Diets By Design

18/09/2025

🐎Has your horse's ridden work gotten a little bit tricky?

If you're seeing any of the signs above, Equine Transeva Technique (ETT) could be the gentle, non-invasive solution. It helps improve your horse's comfort, movement, and overall performance by addressing muscular imbalances.

10/09/2025

Some nice research being done.

We have been saying this for a long time, glad to see some reserch that bears it out!

This is what the barefoot world has been saying for about 15 to 20 years….. but glad it is finally becoming mainstream……..

August 30, 2022
New Research on why Barefoot Horses remain Sounder than Shod Horses
The barefoot movement is growing amongst top professional riders worldwide, and finally a comprehensive Swedish research project is to determine exactly why there are so many benefits from ditching your horse’s iron shoes and going barefoot instead.



By Helle Maigaard Erhardsen



Since the Olympic Gold medallist and World number one in Showjumping Peder Fredricson pulled the shoes of his horses and went barefoot, he has had far fewer issues with lameness, far less injuries to the hooves and lower limbs and not a single hoof abscess. And perhaps needless to say, his horses keep bringing home the gold like never before.



But why is that? For decades hoof rehabilitators and horse owners have experienced extraordinary results with taking previously shod horses barefoot, but there has been very little research done to support these results scientifically.



So far, fragments of larger studies and smaller case studies have proved how iron shoes increase concussion when the horse lands, how iron shoes interrupt the blood supply to the hooves and inhibits the hooves’ ability to contract and expand. And the renowned podiatry researcher Dr. Robert Bowker VMD has even described how shoeing can be the direct cause of caudal heel pain, also referred to as navicular disease.



However, with next to no specific research comparing the performance of a barefoot hoof to a shod hoof, the debate between pro-shoe horse people and anti-shoe horse people have relied mostly on belief, tradition and personal experience. Now, a new comprehensive research project by The Swedish Agricultural University (SLU) and Agria Animal Insurance is well on the way to scientifically determine the difference between the barefoot hoof and the shod horse hoof.

Swedish barefoot study 2022SLU Professor Lars Roepstorff and his team conducting research for the new comprehensive barefoot study with Peder Fredricson performing an empirical riding test in the background.



A Shod Hoof can’t Expand or Contract as much as a Barefoot Hoof



The Swedish research project is led by Professor Lars Roepstorff, who has been collecting data from empirical riding tests and in-depth interviews throughout the past year. The preliminary results from the first phase of data analysis confirms what smaller studies previously have found: Traditional horseshoes do affect the function of the horse’s hooves.

“The iron shoe locks the so-called hoof mechanism especially when landing after obstacles. The shod hoof can’t expand or contract as much as the barefoot hoof because the shoe inhibits lateral movement. It could mean that the blood flow in the shod hooves is inhibited, and this blood flow is important for the hooves to be healthy,” Roepstorff explained to Agria Djurförsäkring.

In this first stage of the study, the researchers have been focussing on measuring the internal movements of the hoof with and without horseshoes. Professor Lars Roepstorff found it particularly interesting to be able to describe the difference in how much the hoof was allowed to contract during the rollover phase:

“When the mechanism of the hoof is described, it’s often said that the hoof expands when it lands on the ground, which is correct. But we also see that the hoof contracts during the rollover phase and that movement is inhibited by horseshoes. That has not been described very well in literature before now,” Lars Roepstorff said.

Further analysis is to be made to draw conclusions on the actual consequences of the hooves moving less with shoes, like how this affects blood circulation, load and shock absorption.

Horseshoe nailsThe new Swedish research has shown that it’s not only the rigid iron shoe itself that inhibits normal, healthy hoof function, but also the way it is fixed to the hoof with nails.



Barefoot Horses are more Cautious where they put their Feet than Shod Horses



One of the advantages that Peder Fredricson has discovered since going barefoot with his top-level showjumping horses, is that the horses now can feel the ground much better and are far more careful with how and where they put their feet. He links this improved ground sensitivity, also known as proprioception, to the less injuries and lameness issues he has had in his horses since he took their shoes off.



“I think that adaptation to the ground conditions is part of keeping the horse’s hooves healthy and strong. Horses don’t see where they put their hooves, they only sense the ground conditions when they have put their hooves in the ground. With shoes, we remove the feeling from the hoof, so they can move unhindered regardless of the ground. Even in those situations where they really should have been a little cautious,” Peder said according to Agria Djurförsäkring.



Moreover, it is Peder’s experience that metal horseshoes can disguise an incipient injury, which makes it difficult to discover a problem before it turns into actual lameness. Differently, a barefoot horse will instantly display any discomfort:



“You can compare it to when we humans walk barefoot across a gravel field. It may look painful before the feet have hardened and adjusted, but when we get to the grass we can walk normally again. You need to learn and understand the difference between what temporary sensitivity is and what is an injury. Horses with shoes can go for a long time with an injury before it is noticed that it is lame,” Peder said.

07/09/2025

Load Transfer: The Invisible System That Keeps Horses Sound (Until We Break It)

(This is probably the most significant blog I have written to date...and I am deadly serious.)

1️⃣ Why We Miss the Point

Most riders and owners look at legs, joints, or hooves when a horse goes lame. We obsess over hock injections, tendon scans, or shoeing tweaks.

But here’s the blind spot: horses aren’t Lego sets where you can just swap out a dodgy block and keep stacking. They’re whole systems where forces - rider weight, ground impact, propulsion - have to be absorbed, stabilised, and passed on like the world’s most complicated game of pass-the-parcel. That process is called load transfer.

If load transfer works, the horse moves fluidly, distributes force safely, and stays sound. If it doesn’t, the wrong bit cops the pressure - joints, tendons, ligaments - until it breaks. Cue “mystery lameness” and your savings account crying into a feed bucket.

2️⃣ What Load Transfer Actually Is

Load transfer is the art of sharing forces across the horse’s whole body:
- Hooves = shock absorbers (your horse’s Nike Airs).
- Tendons and ligaments = springs (boing, boing).
- Core and spine = suspension bridge (though honestly, comparing a living, moving horse to a bridge bolted to the ground is a bit crap - sorry Tami, I’ll get to you in a second and anyone else having a fit over my analogies :P ).
- Hindquarters = the engine room.
- Trunk = the bridge deck, carrying weight forward.
- Nervous system = Wi-Fi (sometimes 5G, sometimes “buffering…”).

It’s not one joint or one leg doing the work - it’s a team effort. And when one player drops the ball, the others cover… until they tear something.

3️⃣ How It Gets Compromised in Domestication

Here’s the catch: our horses don’t live or move the way evolution intended. Instead, we’ve gifted them the equine version of late-stage capitalism:
- Sedentary living → Wild horses walk 20 km a day. Ours do laps of a 20 x 60 and then slouch around on the couch bingeing Netflix. Fascia weakens, cores collapse, proprioception clocks off.
- Gut health issues → Ulcers, acidosis, restricted forage. Imagine doing Pilates with chronic indigestion. Goodbye stabilisers, hello bracing.
- Rider influence → Saddles, weight, wobbly balance. A hollow back under a rider = hocks and forelimbs eating all the force. “Congratulations, you’re now a wheelbarrow.”

And then we act shocked when the “bridge” collapses and the legs file for workers’ comp.

4️⃣ Why This Explains Early Breakdowns

A horse with poor load transfer isn’t just inefficient - it’s a ticking time bomb.
- Hock arthritis by six.
- Suspensory tears that never heal.
- Kissing spine in a horse that never learned to lift.

This isn’t bad luck. It’s physics. And yes, physics is painful. But so is paying vet bills the size of your mortgage repayments.

Once you see it, the endless cycle of injections and rehab isn’t fate — it’s the logical result of pretending your horse is four pogo sticks with ears instead of a system that has to share the damn load.

5️⃣ Why Talking About This Will Probably Annoy You

Here’s the thing: people who really understand the sheer magnitude of load transfer will most likely confuse you… or offend you.

My good friend Tami Elkayam is the one responsible for hammering this into my thick skull. And I’ll be honest: it took four clinics and two years of friendship before the penny really dropped. She will read this and her hair will stand on end, because load transfer and how the body works is far more interconnected and complex than I’ve made it here.

Because here’s the reality: there is a reason your six-year-old has the joints of a 27-year-old, or why your horse developed kissing spine. And while I’m pretty good at spotting when dysfunctional load transfer has already chewed through a part of the horse… my bigger mission now is to spread the word before more horses — and bank accounts — get wrecked.😎

It may sound like physics, and physics isn’t sexy. But this is physics that explains your vet bills, your training plateaus, your horse’s “difficult” behaviour, and that nagging sense of “not quite right.”

6️⃣ What We Need to Do About It

Instead of obsessing over the parts, we need to step back and care for the system:
- Movement lifestyle → Turnout, hills, hacking, grazing posture. (Not “arena prison with cardio punishment.”)
- Gut health → Forage first, low starch, fewer ulcers. (Because no one engages their core mid-stomach cramp...and that's not even mentioning how digestion impacts the whole things - that blog is for another day)
- Training for posture → Lift the back, wake up the core, balance the bridge. (“More forward” and "rounder" isn’t a strategy, in fact saying those things can be part of the problem...)
Rider responsibility → Balanced seat, good saddle fit, some self-awareness. (Yes, because we have a massive impact on load transfer and how dysfunctional we make it...but let's get the idea in our heads before we beat ourselves up.)
Preventive care → Conditioning, fascia release, thoughtful management. (“Wait for it to break, then panic” is not a plan.)

7️⃣. Closing

Load transfer is the invisible system that keeps horses sound. When it fails, the legs, joints, and tendons take the hit - and horses “mysteriously” break down.

The tragedy isn’t that we can’t prevent it. It’s that we’re too busy staring at hooves or arguing on social media about everything from bits to barefoot to notice the actual system collapsing under our noses.

Once you understand load transfer, you can’t unsee it. And once you can’t unsee it, you’ll never settle for patching symptoms again. You’ll start caring for the whole horse - because that’s the only way to keep the bridge standing, the system working, and your horse sound.

This is Collectable Advice 17/365 of my notebook challenge.

❤Please share this if it made you think. But don’t copy-paste it and slap your name on it - that’s the intellectual equivalent of turning up to an office party with a packet of Tim Tams and calling it “homemade.” This is my work, my study, my sweat, and my own years of training horses (and myself) before figuring this out (well with Tami Elkayam's patience too). Share it, spread it, argue with it - but don’t steal it.

03/09/2025

I keep getting asked about so called blood boosting supplements or products that increase mineral absorption which are regularly recommended for horses.
If you don't believe iron is an issue read this article by Dr David Marlin on the dangers of iron. Every single diet I have done in RSA has excess iron in - based on tested figures.
Liver analysis I carried out when I did my MSc showed massive liver iron levels - well into the toxic range across all the horses in the sample group, unless they have massive worm burdens, so please do your horse a favour and don't feed anything with extra iron in.

10 VERY GOOD Reasons NOT to Feed your Horse Feeds or Supplements with added IRON

IRON is the 4th most abundant element in soil and is vital for the transport of oxygen by red blood cells, along with other roles in immune function and metabolism, and around 1/3rd of the “functional” iron in the horse is in haemoglobin inside red blood cells in the circulation or stored in the spleen (and released during exercise) with another 1/3rd in myoglobin in muscle (myoglobin moves oxygen inside muscle cells). However, this has lead to many myths, including that extra iron in feeds or supplements can act as an energy booster or to help horses recover from illness.

Iron supplementation in horses is almost only ever required when there has been significant blood loss and sub-clinical IRON TOXICITY (not initially apparent from clinical signs) is many many times more common than iron deficiency. You may then ask, if all of this is true then why do so many supplements boast high iron content for “energy”, as a “tonic” or “to aid recovery”, to “improve performance”, “boost red blood cell numbers” or for “horses in hard work”? Either these companies are ignorant of the science on use of iron in horses or they have products that sell well and don’t wish to educate horse owners.

You may also have seen that some of the brands with a strong science based approach, such as Spillers, Science Supplements, Winergy, Pure Feed and a few others, do not add iron to their feed and supplements.

So, why should you be avoiding products with added iron?

1) IRON DEFICIENCY IS VERY RARE IN THE UK
UK soils and forage are generally high in iron (>100 mg iron per kg dry matter) and most horses get more than the NRC recommended daily intake (400-500mg per 500kg per day; NRC 2007) from forage alone.

2) MOST HORSES ARE OVER-SUPPLEMENTED WITH IRON
Within the EU the inclusion of iron is actually limited to a maximum of 750mg per day in a complete diet (OJ L317/23. COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1334/2003.). Even back as far as 20 years ago, some work in my group at the Animal Health Trust showed that event horses supplemented with iron had plasma total iron concentrations 2-3x higher than the typical normal range (Mills & Marlin, 1996).

3) ONCE INGESTED IRON CANNOT EFFECTIVELY BE EXCRETED FROM THE BODY
The horse has no mechanism to excrete iron once taken up from the gastro-intestinal tract other than via a very small amount excreted in urine. Once in the circulation, excess is removed by the liver or spleen and stored linked to protein either as ferritin or haemosiderin.

4) IRON ACTS AS AN OXIDANT INCREASING OXIDATIVE STRESS & INFLAMATION
Iron in the body can act as a pro-oxidant, producing free-radicals which in turn cause tissue damage and inflammation. These damaging effects of free-radicals can be moderated by Vitamins such as Vitamins E and C or by antioxidant enzyme defences such as catalase, superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidise. However, this requires an increase in Vitamin C & E turnover and the need for a higher dietary intake to prevent depletion and secondary problems such as decreased immune function or increased respiratory inflammation. The damaging effects of high iron intake are made worse by exercise, stress and thermal environmental stress (hot or hot and humid weather or very cold weather) Mills et al. (1996).

5) IRON TOXICITY OCCURS AT LOW INTAKES
Iron toxicity occurs at relatively low levels, perhaps only 2-3 times the NRC recommended daily intake. If a forage fed at 5 kg dry matter provides 1000 mg of iron (200 mg/kg) and an additional 500 mg per day comes from hard feed and supplements, this is already at 3x NRC. Initially the signs of toxicity may be unspecific and not readily recognised as being related to iron intake. Iron is corrosive and signs may include, gastric irritation, gastric pain, gastric ulceration as well as damage to the small and large intestinal lining. Other signs associated with iron toxicity include diarrhoea, dehydration, depression and reduced immunity. There is also an increased risk of bacterial infections as bacteria use iron as an energy source. In more severe cases of iron toxicity, liver failure can be induced, which may be fatal. In people, iron supplementation can lead to undesirable overgrowth of bacteria in the small intestine. EXCESS IRON IS ESPECIALLY TOXIC TO YOUNG FOALS and death due to excess supplementation has been reported.

6) IRON DOES NOT BOOST RED BLOOD CELLS NUMBERS
Feeding iron supplements will NOT increase the number of red blood cells. FACT.

7) IRON DOES NOT CORRECT ANAEMIA (LOW BLOOD COUNT)
Feeding iron supplements will NOT correct anaemia (low red blood cell count) UNLESS this is due to high blood loss. FACT.

8) IRON DOES NOT INCREASE ENERGY
The theory for iron as an energy booster seems to be related to the fact that people who are anaemic have low energy levels and giving them iron supplements can restore their energy levels! BUT as we have already said, horses are rarely anaemic and if they are it is rarely due to iron deficiency and iron supplements will have no effect unless there has been heavy blood loss.

9) IRON INTERFERES WITH ABSORPTION OF OTHER MINERALS
Supplemental iron can decrease zinc and copper uptake from the diet and over time can lead to deficiency and other health problems such as poor coat and hoof quality.

10) IRON MAY BE LINKED TO EQUINE METABOLIC SYNDROME (reduction in the normal response to insulin)
In people there are studies that show iron plays a role in metabolic syndrome (Mojominiyi et al. 2008) and obesity (Zafron et al. 2011). Nielsen et al. (2012) also identified a link between iron and insulin resistance in horses, which appears to be becoming more common.

BOTTOM LINE – You should only use feeds with added iron or use supplements with iron in on the advice of a qualified nutritionist or your vet and ideally following confirmation of low iron content of your horses diet and clinical evidence of iron deficiency. Most horses are receiving far too much iron and this has a high potential to cause long term health problems that are rarely ever attributed to high dietary iron intake.

01/09/2025

🐎Muscle of the Month🐎

The Biceps Femoris

A powerful muscle in the horse's hindquarters, essential for extending the hip and hock, enabling them to gallop, jump, and perform with power and precision.

29/08/2025

With vaccination season in full swing it is important to make sure your horse has sufficient copper and zinc to help build antibodies and maintain a healthy immune system.

Some common visual signs of copper and zinc deficiency are bleached and faded coats, weak hoof walls and thrush infections.

Use ImmunoHoof to ensure your horses copper and zinc needs are met.

29/08/2025

Boots are such an important part of the transition to barefoot. I have worked with Christine for years and love her approach to overall horse wellbeing and comfort.

💥🎊💥 SALE now on! 💥🎊💥

Order any pair of Scoot Boots or EVO Hoof Boots and save 5% on your order!

WhatsApp 0733895245 to view our return and exchange policy and price list or to get remote or in-person sizing assistance from our seasoned hoofcare professionals

Sale ends 6 September

27/08/2025

I want to extend a big thank you to Cairnbrogie farm in Plettenburg Bay for allowing us to use this magnificent barn for my equine nutrition talk this past weekend.

I must also thank Denny Timson and Shayne Treisman for all their effort in making sure the day was possible. It was a privilege to be able to share some nutritional information with all who attended.

19/08/2025

Winter weather can be tough on a horse's lungs. Halotherapy, is a natural way to support their respiratory health and keep them breathing easy all season.💫

05/08/2025

Equestrians from Plett and Surrounds - Join me to explore the essentials of effective horse feeding.

Good nutrition is the cornerstone of your horse’s health and performance — yet it's role is often overlooked and clouded by misinformation and lack of knowledge.

In this talk, I’ll break down the science of equine nutrition in a practical, easy-to-understand way to give you a clearer understanding of your horse’s dietary needs and how to feed more effectively.

05/08/2025

🐥 SOUTH AFRICA CLINIC - EARLY BIRD DISCOUNT ENDS TODAY!

🇿🇦 South African equine professionals and informed owners:

Don’t miss the chance to learn from The Equine Documentalist, Yogi Sharp, this October in Cape Town and Jozi.

Farrier, equine researcher and a finalist Farrier of the Year (2025 Equine Business Awards UK), Yogi Sharp, DipWCF, BSc(Hons), PGCert. will present his worldwide cutting-edge research and technology, combined with live demonstrations.

What will you learn?

A WHOLE HORSE APPROACH TO HOOF MORPHOLOGY

(MORPHOLOGY,
BIOMECHANICS & POSTURAL INFLUENCE)

➡️ Understanding hoof morphology
➡️ Shoeing for balance & to create the ideal
➡️ Measuring hoof balance
➡️ Connecting hoof, posture & movement

These full-day clinics also include a sand pit demo, showing the effects of base proportions on equilibrium, a demo using HoofmApp, and a live shoeing session.
This is a must-attend event if you work with horses and want to extend your knowledge and commitment to equine welfare.

Book now on Quicket (links below) Early bird ends tonight.

With thanks to our amazing sponsors
Royal Feeds South Africa
Onlinepethealth
Ridely App

JHB - https://www.quicket.co.za/events/320794-the-equine-documentalist-yogi-sharp-johannesburg/

CPT - https://www.quicket.co.za/events/320743-the-equine-documentalist-yogi-sharp-cape-town-cli

03/08/2025

🐎Muscle of the Month🐎

The superficial glute muscle is key for a horse's explosive push-off, helping with hind leg extension and movement.