Argamak Stud

They may be small, but ponies are tough and hardy and their nutritional requirements differ from a horse’s. Here’s how to feed your pony like a pony. by Kerri-Jo Stewart as published in the current issue of Equine Wellness Magazine Ponies aren’t horses. That means they can’t be fed the same way you would feed [...]

You can now test your racehorses for speed through Equinome. They have developed a genetic test for Thoroughbreds for the C:C (short), C:T (middle) and T:T (long) genes. C:C -likely to be a fast, early maturing horse that performs well as a two-year-old. Average best distance – 6.5 f (1300 m) C:T -mixture of speed [...]

Preliminary study of jointed snaffle vs. crossunder bitless bridles: Quantified comparison of behaviour in four horses. W. R. Cook and D. S. Mills, Equine Veterinary Journal (2009) 41(1) Abstract: The study tested the null hypothesis that if a horse is ridden in a snaffle bridle and then a crossunder bitless bridle, there will be no [...]

Endurance people take note! Your horses are affected by transportation. They are amazing creatures, but they do need time to recover fully following transportation. They also have increased susceptibility to disease in the 24 hours following transportation. Also, they are less stressed and less likely to get sick if their heads are not tied during [...]

Hess et al. (1) conducted an interesting supplementation trial on horses during an endurance race with an international group*. They found that electrolytes with high Sodium and without Potassium, combined with a higher Calcium feed were advantageous to the horses and potentially decreases pull rates. Clinical signs that are typically seen in horses when they [...]

The dietary cation-anion difference (DCAD) of a feed can be used to characterize large animal diets. DCAD (also known as DCAB or dietary cation-anion balance) of the diet is a major determinant of blood SID as the strong ions enter the blood from the digestive tract (Riond 2000). DCAD is the difference between the strong [...]

Neilsen and Spooner of Michigan State did a post hoc study of research looking at changes in bone as a result of either nutrition or exercise. The interest in decreasing skeletal injury in horses is of course of great practical importance to horse owners and trainers. They found that it is exercise that causes improvements [...]

Here is an abstract of research from Northern Arizona University finding that stallions were faster than both mares and geldings. Looking at the results for Thoroughbred, the stallions were lengths ahead of the mares at the 1600m (or less) races and there was twice as much difference between them at races over 1600m. Do racehorses [...]

There is a paucity of scientific data on massage therapy (Lovas et al. 2002). The few studies performed using objective measurements have methodological flaws. Scientific evidence currently does not support nor refute claims made by massage advocates. Although many studies find that massage may be beneficial, researchers also discuss the lack of objective measures and [...]

The type of feed the horse eats is what determines what fuel is available for the horse to use during exercise. So it is important to figure out the optimal diet for your horses. Although there has been research showing the benefits of fat supplementation over feeding grain in equine diets, many people still prefer [...]