It is high in calcium which is in a highly bio-available form, providing around 15grams per kilo, which is essential for health (bones, joints, hooves, nervous system, metabolism) and is useful for balancing concentrates which are high in phosphorus, eg grains, copra, soy, lupins, bran (both wheat and rice bran), pollard and millrun.
Adult horses need roughly twice as much calcium as phosphorus in their diet and young growing horses need about 1.5 to 2 times as much calcium as phosphate. It is also very useful for providing calcium for horses grazing on high oxalate pasture (eg Setaria, Buffel, Kikuyu. (Oxalates bind with calcium in horses’ GI tracts and cause calcium deficiency). Most equine nutritionists also recommend that magnesium should also be supplemented in the correct ratio to the calcium in the Lucerne.