09/11/2025
A fabulous read from Karly at Stable-Ised Equine on the risks of Iron Overload- we are noticing a huge increase in people feeding mineral supplements containing huge amounts of added Iron- an extremely outdated way of thinking!
Excessive Iron causes all sorts of issues- from poor coat and hair health, hoof issues, metabolic and performance issues as well as organ damage especially affecting the liver.
Click the link below and also check out her Irony of Iron post where she explains everything perfectly in layman's terms!
And for the love of your horse- check that your premixed feeds and supplements do not contain added Iron. Our soils and bore water sources here on the coast are more often than not- already extremely high in naturally occurring Iron.
There are quite a few amazing mineral supplements on the market which contain no added Iron which is what we should always be striving for!
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βοΈ I completely understand that an Equine Nutrition Consultation where someone such as myself is able to tell you what to feed your horses and exactly how much is not always possible, and thatβs absolutely okay. I do try my hardest to share free and useful information resources on my social media platforms, however there seems to be some basic feeding protocols that are continuously overlooked or ignored so perhaps I need to be a little more direct in my topics of choice.
π Today I would like to briefly but concisely talk about iron. Please, for the love of your horse, if you are the one deciding what premixed feed or supplement you are giving them, stop selecting ones with added iron. Just stop.
π΄ Only yesterday I was looking at a couple of diets for a client who was feeding a βcompleteβ vitamin and mineral balancer. Once I put the numbers down on paper and looked at what this supplement was providing in terms of iron versus competing trace elements such as copper and zinc relevant to the rest of the intake, the recommended daily intake of iron for both of these horses was exceeding 700%.
π± Horses are 99.999999% of the time over-supplied iron by their base diets of forage and supplementary feed ingredients. Itβs unavoidable and the reason why we need to supplement more copper and zinc than just the base recommended daily intake (RDI). Now, there is a difference between naturally occurring iron (unavoidable) in raw ingredients and added iron (careless, outdated) in premixed feeds and supplements, so donβt be afraid to ask your feed/supplement manufacturer which type applies to their product. Hot tip: All Stable-Ised Equine supplements contain zero, zilch, nada added iron.
π’ Unless the horse has suffered a significant bleed, there is zero necessity to feed an iron supplement. Even when blood panels come back as the horse being βanaemic,β this is rarely because the diet is deficient in iron, itβs likely because the horse has suffered a bleed, has bleeding ulcers, has a large parasite burden, or has an underlying illness, disease, or virus. Adding iron to an βanaemicβ horseβs diet (unless it has suffered a bleed) is not treating the cause and only, maybe, the symptoms.
π So, if there is one thing you do today or tomorrow, let it be confirm that your premixed, complete, fortified, balanced, whatever it is vitamin and mineral source of choice for your horse has NO added iron.
πΈ Some classic examples of iron overload or iron, copper, and zinc imbalances featured below (four different horses, four different clients):
