Show Notes
If you are spending money on joint supplements for your horse, or wondering whether that corticosteroid injection is really helping, this episode is essential listening. Dr. Nerida is joined by Renee Harbowy and Dr. Brian Nielsen from Michigan State University, two of the leading researchers in equine joint and bone health, for an honest, science-based conversation about what actually keeps horses sound for life. Renee shares the findings from her recently published research study examining whether glucosamine and chondroitin supplements improve lameness in horses with osteoarthritis, and what the results mean for every horse owner standing in front of a wall of joint supplements at the feed store. From there, the conversation covers equine joint health from the ground up. In this episode you’ll learn: What osteoarthritis actually does to joint tissue and why understanding this changes how you manage it Why movement is non-negotiable for cartilage health, and what happens to joints when horses are stalled The research on pastured versus stalled horses and what it means for how you manage your horse day to day Why nutrition from conception onwards is the foundation of lifetime joint soundness The trace minerals most commonly deficient in horse diets and why deficiencies during development cause problems that show up years later Dr Brian’s research on bone strength and the surprisingly small amount of exercise needed to maintain it The five things Renee considers most important for long-term joint health The truth about corticosteroid injections; what they actually do, and the risk of masking pain in performance horses Early warning signs that your horse’s joints may be struggling before obvious lameness appears Practical, actionable strategies for joint health regardless of your horse’s age, breed, or living situation Whether you have a young horse you are bringing up right, a performance horse in hard work, or an older horse starting to show their age, this conversation will change how you think about joint health and what you can actually do to help your horses have a long, sound, happy life! 🧪 Renee's full research paper can be found here (and it is well worth the read, beautifully written and a brilliant piece of science!): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13113781/ 🌟 If this episode helps you look at joint health a little differently, please follow the podcast so you don’t miss what’s coming next. 💛 And we'd love you to share it with a horse friend, especially someone with a young horse, an older horse, or a horse already struggling with joint issues. These are the conversations that can genuinely change how we manage horses for the better. 📲 And if you want help getting the nutrition side right, download the MyHappy.Horse app. It’s like having a practical, science-based equine nutritionist in your pocket, helping you feed with more confidence and less second-guessing. https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324
More from Happy Horse Nutrition
Ever looked at the feeding recommendations on a bag of horse feed or a bucket of supplements and wondered who decides how much you should feed? And do you really need to follow them? In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida takes you behind the scenes of horse feed and supplement formulation, drawing on more than 25 years of experience developing products and writing the feeding recommendations that appear on their labels. You will learn why some feeds recommend feeding large amounts while others recommend very little, how those feeding rates are calculated, and why feeding less than the recommended amount could leave your horse short of essential vitamins and minerals. We also explore what happens when you combine fortified feeds with vitamin and mineral supplements, why a 30 g supplement isn't necessarily better or worse than a 150 g supplement, and why feeding half the recommended dose of a gut health or hoof supplement might mean you're wasting your money. Plus, what should you do if your horse gets fat on the recommended feeding rate, or needs more feed than the manufacturer suggests? And Nerida mentions several times that the best way to know exactly what your horse is getting from its diet, is to run an diet analysis thorugh MyHappy.Horse, the equine nutrition app designed to help you feed with confidence and accuracy! You can check out MyHappy.Horse here 🩵 https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324
Knowing better is one thing. Actually changing what we do is something else entirely. In Part 2 of this conversation, Dr Nerida and veterinarian and social worker Dr Katherine Goldberg go deeper into the very human reasons horse management practices can be so hard to change. They use one of the simplest horse welfare changes as the perfect case study: feeding hay before you ride. Why does something so easy, with such clear benefits for our horses around gastric health, comfort and behaviour, still meet resistance? Then Nerida and Katherine jump back on after Pony Camp for a real-world update and put the psychology into practice, looking at decisional balance, why being the only person doing something differently can feel hard, and why sometimes the best way to create change is simply to keep modelling the better way, loudly and positively. Connect with Dr Katherine Goldberg Dr Katherine works with horse owners through Horses First Stewardship, helping people navigate horse care, feeding, track systems and those tricky situations where you know something needs to change, but you’re not quite sure what to do next. Website: https://www.horsesfirststewardship.com Email: [email protected]
Why is it that we can be told something is better for our horse... and still find it incredibly hard to change what we do? In Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Dr Nerida is joined again by Dr Katherine Goldberg, veterinarian and social worker, to turn the microscope away from the horse for a moment and onto the humans making the decisions. Because improving horse welfare and horse nutrition isn’t always as simple as giving people better information. Human behaviour is messy. We have habits, beliefs, identities, fears, practical limitations and social pressures, and sometimes the benefits of staying exactly where we are feel bigger than the benefits of changing, even when the science is telling us otherwise. Dr Katherine walks us through the psychology of behaviour change, including readiness for change, decisional balance and why some people simply aren’t ready to hear a new message yet. And then there’s information overload: the vet says one thing, the trainer says another, Facebook says something else again, and suddenly doing nothing feels easier than working out who to believe. If you’ve ever wondered why you or the horse people around you resist change, why better information isn’t always enough, or why knowing better doesn’t automatically mean doing better, this episode is for you. Part 2 continues next week. Connect with Dr Katherine Goldberg Dr Katherine works with horse owners through Horses First Stewardship, helping people navigate horse care, feeding, track systems and those tricky situations where you know something needs to change, but you’re not quite sure what to do next. Website: https://www.horsesfirststewardship.com Email: [email protected]
Bentley had been a healthy horse for years, until an injury, prolonged antibiotic treatment and a cascade of gut problems changed everything. Persistent colic, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, gastric ulcers and gas eventually led us to look more closely at his hindgut microbiome. In this episode, Dr Nerida shares Bentley’s roller-coaster ride case study, from microbiome testing and low microbial diversity, through increasing dietary fibre diversity and two faecal microbiota transplants (FMT), to the gradual return of a comfortable, happy horse. We also look at free faecal water, faecal pH, vitamin B2, fibre-fermenting bacteria and what Bentley’s before-and-after microbiome results might tell us about equine dysbiosis, gut health and colic risk. It’s a brilliant example of just how complex the horse hindgut is, and how much we still have to learn about rebuilding a disrupted microbiome. Have a listen and be sure to hang on for the highs and the lows of Bentley’s story ❤️
When it comes to fuelling performance, muscle glycogen and grain feeding get most of the attention, but that’s only half of the story. In this episode, Dr Nerida breaks down the dual fuel tank theory of performance horse nutrition: the finite store of muscle glycogen used for speed and high-intensity work, and the continuous supply of energy in the form of volatile fatty acids (VFAs) produced via fibre fermentation in the hindgut. We explore how these two fuel systems work together, how forage is an essential performance fuel, how the VFA acetate contributes directly to working muscle energy, and why overfeeding grain can undermine the hindgut fuel system that helps horses conserve glycogen for when they really need it. If you feed a racehorse, eventer, polo horse, endurance horse or other high-level athlete, this episode offers a different way to think about the way you structure your diets around forage and grain, to maximise muscle glycogen, gut health and performance.