Chinese herbal formulas are an important part of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine (TCVM). Like Western medications, these formulas are prescribed to a specific horse for a specific condition.   Herbal formulas are not supplements and should not be fed to other horses without explicit instructions from a veterinarian! Used correctly, these formulas will help your horse improve more quickly and may decrease the number of acupuncture treatments needed. In some cases, herbal medicine may be used instead of acupuncture.

The formulas come as a powder that can be mixed with feed. Most horses will eat the herbs without a problem, especially when they are introduced in small amounts and slowly increased to full dose. All of the herbal formulas prescribed by Balanced Horse Veterinary Service are produced by Dr. Xie's Jing Tang Herbal, Inc., a professional manufacturer and supplier of veterinary herbal formulas. Quality control is imperative for Chinese herbal medicine to be both safe and effective. Click here to read more about Jing Tang Herbal's quality control standards.

At Dr. Xie's Jing Tang Herbal, individual herbs, like those pictured to the left, are ground into a powder and combined in appropriate ratios to create formulas designed to treat specific conditions. Paeonia and Angelica are two of the ingredients in the formula "Stomach Happy," which is used to treat horses with gastric ulcers.

Client Testimonial for "Stomach Happy"

“My ex-racing Thoroughbred, Sylvester, has always been a mouthy horse – always snatching at the lead rope, reins, hands, whatever happens to be near his mouth at any given time. He has always been somewhat girthy, as well, and is a cribber. I have known that he is prone to ulcers, so when one day he went from calm and happy to positively vibrating and barely being able to stay in his own skin in the space of time it took me to tack him up, I knew it was time to treat for ulcers again. Around the same time, Dr. Taryn Rathbone started treating Sylvester with acupuncture, and kept noticing that even after a month of ulcer treatments, his GI points were still “lighting up” every time she treated him. So she prescribed the Chinese herbal formula “Stomach Happy” for him. It took some time to coax him to eat it, but within a week, and even on only half a dose, I started noticing changes in Sylvester’s demeanor. His eye got softer, his body seemed less “tight”, and one day I realized that we had tacked up, worked, and untacked without a single snarl or snatch at me, the reins or the lunge line! Perhaps the most impressive change I’ve noticed in my horse is that instead of holding in his body and moving like two angry men in a sack (completely disconnected from back to front), Sylvester has started relaxing his body and truly moving through his entire body – which has resulted in significant muscle development across his topline and quarters. I am convinced! Stomach Happy is a powerful and effective treatment for horses with GI issues, known or unknown!”
-Tammy Prevo