Today Jean’s diet
for each horse consists of whole oats, Cool Stance (coconut), split peas, flax (or hemp oil if she can get it), and lastly a supplement of necessary vitamins and chelated minerals called Medicine Bag Complete (MBC). The feed is soaked in hot water for 30 minutes. For forage, each horse receives at least four sections of their home-grown peanut hay per day. Over time, Jean says, the benefits of feeding holistically became clear. “Occurrences of OCD lesions lessened in the growing youngsters. Horses with injuries rebounded faster since their immune systems improved. Allergies improved or disappeared. We try to control ulcers in our working horses with as much turn out as possible and by keeping hay available through most of the day. I believe GMO-based feeds can be a contributing cause of ulcers,” she explains. She recalls the story of a young mare they bred who failed the first sale’s vetting due to a badly misshaped and fractured sesamoid bone found in the x-rays. “The veteri- narian told us she was probably stepped on as a foal. Since she wasn’t lame, we continued with her training and she held up fine. We gave a high dose of MBC in her feed and about a year later, she was vetted again. I warned the buyers that the x-rays were going to reveal this problem but was happily surprised when the veterinarian couldn’t find a single problem with that sesamoid—it had healed beautifully!”
A section of peanut hay, a popular source of forage grown in north Florida and south Georgia.
Dressage Rider Karen Bates
Originally from Belgium, Karen Bates-Leenknegt is an amateur dressage rider who, along with her husband, has moved a number of times but is now a U.S. citizen and mother of two resid- ing in Canton, Geor- gia. She considers herself an experi- enced rider, having ridden for over 30 years, during which she had the oppor- tunity to learn dres- sage with the help of both schoolmas- ters and reputable trainers. She bought herself a promising young mare, La Luna (2000 Oldenburg by Royal Dance), whom she trained
Karen Bates-Leenknegt competing her mare La Luna at Prix St. Georges, a goal she says she couldn’t have reached with- out switching her to a whole food diet.
32 March/April 2018
“I put a lot of resources into finding the source of the problem, only to find
nothing wrong with her. Until I was left with only one more thing: her diet.”
through the levels with professional help. However, when the pair was attempt- ing to start serious collected work for the upper levels, her horse just couldn’t get there. “With her breed-
ing, conformation and good training, I was baffled as to why she was strug- gling so much,” Karen recounts. “I put a lot of resources into finding the source of the problem, only to find nothing wrong with her. Until I was left with only one more thing: her diet.” She had moved her horse to a boarding barn where the
Karen competed her four-year-old mare Tia Carlina, an Oldenburg by Daily Deal, at Dressage at Devon last year. Karen believes that the mare remained very level-headed for her age at the event due to her diet.
barn manager was studying at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. Karen was intrigued and knew the school had a good reputation for their courses on equine nutrition, so she took the available courses and was soon intent on learning all she could about the subject. She says she also had the fortune of meeting Tigger Montague of Biostar many years before then. Tigger is a nutritionist and founder of the supplement company Biostar US, and also published the book Whole Food for Horses. “With everything I was learning, it all started to fall in place and I knew it was time to change La Luna’s diet,” she recalls. It was seven years ago when she made the switch and
she says the results were remarkable. “My red-headed mare underwent both physical and mental changes on the new diet,” Karen says. “She became a happy athlete, became more focused and was able to do the FEI work. Even more excit- ing was that I could feel her hind end becoming much stron- ger and it seemed as if I had an extra gear to tap into while she remained calm and focused instead of hot and flustered. Friends commented they couldn’t believe the changes in my horse.” The pair did well showing Prix St. Georges in 2014 and 2015 before she had to be retired. Another unexpected benefit to embracing the new diet? Karen was able to start a new career as an equine nutritionist
Conklin Photography
Liz Cornell
Alicia Frese
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100
