How strange can horse owners be?

I did have to giggle at myself today, and wonder what on earth a bystander would have thought if they had seen me  pick up some of Ace's poo and smell it and break it up to see the constistency!  I guess it does look more than a little like I have escaped from a funny farm :-)

But I can report that it smells a lot less than it used to, and it is now the same colour as the other two boys, when previously it has been much more green with undigested grass. From now on, we are not going to be able to isolate the effect of the charcoal, because they are all now on Naf Haylage Balancer which has  yea-sac, a live yeast, in it. I have started using this because I can no longer trust Charnwood to supply a consistent quality of Brewers Yeast, and it seemed like  a good product at a good price. So now they are on a full dose of Naf Balancer, 25 g of magnesium oxide, 1g of copper bioplex. Ace gets 50ml of activated charcoal and 100ml of Settelex antacid powder too. I am only using the Settelex because I have it. I don't think he needs it, but it seemed pointless to stop using it while he is improving all the time and I have three big tubs with no other use, but I shall now wean him off it because the Naf stuff has the same ingredients in it.

They all absolutely adore the Naf stuff, which has herbs and vanilla in it and a very strong smell of mint. None of them eat polos, they spit them out, but they love this minty powder!

Radar is interesting this year. Last year he consistently, all spring and summer, had cowpat poo. This year, after a year on extra copper, he has balls of poo and not one cowpat. Jazz's feet always went flat in summer and this year they have kept a wonderful concavity. I wonder just how many horses are affected by excess iron and/or manganese but their owners don't know??????

C

ps too lazy to ride today. I walked the OH five miles and then fell asleep instead :-)