deprive ourselves of the exhilaration and accomplishment

that comes from winning the trust and companionship of such a

magnificent creature, let’s get some HORSESENSE!

EQUINE HISTORY

A horse is a thing of such beauty. . .none will tire of looking at him as long as he displays himself in his splendor. Xenophon, THE ART OF HORSEMANSHIP

The "Chinese" Horse Painted in yellow on the cave ceiling Lascaux, France, early period, 15,000-13,500 BC Douglas Mazonowicz Gallery of Prehistoric Painting, New York City

At 35,000 years old, mankind's earli-est work of art carved from mammoth ivory and found in Vogelgerd Cave in Germany - on exhibit at the Baden-Wurttemberg University Museum.

Pegasus - mythical son of Medusa & Poseidon, a white stallion with golden wings & hooves, also represented an

aspect of the Great Goddess

Part 1

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H ealth for every species begins with digestion. Hence, we need

to understand the equine digestive tract in order to know how to

feed for the best health possible. Without this understanding, a horse

can indeed become a “hay burner” with less than optimum health and

resistance to disease. Although far too many owners think that all

herbivores are identical, in reality, horses are classed as monogastric

herbivores meaning they have a single stomach (unlike such rumi-

nants as cattle and sheep) and their natural diet consists only of large

amounts of grasses and some herbs. In fact, it is through the constant

supply of naturally dried grasses that horses were able to keep warm

on the open steppes; the digestive process created body heat which

was then maintained by almost constant movement. So let us take a

quick tour of the gastro-intestinal tract of an average horse . . .

Mouth & throat - Equine digestion begins in the mouth as

horses nip forage off with their incisors or front teeth. They

then grind a large amount of the resultant cellulose with their

powerful molars, or back teeth, in a side-to-side, almost cir-

cular motion mixing it with saliva to form a moist, mucous-

laden bolus. Three pairs of glands (parotid, submaxillary, &

sublingual) produce up to 10 gallons of saliva per day in

healthy, mature horses. The bolus then travels down their

long, approximately 4½ ft., esophagus, essentially a muscular

tube, to reach the stomach. As a grazer, the horse is designed

to both eat and drink with its head down and is subject to

choke, poor thyroid function and even strain on the front

hooves and legs if they eat from a head-raised position.

Upper gut - The Upper Gut is comprised of the stomach and

the small intestine. The stomach has an 8-17 quart capacity;

only 10% of the entire digestive tract whereas in cattle, the

stomach equals 70% of the total. Since equine stomachs can

hold only .3% of their body weight at any one time, this

means that they are designed to eat constant small amounts of

high fibrous food. The stomach then empties into the 17’, 48

quart capacity small intestine; this is where most of the pro-

tein, fat, vitamins and minerals contained in forage are di-

gested via various enzymes. Since the horse has no gall blad-

der, bile constantly flows into the small intestine from the

liver. Nutrients are then absorbed through the walls of the small in-

testine into the blood and delivered to various cellular structures.

Nearly 50-70% of carbohydrate digestion and absorption, and almost

all amino acid absorption, occurs in the small intestine.

Hindgut - Equines have the largest, most complex Hindgut of any

domestic animal. It is designed to have a constant supply of fiber in

order to maintain normal gastrointestinal pH, motility, and function.

DIGESTIVE TRACT

Horse thou art truly a creature without equal, for thou fliest without wings and conquerest without sword. The Koran

Part 1