Your Buyers Are Believers. Here's Why That's Both the Best and Riskiest Thing About the Equine Supplement

I've been involved in the horse industry for most of my life. I've owned horses, managed their feed programs, stood in front of a supplement wall at the tack store, and made the same guesses every other horse owner makes. I've also spent my career on the other side of that shelf, formulating products, advising brands, and helping companies figure out what the science actually says versus what they wish it said. When a recent study landed in front of me last week, I found myself nodding the way you do when someone finally puts data behind what you've always suspected.

The study surveyed equestrians and equine professionals across a range of disciplines and competition levels to assess beliefs about supplements, supplement form preferences, and current or prior supplement use. The research design was deliberately broad, as they wanted a real-world cross-section of horse owners, not just elite competitors, and the result is one of the more honest portraits I've seen in a long time of how the equine supplement market truly functions.

The Numbers Behind the Habit

I knew from my own long days in the barn that most horse owners gave some type of supplement on top of their equids’ normal diet of hay and grain, but what the researchers found was truly eye-opening. Vitamin and mineral supplementation were essentially universal at 98.1%. Gastrointestinal health came in at 97.1%. Joint health and temperament were given similarly at 86.5% and 85.0%, respectively. Exercise performance was the notable outlier, reported by 61.4% of respondents, but meaningfully lower than every other category, and the only one where a significant portion of participants said they either weren't supplementing or didn't know that supplementation options existed.

The use rates alone tell a compelling story, but another story buried in the data deserves more attention than it typically gets in conversations about this market: a substantial percentage of respondents reported supplementing for multiple conditions simultaneously, which the authors referred to as "polypharmacy" in the equine context.

If you're a brand in this space, those numbers probably feel validating. The market exists. The buyers are there. They're engaged, and they're spending. But there's a second finding in this study that I think matters more for your long-term business than the use rates, and it's the one that should prompt a hard conversation inside your organization.

What the Research Actually Reported

The study design was deliberately modeled on prior work in human sports nutrition supplementation, adapting it for the equine context. Participants completed a questionnaire that asked them to rank seven supplement forms (herbal blend, tonic, mineral block, paste, pellet, needle-and-syringe, and powder) by expected effectiveness across five outcome categories: gastrointestinal health, joint health, exercise performance, temperament, and vitamin and mineral needs. They also reported whether they currently or previously supplemented for each outcome.

Now here's where it gets interesting. When the researchers asked participants to rank supplement forms by expected effectiveness, there was almost no consensus. Across all outcome categories, buyers disagreed on which forms they believed worked best. Form aside, horse owners are buying into equine supplements at near-universal rates, but they are not buying from a shared, evidence-based understanding of what they are buying. It's buying on belief.

The Belief Economy

The concept of placebo and belief effects in equine supplementation isn't new. Prior research has documented that caregivers’ belief in treatment efficacy can alter behavioral and clinical outcomes in horses, meaning what the horse's owner expects to happen has a measurable influence on what they observe. The researchers cite this as one of the driving forces behind supplement use, alongside more straightforward motivations like addressing nutritional gaps or compensating for forage quality.

This study provides a clearer picture of the market structure resulting from belief-driven purchasing. When you have near-universal adoption but low concordance in rationale, you've got a market built largely on confidence rather than evidence. Buyers trust that supplementing is the right course of action. They're less certain about which form, which ingredient, or which mechanism of action is actually driving results, but they're buying anyway.

For a brand, that sounds like a gift. And in some ways, it is. Baseline demand is high and relatively sticky. Horse owners are predisposed to believe that supplementation is necessary. You don't have to build the category from scratch.

But here's the problem with a belief-driven market: It's only as durable as the category's credibility. And right now, the credibility infrastructure supporting the equine supplement industry is dangerously thin.

A Market Without a Safety Net

The authors put it plainly: Unlike human sports nutrition, there are no regulatory frameworks, no mandatory third-party testing requirements, and no international consensus standards for equine supplement safety or efficacy. Anti-doping regulations exist at the governing body level, but they place the burden entirely on the owner or rider, not the manufacturer. There is no requirement for supplement companies to test for contamination or banned substances before their products reach the market. Riders are encouraged to self-fund elective testing and retain batch numbers. That's the entire system.

For brands operating in good faith, that regulatory vacuum probably feels like freedom. No mandatory hoops. No required certifications. Lower barriers to market entry. But that framing misses something important.

Why This Should Matter to Your Organization

The same regulatory vacuum that feels like low overhead today is also what makes every supplement brand in this space vulnerable when something goes wrong. And things do go wrong.

Contamination events happen. Adverse analytical findings happen. An elite horse tests positive for a prohibited substance that originated from a product that was never screened. A high-profile case goes public. A governing body tightens testing protocols. Social media turns a single incident into a category-wide credibility crisis.

When that happens (and it has happened in this industry, and it will again), the brands that survive and even grow through the fallout are the ones with defensible quality and regulatory infrastructure already in place. These are the brands that can say, demonstrably: We test for this, we document this, we have third-party verification. The ones who can't are left explaining why they trusted a system that never required them to verify anything.

Polypharmacy only compounds the risk. When horses are receiving multiple supplements simultaneously, the potential for interaction effects, cumulative toxicity, and inadvertent exposure to contaminants increases exponentially. The more supplements in the program, the more potential sources of a problem. A brand might be doing everything right in isolation, while its product ends up in a feeding program that creates risk through combination with another supplement. That doesn't absolve the brand of scrutiny when questions start getting asked.

The study also raises a welfare dimension that I think is underappreciated in business conversations about this market. The high rates of supplementation across all categories may reflect something the researchers noted with concern: a pattern of providing accessible, timely "care" in lieu of seeking professional or veterinary advice. The market is meeting a real felt need, but not necessarily through the most evidence-based path. Brands that genuinely want to serve horse welfare and make defensible welfare-related claims on their labels need to be able to substantiate what they're selling.

That requires proper formulation. It requires substantiated label claims. It requires knowing not just that your product contains an ingredient, but also that the ingredient is present at a dose with documented physiological relevance.

Where the Opportunity Actually Lives

I want to be careful not to let this read as a doom-and-gloom piece about a market that has real, demonstrated, durable demand. The near-universal use rates in this study are remarkable. Horse owners are deeply committed to their animals' health and performance; they're actively spending, and they're not particularly price-sensitive when they believe in a product. That's a strong foundation.

The opportunity for brands in this space isn't just to ride that demand. It's to differentiate on substance at a time when most competitors aren't. Third-party testing and certification. Formulation decisions that are defensible, documented, and proportionate to actual physiological need. Label claims that hold up under regulatory scrutiny. A clear answer to the question: "How do you know this works, and how do you know it's safe?"

That's not just a compliance story. That's a competitive advantage, particularly as governing bodies continue to increase scrutiny, as veterinary and nutritionist communities push for higher standards of evidence, and as the breed of buyer who reads ingredient panels and asks harder questions grows in this market.

The equine supplement industry has largely operated on trust and tradition. A new generation of horse owners and a new level of regulatory attention are going to ask for more. The brands that have built the infrastructure to answer those questions will have a significant head start.

This is Part 1 of a three-part series examining what recent research on equine supplement beliefs and use means for brands operating in this space. Part 2 will focus specifically on the regulatory gap: what it looks like, what's emerging in voluntary standards, and what brands can do now to build credibility ahead of the industry’s direction.

At BSM Partners, we work with equine supplement and feed brands at every stage of product development and regulatory positioning, from formulation and ingredient substantiation to NASC certification support and label review. If your team is navigating questions about where your product stands, we'd be glad to have that conversation.

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About the Author

Neeley Bowden Lewis is a Manager of Special Services on the BSM Partners Product Innovation team. She earned her bachelor's degree in pet food production and her master's in food science. In her early career, she worked in product innovation of pet food ingredients, focusing on the development of palatability enhancers. Bowden Lewis calls Arizona home, along with her faithful canine, Allie.