PSII-A-1 - A Preliminary Study Examining Supplement and Medication Use in Rodeo Horses

Abstract: Dietary supplements and prescription medications are widely used in the horse community. Many equine governing organizations have guidelines and regulations related to supplement and medication use in performance horses. Prior surveys have focused on supplement and medication use in the horse show industry, while little data has been published regarding their use in horses competing in rodeos. Therefore, the purpose of this survey was to understand owner-reported supplement and medication use in rodeo horses. The Qualtrics-designed survey consisted of 36 questions pertaining to owner and horse demographics, as well as supplement and medication types administered to individual horses. Survey links were distributed via email and social media outlets. Responses were collected for owner’s self-selected main competition horse. Descriptive and correlation analyses were performed with SAS. There were 189 complete responses from competitors in 24 different states with the largest frequency of responses from the midwestern United States (84.5%). The majority of horses fell between the age groups of 11-15 (38.1%) and 6-10 (34.4%). The predominant event was barrel racing (82.5%). The majority (56.1%) of owners reported using both dietary supplements and medications while 26.9% used dietary supplements exclusively and 6.9% used injectable/inhaled/topical medications exclusively. Horse age tended to be negatively correlated with number of supplements used being greater for horses of a younger age (r²=-0.12; p=0.10). For dietary supplements and oral medications, products related to digestive health were used most frequently (73.25%) followed by products for joint support (63.7%) and respiratory health (38.85%). For injectable/inhaled/topical medications, products related to joint and bone health were most frequently used (66.93%) followed by respiratory health (45.16%) and quieting agents (17.74%). The supplements/medications provided addressed an average of 4.6 health categories per horse. This survey provided insightful information on the use of dietary supplements and medications currently used in rodeo horses in the USA.