Question: Can you tell me how many mgs of magnesium are in a scoop of EquiPride? The tag and info on the site just gives a percentage which doesn’t tell me what I need to know. I’m having my gelding’s bloodwork done on Monday because we suspect he may have blood sugar issues (overweight, cresty neck, fat pads despite only grass hay and lots of exercise), and I’ve been reading about how much magnesium helps these kinds of horses so I need to know exactly how much is in the equipride and if I need to supplement it.
Answer from Brad Thornberg of SweetPro: Okay, the standard serving recommendation for EquiPride is one ounce (28 grams) per hundred pounds of body weight. Using the prototype 1,000 pound horse: The recommended maintenance feeding rate would be based on 10 hundred weight. (1,000 divided by 100 pounds) Ten ounces, by weight, per day. A 1,500 pound horse would get 15 ounces. Since the blue scoops in the EquiPride Pail are a standard 8 fluid ounce cup. To use them for weight measurement, we note that one cup of EquiPride weighs 5 ounces (dry). Thus two cups per day would be the standard feeding rate (10 ounces) for that prototype 1,000 pound horse.
Since there’s 1.5% magnesium in EquiPride, that 10 ounce serving would provide 0.15 ounces by weight ( 10 x 0.015 ) or 4.2 grams ( 4,200 milligrams ) of magnesium. The Macro Minerals–Magnesium, Calcium, Potassium, Phosphorus and Sulfur—are listed by percent since their inclusion is quite large (more than 10x greater than the micros).
The Micro Minerals (because their proportions are so much smaller) are listed in either parts per million (PPM) or milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg), which are the same thing, One milligram is one part per million.
For Zinc, EquiPride provides 1000 ppm or 1000 milligrams per kilogram of product. So now we have to convert from Metric to our English system of measure. There are 2.2 pounds in a kilogram, so to find out how many milligrams of Zinc is in a pound of EquiPride divide 1000 by 2.2 to get 454 milligrams. 454 divided by 16 ounces equals 28 milligrams per ounce of EquiPride or 280 milligrams in a 10 ounce serving.
For Selenium, we have 5 ppm (5 milligrams per kilogram of product). 5 Divided by 2.2 = 2.27 milligrams. 2.27 divided by 16 = .142 milligrams per ounce or 1.42 milligrams per 10 ounce serving.
For Biotin, we have 40 ppm (40 milligrams per kilogram of product). 40 Divided by 2.2 = 18.18 milligrams. 18.18 divided by 16 = 1.14 milligrams per ounce or 11.40 milligrams per 10 ounce serving.
You’ll find this total on the back of the pail in the Guaranteed Analysis section under the heading of “Per 10 oz. Feeding.” All the micro nutrients are listed in this column.
When converting percent to ppm, multiply by 10,000. Thus 1.25% Phosphorus, for example would be (1.25 x 10,000) 12,500 ppm.