It stands about 6 ft. tall at this point and is permanently affixed to the bottom of my feet.  This soap box is not going to diminish in size; in fact, it’s only going to grow taller.

What fills this box?

Thoughts turning into convictions.

On food.

That daily sustenance that we provide so carefully and thoughtfully for our critters. That daily sustenance that we believe is going to make them grow stronger, healthier and smarter.

That daily sustenance that is killing them.

Yep — you read that correctly. I said it. It’s killing them.

We believe what the experts tell us. We believe that the manufacturers of the feed know what they’re doing. We believe that veterinarians know; healthcare providers know and the developers know.

But do they know this?

Eighty million species on earth (about 700,000 of which are animals) thrive on raw food. Only humans apply heat to what they eat. Humans on average as a race, die at or below half their potential life span of chronic illness that is largely diet and lifestyle related. Domesticated pets also are fed cooked, processed, packaged food that likewise is denatured by heat. As a consequence, they suffer human-like chronic ailments including cancer, arthritis and other degenerative diseases. –http://www.living-foods.com

Not only cancer, arthritis, metabolic syndrome, IR, Diabetes and more … but “Leukocytosis” and “Deficiency Disease”.

In 1930, Dr. Paul Kouchakoff directed research at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry in Lausanne, Switzerland on the effects of processed vs. raw foods and the immune system. What he found was astounding.

It was found that after a person ate cooked food there was an increase in the person’s white blood cell count that indicated a response to something ‘toxic’ or ‘foreign’ to the body. This event is called “Leukocytosis”. During the same study it was found that raw foods did not produce this increase in the leukocyte levels. Also discovered that PROCESSED food resulted in a state of extreme leukocytosis akin to the body being violently poisoned.

Pretty scary stuff, I’d say.

Reading this was the answer *I* had been searching for the last decade to the question of —

WHY!?!?  Why were our horses getting more and more ill at younger and younger ages !?!?!  We have the “best” in research; the “best” in medical and scientific studies yet they are getting more and more sick. The methodologies used to treat these sick animals were not *curing* them but mainly *maintaining* an acceptable range of condition.

That was and is unacceptable to me. So, I was and am determined to do *something* about it. And I did. I read, I studied, I thought, I connected the dots and here we have it.

Another study done by Dr. Francis M. Pottenger, Jr. over a period of 10 years was extremely revealing … Pottenger’s Cat Study.  Dr. Pottenger’s study revealed the extremely detrimental effects of feeding processed and cooked food to over 800 cats. By the third generation of cats the kittens born (if they were not still born) were deficient in physical development, organ development and succumbed to early deaths (before 6 months of age.)  In his published studies, Dr. Pottenger took photos of the autopsied cats showing the severe deformities of the inner organs and the overall ill physical characteristics of the 3rd generation of cats.

I have that printed study and the photos are just astounding.

NOW — putting Dr. Kouchakoff’s study together with Dr. Pottenger’s studies I have an answer that is working for PENZANCE and PENZANCE’s clients.

Get off the processed foods, for sure!  Get the horses off whole grains – they are foragers :: herbivores; not grain eaters. Their systems are not designed to eat large amounts of grain – they are created to eat forages – little bits of forages a whole lot of the time. 18 – 20 hours a day of grazing.  Feed them RAW FORAGES!  Vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, grass, hay — let them eat bark, trees, shrubs, weeds, flowers, herbs as they are meant to do.  Get them off chemicals!  Artificial toxins. Let nature do its job of protecting the systems by a HEALTHY IMMUNE SYSTEM that is impeccable at doing its job efficiently when healthy.

Stop STARVING the horses! They are dying of starvation while their bellies are being filled with processed foods, chemicals, artificial agents to ‘increase palatability’.

In other words, KISS.
“Keep It Simple, Simon”

Feed what our Creator created them to eat!  —

“Genesis 1:30
And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”

KISS.

Raw vegetables. Raw fruits. Raw nuts. Raw seeds. Flowers, trees, weeds — Forages (yes, I know seeds are not forage but they DO eat *some* seed in natural, feral settings.)

Every plant has medicinal properties of some kind. Horses *know*, innately, what they need.

They don’t understand ‘manufactured food’.

and for that matter, I don’t understand it either at this point.

And so my soap box grows taller …