What do these three pictures have in common?

They are all from upcoming Purina presentations at the Equine Science Society Symposium in Mescalero, New Mexico!  We have 4 accepted research abstracts on a wide variety of topics, ranging from salt and water intake, how feed additives affect manure stock-piling, and protein supplementation in exercising horses.  Each research abstract will be presented as part of the symposium as a data-sharing PowerPoint presentation, describing the research hypotheses, methodologies, results and implications.  If you would like a sneak peak of the research and other topics being presented, the abstracts and full papers have already been published and uploaded to the Journal of Equine Veterinary Science website at: http://www.j-evs.com/

More information about the meeting can be found at http://www.equinescience.org/2013/

Also, we will be sure to blog about the meeting itself and provide insight into all the new and exciting equine research being presented.  The meeting covers everything from nutrition, exercise physiology, reproduction, teaching & extension and more!

2013 Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event

Looking at the Kentucky Horse Park’s schedule of events, there’s always something going on at the park; shows, demonstrations, and competitions of all shapes and kinds, not the least of which is the Rolex Kentucky Three Day Event – easily one of my favorite events of the year!

Once again, Purina Animal Nutrition was proud to be a sponsor of the annual event. To kick of the festivities, we were treated to a course walk by Olympian and Purina Ambassador Kyle Carter on Thursday afternoon. Kyle took us on a tour of the cross country course with great insights into the strategy and approaches for each obstacle. While some obstacles have a few options to take depending on the rider’s objective, all of them are a challenge in and of themselves. Just walking the course is a huge effort so you can imagine what that translates to on horseback.

I’m not an eventer myself, but I’ve developed an immense amount of respect for what it takes to get a horse to compete at this level.  To go from calm focus on dressage day to watching them gallop through the lanes on cross country day is certainly a sight to behold only to see them come back on Sunday and jump through the stadium course with what looks like ease. Of course there’s nothing easy about a four star level event and it takes a monumental team effort to get there.