If you read the ingredients in most feeds, you will find there is no real food, just lots of overly processed grains, corn, sugars, fillers, soy, artificial and synthetic ingredients that the horse is not really meant to eat. Even the "natural" feeds being put out today along with the so called supplements that are supposed to help your horses, have been steering away from being pure. I personally like to know where my vitamins/minerals are coming from and prefer to get them from food instead of in pill form. This is why, feeding herbs along with a pelleted forage base best for  horses as this is what they are meant to eat and digest. Herbs not only have amazing nutritional properties but, can heal on multiple levels, though there are some professionals who don't believe in their healing power. By healing, I don't necessarily mean "cure", I mean, healing in the sense of bringing relief to specific ailments your horse may be going through.

​

Here's a big truth. Weight and a shiny coat are NOT a sign that your horse is healthy. We pump our horses full of medications, vaccines and overly processed food and band-aid everything up, that if we don't see something, we think they are fine. We need to look deeper, to heal deeper and to understand why we see some of the things we see when our horses aren't feeling good or acting normal. We need to stop covering up symptoms by suppressing them and feed the body. We need to understand that mares for example, have many hormonal disruptions. They have cramps, they can get PMS, they can have too much estrogen (soy) and we need to help balance them instead of claiming they have the "mare stare". This goes for geldings as well. We need to understand that allergies are a immune response, which tells us something is deficient in the body. We need to treat and feed our horses as nature intended. We need to get to the root cause. We need to not band-aid pain, but feed the bones and joints so they can heal on some level. 

​

To quote Dr. Bill Vanergrift, the equine nutritionist who formulated the Triple Crown feed line. "In the last 20 years or so, horse owners are realizing that there are better ways to feed and treat our horses as they are pushed more to be top athletes and are willing to invest more on proper diet alone.  The number of horses experiencing musculoskeletal and respiratory function disorders has risen." He goes on to say, "traditional veterinarian medicine has not been able to make significant progress towards treating many of these horses; so in part out of desperation and in part out of a renewed respect for alternative therapies, the use of herbal products, homeopathy, acupuncture, massage therapy, chiropractic care and even aromatherapy has increased dramatically."

​

Herbs have been used by both human and animals for thousands of years. There was a time when every thing came from the earth and were sought out. Wild horses still do this today. They have been found seeking the plant /root/flower, etc, they need to help relieve certain symptoms or give them nutritional value. Dr. Eloy, a research scientist of chemical biology, ecology and medicinal chemistry at Cornell University has coined the self medication of animals Zoopharmacognosy.