What can you Blood Test for Horses?

Hi there fellow horse feeder,

Have you had a blood test taken from you horse by a vet to check a potential health issue?

I want to empower you with some facts about what you can analyse from a blood test in a blood test, and potentially bust some myths and save you some $.

A blood test can be helpful in determining a horse’s status, and a series of blood tests can be even more helpful. Unfortunately, however, no analysis of blood chemistry can provide a definitive answer to every nutrition, training, and performance question.

What is important to note is that your vet will be looking at these figures as a whole together with the specific horse situation in front of them. Not every small variation is meaningful. And sometimes a high value may indicate a problem, while a result below the normal range doesn’t mean much.

The horse’s blood chemistry is constantly changing in response to the time of day, exercise program, diet, time of feeding, stress, and other parameters, therefore always consult your vet and discuss the analysis of the blood test.

The following are certain compounds that are stored in the blood in the horse and therefore may give a good indication of health or potential disease.

• White Blood Cell Count WBC

• Red Blood Cell Count RBC

• Fibrinogen – Liver protein

• Creatinine – acute phase protein made by liver elveated levels indicate inflammation

• Blood Urea Nitrogen BUN – waste product excreted via kidneys

• GGT – enzyme important in regulation of body inflammation

• Bilirubin – released from haemoglobin and excreted in bile

• Glucose – the sugar circulating in the bloodstream

• Calcium

• Phosphate

• Potassium

• Sodium

• Vitamin E

• Selenium

What is unreliable in terms of nutrition to blood test for?

• Zinc – Blood tests are fairly insensitive measures of zinc status

• Copper – Marginal deficiencies in copper intake may exist even though the serum copper concentration is adequate.

• Iron – Evaluation of iron status should include other tests in addition to serum iron concentration.

• Magnesium – Very little magnesium found in the extracellular fluid (about 1%), which is why testing blood for magnesium deficiency is inaccurate.

So if certain compounds are unreliable to blood test for what can you do?

Get a pasture analysis done, this will tell you exactly what is on the grass your horse is eating.

Then give that to me your equine nutritionist and I will calculate exact levels of intake for your horse

From this I can work with you and your vet to keep your horse in optimum health.

Get in contact today!