Dr. Thornley’s™ Hay Balancer™: Common Sense. Simple Science.™
Dr. Thornley’s™ Hay Balancer™ offers horse owners a simple, economical and powerful way to make sure their animals have all the nutrition they require for optimal growth, performance and longevity. To understand how this is possible, one must understand the basics of the amazing machine that is the horse.
The Amazing Equine Machine
The horse, like many other animals, is an amazing system of metabolic processes that creates almost everything it needs to live, grow, heal and repair itself throughout its lifetime. Think of the horse as a complex factory that is hyper-efficient at making everything it needs: tissues like bone, muscle, tendons, hair, skin, and hoof; substances like proteins and vitamins; even chemicals like insulin, adrenaline, dopamine and glucosamine. The list of the substances that are actually created (sometimes we use the word synthesized) within the horse’s body goes on and on. In fact. many of the most popular equine supplements on the market today are made up almost entirely of substances that the healthy horse produces all on its own. For the most part, a horse produces what it needs, when it needs it, for optimum health, but only when it has a consistent supply of the right raw materials.
Raw Materials are Critical
Just like a factory that makes hundreds of different products, the horse must have an ample supply of all the raw materials needed to make these products at all times. These raw materials include minerals, amino acids, vitamins, fats, carbohydrates, protein, fiber, water and other substances. If raw materials required for a certain process are not available when needed, then the horse will go without, and this is when a horse’s health suffers. Whether building bone and muscle tissue during growth, recovering from hard work, creating a new foal during pregnancy, or healing from an injury, it is critical that a horse has the raw materials it needs within its system at all times.
Sources of Raw Materials
A horse gets all the raw materials it needs to sustain life and promote health through three main activities: breathing, drinking and eating. As responsible horse owners, it is our job to make sure that through these activities our horses get the nutrition they need. It’s why we feed them clean water and quality hay. The problem is that even the best hay rations are generally deficient in certain critical nutritional components that are required for a healthy horse. This is why a complete supplement that accounts for these deficiencies should be fed to your horse at all times.
With a quality hay ration, access to clean water and salt, and Dr. Thornley’s™ Hay Balancer™, the amazing machine that is your horse will always be able to create the substances it needs for optimal health.
Too Much. Too Little. Just Right.
So how much of certain nutrients is too much? How much is too little? And how much is just right? For fats, carbohydrates and proteins, we know when our horse is getting too much or too little feed by its general body condition. We’ve all read the rule that a horse will consume about 65% of its body weight in feed every month, with some adjustments for the specific horse, time of year, quality of feed, etc. But what about vitamins, minerals, amino acids and prebiotics? Just because a horse is getting enough feed does not mean it is getting proper nutrition. And in the case of vitamins, minerals and amino acids, finding the “just right” amount is practically impossible. But that’s okay, and here is why . . .
Enough is Not Too Much
In addition to being an amazing machine that can take raw materials to produce what it needs, the horse’s body is also an amazing filter that is highly efficient at eliminating nutrients from its system that are not needed at any given time. These substances are eliminated through exhaled CO2, urine and feces. In only a very few cases are there substances that can become toxic to a horse if too much is consumed, and these are not substances that are included in supplements at any significant level. So what we should be doing with our horses is making sure they always have enough of the critical vitamins, minerals and amino acids that are the basis of optimal health. A horse will then take what it needs and eliminate or store the rest.
Common Sense. Simple Science.™
And that’s just what Dr. Thornley’s™ Hay Balancer™ does – assures your horse has enough of the critical raw materials for sound nutrition to balance the hay diet at all times, thus promoting optimal growth, performance and longevity.