Horse Guard 40 lb, Equine Vitamin Mineral Supplement with Organic Selenium & Vitamin E

Horse Guard is the most highly concentrated equine vitamin-mineral supplement on the market today. A mere two ounces a day ensures your horse will get all the critical nutrients typically missing from hay – including 3 mg. of organic selenium.

Vibrant health is the result of many things, nutrition being the cornerstone. Horses, unlike humans, have very limited food sources – most of which are from the local area. Because of this they are much more prone to deficiencies caused by the deficiency in local soils and by the loss of vitamin content with feed storage.

Reformulated to included 1,500 IU of Vitamin E per dose!

Feed 2 oz per day,per 1,000 lbs. (Scoop included in Bag)

A 10 lb. bag of Horse Guard is an 80 Day Supply for a 1,000 lb horse

A 40 lb. bag of Horse Guard is a 320 Day Supply for a 1,000 lb. horse

A complete vitamin-mineral supplement helps to ensures complete nutrition and provides for all body functions.

Why is Selenium Important?

Selenium has several roles in horse health, but the most well-known is as a key element in antioxidant defense, which makes it important in every cell in the body as well as in immune defense.

The body produces radical oxygen metabolites (ROM) as a normal consequence of oxygen metabolism. Selenium-requiring enzymes such as glutathione peroxidase (GSH-Px) neutralize ROM, rendering them harmless and protecting cellular machinery from damage.

Other basic processes requiring selenium for normal function include growth, disease defense and reproduction. Selenium-supplemented foals are known to grow better than Se-deficient foals, possible because a Se-dependent enzyme is needed to activate thyroid hormone.

In addition, both males and females require selenium for reproductive function.

Exercise increases oxidative metabolism markedly, which results in mobilization of tissue selenium to meet increased antioxidant demand. This explains why performances horses and human athletes have greater selenium needs than non-athletes.

Is Organic Selenium more or less toxic than inorganic selenium?

Although more digestible than inorganic selenium, organic selenium is actually much safer to both horses and humans. The organic selenium compounds that plants and yeast produce are nature’s way of providing a potentially toxic element in a safe form. Selenoamino acids are absorbed from the gut via amino acid pathways, which necessarily limits excessive uptake.

In contrast, inorganic selenium (selenite) is passively absorbed, which allows rapid and unregulated uptake of toxic levels of selenium. Organic Selenium is also much safer to handle by those mixing feeds. Sodium selenite is extremely toxic because it is absorbed through the skin. In contrast, the compounds of organic selenium are not absorbed on contact, which increases safety against the most common selenium toxicity problem: exposure to human skin.