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  Discussion on Vit e/selenium supplements
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Posted on Thursday, Aug 12, 1999 - 1:32 am:

I live in Illinois and have been told that the area is low for selenium. I ride dressage and work my horse 5 days/week. I don't necessarily think that one has to use multiple supplements for this or that, but want to make sure that my horse is getting what he needs. He is fed crimpt oats and a grass/alfalfa hay mixture. I picked up a supplement called Equi-Shine, which was I guess developed by an equine vet up in Wi. or Mi. I also feed a vit E/sel. powder. How much vit E sel. should my horse get a day? If both supplements have this in them--I definately don't want to overdose him. My horse is approx 1000. Is there a calculation that I can perform?
Thanks a lot for the imput!!!!!!!

Posted on Thursday, Aug 12, 1999 - 8:26 am:

Hello Miki,
We just had a discussion about this in the repro section and here is a paste and edit of parts of that discussion:

For adult full sized horses an easy and relatively safe way of adding selenium to the diet would be to add 1/2 oz (that is the weight oz, not the volume) of a 90 mg/kg (ppm) selenium supplemented salt to the grain portion of the diet daily. This is a total of 2.8 mg Se added daily. These are generally available in areas like yours for sheep and cattle. Measure carefully, but it would require a lb/day to be toxic if it is the only source of Se. It would require less to be toxic if there is other sources of Selenium so consider it carefully. For different size horses you could scale the above amount by weight.

A good source of vitamin E is fresh green forage. If this is in short supply supplementing 1000 IU of vitamin E per 1000 lbs of horse seems prudent.

It is also recommended that in deficient areas that a foal receive a selenium/vitamin E injection at birth to aid the immune system.
DrO

Posted on Tuesday, Jan 29, 2002 - 11:34 pm:

Vitamin E and Selenium are essential nutritents in certain areas of the US. The NRC requirements are listed as 1 mg per day for 1000 lb horse. The original research done at Michigan has been found to be inadequate for horses under stress. I recommend 3 to 5 mg per day depending on the horse and stress level. Supplementing 1000 to 2000 mg/IU is important to insure synergistic activity of the nutrients. If you are interested in supplements for selenium deficient areas look at the internet site at www.horseguard.com.
Del Johnson M.S. P.A.S. Equine Nutritionist.

Posted on Wednesday, Jan 30, 2002 - 9:30 am:

Hello DJ,
Welcome aboard, I can use all the help I can get.
DrO
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