Skeletal Support

Young horses will benefit the most from taking our skeletal support supplement. Some of our supplements, such as Calphormin, are also intended to be fed to the mare during pregnancy, helping ensuring a healthy skeletal system for the unborn foal.

Skeletal support supplements are most important for young horses, and for adult horses with insufficient feed (feed with a high cereal content).

Most of these supplements contain vitamin D, calcium phosphate and phosphorous, all essential in creating a strong and healthy skeletal system, essential for competition horses, due both to the horse’s anatomy, and to the activities which horses are typically involved in.

Horses’ legs are relatively thin for an animal of their size, and are required to support the weight of the entire animal for up to fifteen hours a day. Many of the actions required of a horse multiply the stress and strain on their skeleton. The stresses and strains placed on a horse’s skeletal structure are most severe in sports or professional equine animals, this is because sports horses have an abnormal amount of muscle (which is very dense and heavy) and also of course they often carry a jockey or rider, adding yet more weight to the animal, all tending to additional pressure on the skeleton of the horse, and further multiplied when the animal runs or jumps.

A broken leg is sometimes irreparable and in many cases, could end the horse’s career. The difficulty in repairing a leg fracture can be attributed to the anatomy and behaviour of the animal. Horses spend most of their lives standing up; this behaviour creates a major problem when trying to heal broken bones, especially legs. Horses cannot simply rest up a broken leg without succumbing to other ailments, they have evolved to stay upright for most of their life; if they lie in a horizontal position for long periods of time, pneumonia and pressure sores may develop, which can be fatal. If the horse could stand on three legs, to allow the injured limb to heal, the horse’s size and weight becomes a major obstacle. Equines are always at risk of another fracture when bearing on only three limbs, and the risk of laminitis developing is almost guaranteed. Prevention really is the best defence against broken bones, and a strong skeleton is essential.