Someone once said to me "keep it simple" I have kept that with me on my journey helping horses and ponies to better health. It is the horses that have always been my teachers.

So with that in mind I would like to give you my explanation and my findings having carried out goodness knows how many equine hair analysis's in the 25 years I have been doing this!

Firstly we need to start in the equine hindgut yes I hear you say everyone knows that!

But we need to take a deeper look into what is actually going on in there well we know there is good and bad bacteria and that helps the horses gut work but we are missing some knowledge about a very special microbe bacillis subtilis click here for more information.

In fact the horses hindgut is full of "live" microbes all playing specific roles in our horses health, but the thing is the horses hindgut isn't able to produce enough microbes to keep the hindgut fermenting correctly, horses should in fact be obtaining them daily from the pasture they graze this is what keeps it working to an optimum..

However this is where the problem lies, unfortunately there are a number of hindering factors which I am finding when I am testing all your horses hair and that is quite simply I would say around 75% of them are actually deficient in these essential "live" microbes, so why?

Firstly we actually have to go right back to the beginning in fact to when your horse was a foal when he or she was born they would have obtained their gut microbiome from their mothers so if he/she were deficient then issues would have probably started here, but mother nature had intended that the foal would go out to pasture with it's mother and start consuming the grass/soil this is where all the "live" microbes exist the longer on the pasture the better for the health of the foal bearing in microbes are what make the horses hind gut ferment properly, a healthy hind gut will most certainly lead to a horse with a healthy immune, as horses have 80% of their immune in their guts!

So this is what should happen exactly how nature intended but unfortunately there is a different modern day story and why are we seeing so many horses and ponies struggling with all these current day issues.... such as behaviour issues, unwilling to go forward issues, colitis, abscess's, sensitivities, skin issues, mystery lameness, SI issues, allergies, sweet itch, hives, EMS, laminitis, cushing's, colic, ulcers and other clinical situations this is extremely common and presents in about 75% of horses/ponies).

So why is this occurring I hear you say? My horse grazes the grass gets plenty of turnout, well with some horses they have no or very limited turnout, the pastureland has either become overgrazed or fertilised with chemicals which destroys these "live" microbes, their are also environment toxins out of our control that spray the sky's and deplete these natural microbes and if we also add to this antibiotics, steroids, vaccines, wormers and stress the horse endures in it's lifetime! All deplete/kill these "live" microbes leaving our horses venerable and with dysbiosis (a severe imbalance of the gut microbiota with an overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria which is disease causing bacteria) and leaky gut all which I believe play a part in the illness's/conditions in the modern day horse and pony.

Find out more about dysbiosis click here