How to use Sweet Relief

Sweet Relief is a fine white powder. There is a 10ml scoop enclosed in each pack which provides approximately 4g of product.

We recommend feeding one 10ml scoop per day for horses and half a scoop per day for ponies. Where the product provides some benefit but not enough, you can feed up to 3 times the normal dose. However, if the increased dose provides no further benefit, we recommend cutting the dose back again.

At one scoop per day, a pack should last approximately 50 days.

Where horses are fed more than once per day, we recommend splitting the dose across the day's feeds (keeping the total dose per day as above).

Sweet Relief should be safe to feed with other supplements so long as they don't contain high dose B vitamins (which is unlikely).

Given that the product works by supporting a poorly functioning gut, it also makes sense to make sure the horse is on a good diet otherwise. The following suggestions may help:

Suggested base diet

Horses have evolved to eat a high fibre, low sugar diet. Ideally the majority of a horse's calorie intake should come from forage (usually grass, hay or haylage). Forage should wherever possible be given ad-lib - if a horse is without access to forage for more than a couple of hours the risk of gastric ulcers increases significantly. For good doers, consider using double-netted hay/haylage when stabled and strip grazing when turned out.

Few horses other than those in hard work (e.g. endurance, 3-day event, top level dressage, etc.) need much in the way of energy in the bucket feed. Ideally avoid feeds that contain any significant amount of sugars such as molasses. Processed feeds are also more quickly digested and so create blood sugar spikes - these should ideally be avoided. Where higher energy feeds are needed (e.g. for 3-day event horses) straights such as oats and barley work well (so long as the quantities are not excessive).

Ensure that each bucket feed is small - a 500kg horse's stomach can only handle around 5 litres of food in one meal. If you're not sure what five litres of feed looks like, try measuring a typical feed with a measuring jug.

Many horses are given too many supplements. If you don't see any improvement in your horse with a particular supplement, then it's probably not needed (and that goes for Sweet Relief too). Beware of feeding multiple supplements which contain the same ingredients (e.g. balancer plus hoof supplement) which risks overdosing the horse in critical nutrients such as selenium. As a general rule, less is more when it comes to supplements.