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ES Insulin dysregulation in horses: a new epidemic or a new perspective?
March 21, 2025
There are things that sound too good to be true. A single nugget that contains everything your horse needs. Easy, complete, scientifically balanced. A magical mix that promises you never have to worry about anything again. Only... that is not how nutrition works. And certainly not physiology.
Let me take you through a thought experiment. Suppose you were served the exact same ready-made menu every single day. Always the same amount, always the same thing. Would that keep you healthy? Probably not. Your body needs variety, flexibility, and alignment with your physical and mental exertion. And horses are no different in that regard.
Yet I see it happening constantly in practice: stables where every horse gets the exact same all-around feed pellet, regardless of age, workload, medical history, or access to roughage. And when something goes wrong, we just throw another supplement on top of it. Because that is the deeply ingrained mindset: problems are solved with a pill—or a powder.
Many commercial feeds claim to be ‘complete,’ but if you base that on NRC or CVB nutritional standards, you quickly end up with holes in the story. Important trace elements such as selenium, iodine, or zinc are missing or present in questionable forms. Ratios are incorrect. Or synthetic fillers are used that actually hinder absorption.
And that is not even mentioning the interactions between nutrients. Calcium affects the absorption of zinc, copper competes with iron, manganese can interfere with selenium... So one standard kibble can contain ‘everything’ on paper, but that says little about what the body actually absorbs and uses.
A piece of feed by itself is never good or bad. It is all about the context. What forage is the horse getting? What is the quality of the hay or grass? Is it being worked? Is there stress? What does the manure look like? What do the blood test results say? What signals is the horse itself giving?
Anyone who doesn't look into that and relies solely on a bag of feed is feeding at random. As if you're reaching blindly into a cupboard and hoping the right thing comes out.
Good nutrition is like tuning an orchestra. It requires harmony, nuance, and a trained ear for what is out of tune. You do not solve a magnesium deficiency simply by adding magnesium. Nor does a balancer work as a miracle cure if the roughage itself is out of balance.
The myth of the magic mix is persistent. And understandable. It is easy. It offers a false sense of security. But those who look further see that true health begins with understanding, with analyzing, with daring to adapt. Not with ‘just keeping on giving the same thing, because he's been getting that for years and he's doing well on it’.
There That is the essence. It is not the horse that must fit the feed, but the feed that must fit the horse. And that changes. Through seasons, through age, through work, through health. A magical mix that covers all of that at once does not exist.
Whoever dares to acknowledge that takes the first step toward true nourishment. Not filling. Nourishing!
I am that woman who constantly loses her glasses, forgets her keys, never finds her phone. But my opinion? I always have it ready.
Half wolf, half woman - literally in my Facebook profile picture, figuratively in everything I do. I am someone of extremes. Intuitive and astute. Calm and storm. Silence and voice. Soft to what is vulnerable. Tough on what deliberately damages. I am not a perfect version of myself. An honest one, though.
I work with people, systems, food, chaos and vision. Sometimes with horses, often with principles. I believe in truth over diplomacy, and in nuance without wooliness.
Here I share what concerns me. What chafes, what moves, what knocks. Welcome to my head. It's a little wild there - but always real.
#more than power supply #MIRA