HorseSense Fees a Better Idea

HorseSense Feeds a Better Idea

By Leslie VanSant

You are what you eat is an expression that can be understood in both the literal and figurative sense.

For the last 50 years it’s become synonymous with healthy eating, natural and organic foods, less processed, foodie, gourmet and farm to table. It suggests that you will enjoy greater and better health benefits if you eat better foods made with natural and whole ingredients.

Andrea Weyer Donaghy at HorseSense

Photo by Vicky Moon

The sentiment, and larger food movement applies equally to man or beast.

It also could be the motto for HorseSense, located at the train tracks in Belvoir, near Marshall on Zulla Road. In its cozy building, perhaps once white, now cream-colored by age and dust from the nearby tracks, HorseSense offers optimum nutritional feed for horses, cats, dogs and chickens.

Step inside and meet affable Andrea Weyer Donaghy behind the counter. Sit a moment in the tidy directors chairs across from the register and she’ll share the passion for animals that underpins the feed business she started with her late husband, Karl, in 1998.

Karl was a horseman who trained and owned racehorses. Much has been written about Karl and his collaboration with Dr. Marion Jones, a premier animal nutritionist. Jones was an expert in nutrition balancing, a science that applied to commercial livestock including hogs, sheep and cattle for 75 years with much success and science. Donaghy convinced him to apply the science to horses, and the result was Optima.

“In commercial livestock, the feed companies can be heldaccountable, because you can measure the results of the feed in the food produced by the animal,” Andreaexplained. “Horsemen (and women) have been left out of the loop on this information because horses are not producers of commercial meat and milk, where the benefits of grain-roasting and nutrition balancing give obvious proven results.”

Andrea and Karl met more than 30 years ago in Upperville. He worked with the thoroughbreds at Blue Ridge Farm, and she rented a barn at Oakley.

“I had an older mare that I used for therapeutic riding,” Andrea began as she told the story of the day they met. The mare was hard to keep and on many supplements and “Karl suggested I try Optima because it had all of the nutrition the mare needed without trying to feed so many supplements.”

They say the way to a woman’s heart is through her horses.

The mare thrived. A shared passion for equine nutrition and a romance started that lasted until Karl’s death in 2017. The business carries on under Andrea’s guidance today.

HorseSense grew, you might say, from a wheelbarrow where they would mix the nutrition balancer for their own horses at a mill, exponentially increasing their production capacity. The couple started selling the original HorseSense product and since have developed a line of products for horses, dogs, cats, chickens and even people. Product lines include HorseSense A and B, Safe and Sound, and MiraChrome.

HorseSense has been built on the concept that by meeting the nutritional needs of the horse you can improve performance and health. Good nutrition boosts the immune system and positively impacts soundness.

HorseSense has countless loyal customers, “converts” from traditional feeds who swear by the products.

“If you know and understand your horses,” Andrea said, “you can see the difference within three days of starting to feed HorseSense.”

HorseSense is on a modified schedule due to COVID-19. It’s open Monday to Friday, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 4294 Belvoir Road, The Plains. For more information go to horsesensenutrition.com or call 540-253-9987.