With spring hinting that better times are ahead, the grass will soon start to grow in earnest! It needs the temperature to be above 6deg. C to grow and from the sunshine it makes sugars. The riskiest time for laminitis is the spring because we can have lots of sunshine which makes lots of sugar in the grass, but with chilly nights below 6 deg. C the sugar cannot be used for growth but is stored up. In susceptible horses this can trigger laminitis, especially if they already have some fat pads, have Cushings, Equine Metabolic Syndrome or Insulin Resistance.

It is important to monitor the intake of susceptible horses and to increase their time at grass very gradually. You may need to keep them off the grass until it has grown tall and is going to seed. Then, it has high fibre levels and lower nutritional value. Short grass has low fibre and high nutrition so will not fill the horse up but will over-supply nutrients. Standing hay is very much more like, er, hay! This is generally considered a safe feed.

MetaSlim can be a great help alongside a suitable diet and careful management and offers good levels of nutritional support for healthy hoof growth and maintaining levels of insulin and glucose in the blood. It is a very easy balancer to use – whatever your horse should weight in kilos, feed in grams per day. So if the horse is 400kg, (or should be!) use 400g of MetaSlim divided between two feeds. Easy peasy! It can be mixed with other appropriate feeds such as Organic Lucie Stalks for those needing a low calorie diet or Lucie Nuts and LucieChop for those needing more nutrition but very low sugar levels.

Have a look on our gallery and you will some amazing customer success stories of horses that have been helped by MetaSlim.