Page 71 - May 2018 Speedhorse

is wrong. Hair coat can tell you a lot, but a hair sample sent for testing will not necessarily give an accurate nutrient analysis.
A study published in 2005 stated that when interpreting a result, it should be kept in mind that hair color, especially gray hair, influences the concentration of some elements in horse hair. “This study goes through all the different ele- ments and analyzed 28 of them. It was published in Biological Trace Element Research. Simply put, the color of your horse’s hair has a much greater impact on what the readings are than what you are feeding the horse,” says Nielsen.
You can get some indication about selenium, however, by just looking at the hair coat. You don’t really need a hair analysis. One of the clues regarding selenium toxicity is poor quality hair and hoof horn, to the point of mane and tail hair falling out, or cracked hoof walls, or even loss
of the hoofs. Ironically, selenium deficiency also shows up as poor hair and hoof quality.
Nielsen points out that hair quality or hair analysis can only show something that’s happened in the past, because it takes months to grow hair. “If you think about how long it takes for mane hair to grow, what you are feeding the horse today may not show up in the hair until months later. Some- thing that shows up now is an indication of what happened with the diet earlier. For instance, certain drugs in the body can show up later in a laboratory hair analysis. There are so many flaws in thinking that a lab test can pinpoint nutrition status. We don’t recommend this to determine whether you are feeding your horse correctly,” he says.
“Part of what I try to do at the university is help people figure out what is real and what is not regarding nutrition and what they are spend- ing their money on. I always say that financial success in the horse industry is not how much you make, but how much you don’t spend. Many of the people who are recommending hair coat analysis for determining nutrition tend to have
The color of a horse affects the concentration of some major trace elements. The hair of a gray horse, for example, will show higher levels of copper and zinc and perhaps titanium, and lower levels of calcium and selenium.
The contrasting hair on a Paint will influence the concentration of some elements in the hair, giving different results from samples of the white and the colored hairs.
products they want you to buy. You need an unbiased study to make an accurate assessment.
“The only way horse nutritionists or researchers can tell whether you are meeting your horse’s requirements is to look at what you are feeding the horse and compare that to what that horse’s requirements are. A lot of people do want to know, so this is an important thing to address,” says Nielsen.
“Many horse owners believe that hair analy- sis works because people are telling them that it works. It’s difficult for the average person to de- termine what is truth and what isn’t. If we have confidence in the person telling us something, we believe it and sometimes we are fooled. I have been fooled at times when I believed someone on some nutritional topic, and then I go to the literature and realize it wasn’t what I thought.”
Sometimes published research is also misleading. Some studies contradict others and sometimes there is only one study. If that study
was flawed or biased in any way, it may be misleading. Sometimes there is an early study about something that makes news and every- one hears about it and believes the findings, but they don’t hear about subsequent studies that disprove the earlier conclusions.
“I feel that if someone has the absolute an- swer to everything, or a product that resolves every problem, I would not trust them. Most of the good people in academics readily admit that they don’t know, or will tell you if there’s any doubt about a certain claim or theory. But most people don’t want to hear that. They’d rather go to someone who will give them the answers they want. There are many things, however, that we don’t yet know the answers to, and that’s why we do research and continue to do studies. We’ll never run out of things to research because there are still a lot of questions,” he says.
Dr. Kathleen Crandell, Equine Nutrition-
ist of Kentucky Equine Research, says a report on hair analysis will not only tell what may be adequate or lacking, but also gives indications
of metabolic, immunologic and dietary issues determined from the ratios of some of the miner- als to each other. “Some of the promises of what hair analysis will be able to tell include the horse’s metabolic rate, stage of stress, immune system status, adrenal and thyroid glandular activity, carbohydrate tolerance, energy levels, tendencies to multiple illnesses, adequate protein intake, excessive carbohydrate intake, nutritional defi- ciencies, exposure to toxic metals and pollutants, and ingestion of drugs or medications,” she says.
“There are definitely things that a hair analysis can tell us, but many of the claims
are not well researched in horses. Thus, horse owners should be cautious about the diagnoses that may be included in such a report. With a multi-elemental hair analysis, the results are
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EQUINE HEALTH