Equilin Essential Horse Supplements was founded as a collaboration between two veterinarians:

Sandra van Leeuwen-Roelofs, DVM, and Annette van Weezel Errens, MVSc.

In January of 2004 Annette and Sandra decided to join forces to achieve their common goal: developing vegetable nutritional supplements for horses that really help, without unnecessary by products and using as many organic and natural ingredients as possible.

"It's all about handling the horse as natural as possible, from the horse's point of view; in nutrition as well as in housing and human interaction. For us, that list also includes an holistic viewpoint towards disease and health."

Annette graduated in veterinary medicine at the University of Utrecht in 2004, and now works as a veterinary advisor. Recently she wrote the Equinesports Veterinary Manual, a book that discusses the ins and outs of doping and therapeutic substances in equestrianism. It proved to be a standard work for practicing equine veterinarians (see www.equinesports.info) In addition, Annette worked for Treurniet Mengvoeders, an animal food company. During this period, but also during her study veterinary medicine, she became very interested in the nutrition of the horse.

Annette: "We have now developed a product that is almost essential for any horse, because all its ingredients have not been added in adequate concentrations to normal ‘complete' horse foods. Besides that, horses are often fed unnaturally with concentrated foods and pre-fermented roughage like silage. The result is an unfavourable pH value in the large intestines and the caecum."

Sandra graduated in veterinary medicine at the University of Utrecht in 2001, and she has worked as a licensed equine veterinarian in several practices. After a three-year education in equine osteopathy, she specialized more and more in for instance back problems in horses. As osteopathy treats the horse as one entity, in which food also plays an important role, she started to study the nutrition of the horse. At present she runs her own equine osteopathy practice (see www.veterinaire-osteopathie.nl).

Sandra: "In my practice I see a lot of horses with all the symptoms of magnesium deficit. I wanted to do something about that, because the products I prescribed up to this point either contained too little magnesium, or too much sugar and other needless by products. On top of that, these supplements were extremely expensive."

Both Annette and Sandra are enthusiastic riders in their spare time.

Annette has her own horse, which she loves to ride out in the country, and she is no stranger to the world of polo and horse racing and trotting.

Sandra performed in a high level of both dressage and show jumping competitions. She is also very interested in breeding, and lately in ‘natural horsemanship'. She has three NRPS- horses, bred by herself.