June 2005

Get A Glossy Coat

While regular, thorough grooming and added fat will enhance your horse’s coat, for a breathtaking shine you’ll need to feed him right.

It takes attention to nutrition and grooming to get that show-ring shine.

The quality of your horse’s coat, hoof and skin is a good indicator of your horse’s general health and the adequacy of his diet. Your horse needs to receive a variety of nutrients to produce a sleek, high-gloss coat, and we’ve listed these target nutrients in the accompanying chart (see sidebar).

When problems with coat quality arise, it’s usually because there’s insufficient intake of a key nutrient or not enough is being made available to the skin and coat, possibly due to an illness, the demands of growth, or parasitism. …