MonoShield having an impact!

Hi Shane, lovely to chat with you. My name Rachael, I work with MonoShield Equine. I'm an Equine Physical Therapist by trade and I work with Mayo Healthcare. They're a fantastic company that have developed this product with the National University of Ireland.

It is an emerging product that has been highly successful in the racing industry and in the sports horse industry now as well. We're seeing phenomenal results on the track but we're also seeing the show jumping world turn their heads and see the difference in their horses in competitive show jumping.

So MonoShield Equine Granule is one of the products that we're working with. It's a dietetic supplement that promotes health of the gut. We also have our Foal Wean Master product that we're launching here as well. It's for foals that go through the weaning process, so to eliminate the stress and the lactic acid build up in the gut that puts them off their feed.

We want to create the environment to allow them to thrive as they go through the weaning process even though it's a stressful time. It’s all about prevention — keeping the foals strong and healthy through the weaning process.

We've had horses winning some of the top races in the country, they've been over to the UK, there's UK horses winning on MonoShield in the racing circuit.

I have a young rider who has just started on MonoShield in the last couple of months and he's taken his horses from jumping a 1m to 1.10m. His young stallion in particular is now jumping a 1.30m track and he's heading to Barnadown in a couple of weeks to do his 1.35m.

So that was the difference of MonoShield. The horse didn't have the confidence in his own body to take on the bigger fences and was getting in too close and too deep. Now he's jumping with confidence, he's taking on the fences instead of backing off them.

He's a stallion that's also a working stallion so they're finding him so much easier to handle. He's easier to handle and stable, he's easier to load in the box, he's standing in the box all day in the show.

It's a really cool result and it's nice to see. The profound change in the horses’ demeanour is a big thing. New horses are aggravated, they're cross at home in the stable, and that reflects out into the staff, into the environment that the staff have to work in.

So if you can have nice, relaxed, calm horses, the staff will treat them in that nice, relaxed, calm way as well. It's a whole environmental change within the yard at times.

It goes from the racing yards, particularly stallions, performance stallions... you have a couple of stallions standing in your yard, there's natural aggression there between each other. That all dissipates. It's not a cross environment that you're working with, you're working with a positive energy rather than a negative energy.

Well, I think there's a very bright future for MonoShield. We're already exporting to different countries. We've recently launched in Sweden and we've had a huge uptake in the racing industry over there, particularly with the trotters. We've had a couple of good results with trotters. There was one in particular that won a big race in Paris recently.

So to see those results transfer out past our own shores is phenomenal. We were over in the States in February and hope to be back over there again shortly and to see where and what we can do with that.

You can find us at stand E14 in the main hall. So we'd love to catch up with anyone if they have any questions whatsoever about their horses, their products.

And then we have one other really cool thing coming up. We have Dr. Audrey DeClue, DVM. She's coming over from Florida to do a three day workshop for physiotherapists, equine therapists and chiropractors.

It's going to be a real intense three days. She'll be showing in detail the basic function of anatomy and biomechanics in sport horses. Functional, biomechanical, physio-manual therapies and then the cause and effect of equipment in sport horses.

So that’s a three day intense workshop — 24th to the 26th of September — and It’ll be at Anna Harvey Farm, Co. Offaly.

And we also have a two day workshop for vets. The vet side of things, she will be...
Day one will be girthiness and shoulder injuries — the clinical signs and causes of treatment. And day two is the iliopsoas injuries — also the clinical signs and causes of treatment.

So that will be a very educational day for all vets. CVE credits are pending from the Veterinary Council of Ireland. But that should be approved shortly.

But Dr. DeClue, she's very well known for her podcast, The Horse First.
She's a phenomenal lady. She's a pioneer in creating the innovative treatment for shivers and string horse. And she has published papers on it as well.

So to have her come to Ireland, I know people have tried before to get her here and she wouldn’t come. I blundered into meeting her in Florida and she kind of fell in love with the idea of coming to Anna Harvey Farm where we do horse riding holidays. And to throw in education as part of that trip — that's all.

It has been lovely to chat, we can't wait to meet people across the week and introduce equestrians at the RDS to MonoShield.