The body composition of the new-born foal, young and the adult horse (Schryver et al., 1974; Meyer and Ahlswede, 1976; Webb and Weaver, 1979; Grace et al., 1999) reflects the accretion of macro and trace elements in different compartments of the equine body. However, the measurable amounts of minerals give a rather fragmentary figure about the physiological role and the growth related metabolism. It should be mentioned, that a simple quantitative figure (e.g. vitamin E in muscle) is a rather weak information concerning the importance for the process of growth. A second point - and even more relevant if we look on reproduction - is that the impact of mineral and vitamin supply to the growing organism is not initiated when we observe or measure the growth after birth, in fact we have to consider some importance of these nutrients in the organism for successful fertilisation and the following stages of intrauterine life. Therefore the idea of this paper is to draw attention on the several stages of growth and the impact of some nutrients on several processes. The presented facts are partly not obtained in experiments in the equine species. But data from other species are well suitable to describe a certain function. Therefore the authors refer to the contribution of Kienzle (see page 199) presenting the quantitative figures about requirements and recommendations.
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