Helping Horse Owners Understand Their Horses

Power Star Nutrition was founded on a simple belief:

When a horse changes, there’s usually a reason.

Power Star Nutrition didn’t begin because I set out to start a supplement company. It grew from years of working hands-on with horses as an equine massage therapist and trying to understand why some of the problems I was treating kept coming back.

I could loosen tight muscles, improve movement and help a horse feel more comfortable. But sometimes bodywork could only take us so far.

The same tension might return. A horse could remain sore or difficult to bend. Others might become girthy, reactive, spooky or simply not feel quite right to their owner.

I began to realise that sometimes the muscles weren’t the whole problem.

It is much harder to help a horse become soft, comfortable and free-moving when their body isn’t receiving the nutrition it needs, or when digestive discomfort or other internal factors may be contributing to how they feel.

That changed the way I looked at the horses I was treating — and eventually changed the direction of my career.

Why I Turned to Nutrition

Between 2011 and 2014, I became increasingly interested in the relationship between nutrition, digestive health, gastric ulcers, behaviour and muscular comfort.

At that time, our understanding of equine gastric ulcers and digestive health was growing, but gastroscopy — scoping the stomach to diagnose gastric ulcers — wasn’t as readily accessible to many everyday horse owners as it is today.

For many owners, particularly those outside the major centres, having a horse scoped wasn’t necessarily a simple or practical option.

At the same time, there was increasing research and discussion around equine digestive health, including interest in whether patterns of sensitivity and certain acupressure points could be associated with digestive discomfort.

That was particularly interesting to me because it reflected some of what I was seeing through my own hands-on work.

I would work on horses showing muscle soreness, tension or sensitivity and sometimes find that bodywork helped — but only to a point. The same tightness might return, or the owner would describe other changes such as girthiness, sensitivity, altered behaviour or reduced performance.

It made me start looking beyond the sore muscle and asking:

Why is this muscle tight in the first place?

Was the horse receiving enough of the nutrients needed for normal muscle function? Was pasture contributing to the problem? Could digestive discomfort be affecting how the horse was moving or behaving?

Initially, I recommended nutritional supplements that were already available.

But there were horses where I felt we still weren’t getting to the bottom of the problem.

Bodywork could help the muscles, but if something nutritional or digestive was contributing to the problem, treating the muscles alone wasn’t necessarily enough.

And sometimes the supplements I was recommending weren’t giving me the results I had hoped for either.

So I started looking more closely at ingredients, nutrition and how different nutrients could work together to support the horse.

That journey eventually led to the development of Power Star Nutrition in 2015.

Our Philosophy

We still believe what I learned from those horses all those years ago:

Don’t just look at what’s happening. Ask why it’s happening.

A horse can’t tell us that something doesn’t feel right, but they can show us.

Sometimes that’s through changes in behaviour. Sometimes it’s muscle tension, digestive changes, sensitivity, reduced performance or simply an owner saying:

“My horse just isn’t quite themselves.”

Rather than simply focusing on the symptom, we encourage horse owners to look at the whole horse.

Whether it’s digestive health, changing pasture, seasonal challenges, nutritional gaps or everyday wellbeing, our goal is to help horse owners better understand what their horse may be telling them and make informed nutritional decisions with confidence.