What is the day in the life of an equine nutrition advisor like? “There are no two days that are the same,” said Vanessa Allen, a nutrition advisor for Mars Horsecare in the UK since 2013. Prior to joining Mars, Allen was a research assistant at the University of Cambridge for nine years. She also has experience in the horse racing industry and a background and in top level eventing.

Nutrition Advisor Job

Allen generally spends two days a week answering questions from home, including one day a week on the Care Line. “So, for horse owners, trainers, riders, basically anyone who has a question to ask us about feeding plans, etcetera, I’ll spend a whole, a whole day doing that,” explained Allen. She is one of five nutrition advisors who handle that Care Line on a rotation each week.

A nutrition advisor also has administrative duties. She attends to those on the other weekday she works from home. This includes writing up forage reports, getting back to people, attending team meetings, and planning for farm or stable visits.

For the farm and stable visit days, she tries to be flexible to suit the owner or manager’s needs. Allen said she generally visits professional yards in the morning and solo horse owners in the afternoon. That suits the schedules of those people the best. Sometimes she’ll be with an owner until 7 p.m. after work.

A Day in the Territory

Allen’s territory in the U.K. is the East of England and East of the Midlands area. She tries to be as efficient as possible with her time as a nutrition advisor. “If I have two yards close together two hours away from me, I try—if possible—to fit them onto the same day” she said. “It’s important to be efficient with our time and mileage.”

Allen might have various equipment and informational/educational materials with her on her field days. That equipment includes the weighbridge. That portable weight scale allows Allen to get accurate weight measurements on individual horses.

“We have mobile weighbridges which fit in the boot of the car in three separate pieces,” explained Allen. “We then can just jump out of the car when we arrive at the yard, clip them together, and a horse simply walks on.

“We have a a bluetooth handset, and that will tell us the horses weight,” she said. “So, it’s a really useful mobile piece of kit and a really great service for people.”

Body Conditioning

Allen will body condition each horse for the owner. She said that although the weighbridge is very useful, “the most important thing is actually telling the horse owners that their horses are healthy, or if not, showing them why not.”

Allen feels that by teaching owners how to check their horses’ body condition rather than just giving them a weight number and walking away makes a better world for horses.

At the Yards

When Allen arrives at a livery yard, she usually has a list of customers and their horses to see that day.

“We will spend 15 minutes per horse roughly just gauging their weight, their body condition, having a good chat with the owner, and going through any health worries or concerns they have,” she said. “Some of these horses can be really quick and simple, and others really have some complex issues.”

She wants to make sure to give owners the right advice and help with general daily management in terms of their turn out and herd management.

“You know, it’s not just literally the feed in the bucket,” she said. “Horse feeding is so much more. It’s reminding people about what’s in the grass, in the forage, and how they play such an important part.”

When visiting upper-level competition facilities, Allen will do the same basics. But she also tries to help these yards feed each horse individually without the managers having to buy 20 different feeds. She helps them discover how four or five different feeds can work for those 20 horses.

“It’s a very practical applied nutrition,” said Allen. “If you’ve got one person feeding 20 or 30 horses, they don’t want to spend their whole day making up all these little bits and pieces individually.

“It’s always about having that relationship with the owner so that we can help them and really piece the puzzle together,” Allen noted.

Forage Nutrition

Allen often takes forage samples away with her at the professional yards. This is useful because those yards often get large deliveries of hay as opposed to only a week’s worth of hay for individual owners at a livery yard.

Those forage samples are sent to a laboratory. That allows Allen to find out the energy content of the forage along with the fibre and protein levels and dry matter.

“Or perhaps at the other end of the scale, the laminitics or the native-type ponies who really don’t need those high calorie feeds we can make sure that they’re not full of sugars,” said Allen. “That’s really useful.

“Then we try to balance that with the concentrate,” she noted.

Other Notes

Listen to the podcast, where Allen talks about working with professional yards, draft horses, and native ponies. Each has different needs.

She also can advise on horses that have ulcers, are post-colic, or are on box rest.

Senior Horse Advice

So what would be Allen’s top three pieces of nutrition advice to a senior horse owner in the UK or anywhere else?

“My first one I think isn’t even about feed, but it’s just to watch your horse,” said Allen. ” Spend time with your horse and look out for any changes.

The second is if the senior horse is losing weight trying to determine why. Is it from dental issues? Low-grade arthritis in the jaws or legs that can make them reluctant to bend over to graze or eat hay for too long?

“We tend to think, ‘Oh, all old horses lose weight,” said Allen. “But I’ve seen 30-year-old horses that are still holding on to their condition with no trouble. “So, it’s then just applying the same weight management question or solutions to them whether good or poor doers.”

She said her third point would be quality of nutrition. If a horse is on good grass, getting hay, and is holding its weight, owners might think the horse is fine. “But—especially in senior horses and harder working horses—the nutrient requirements are higher,” said Allen. “As owners, we need to meet those requirements.”

She recommended a good ration balancer or multivitamin. Allen likes to make sure seniors are getting vitamins C and E, which are “great antioxidants” to help support the immune and respiratory systems.

Look at the senior horse’s topline, not just its ribs. The older horse might be eating lots of grass or hay, “but is that quality of protein enough to help them keep that top line?” Allen asked.

Final Words

Allen recommends horse owners to reach out to their feed companies to ask questions. “It’s not the horse owners’ job to know everything [about nutrition],” said Allen.

“I think my other tip would be don’t believe everything you read on Facebook groups or some pages,” noted Allen. “Everything that we do at Horsecare is based on science and then applying experience and practical knowledge around that.”

Further Reading