Seabuckthorn for Animals

What is Seabuckthorn?

Seabuckthorn is a plant that contains many vitamins including: A, B1, B2, B6, and C. Several parts of the plant are useful, including the leaves, flowers, seeds, and fruits.

It normally grows as either a small tree or a shrub and has small orange coloured berries.

The leaves as well as the berries are often used for their medicinal and wellbeing benefits.

As its name suggests, it's often found near the sea. But it's been used in the Himalayas area for centuries.

How Can Sea buckthorn Help My Animal?

It's believed to have a number of potential benefits for animal health. And is becoming more widely used as complementary medicine. These benefits include:

• Digestive issues (e.g. gastric ulcers) see here for some veterinary research
• Immune health
• Skin/coat condition
• Ophthalmology (eye conditions) - see below for veterinary research

What animals can use sea buckthorn?

A wide range of animals can enjoy sea buckthorn products, including horses, dogs, llamas, alpacas, cattle and chickens!

Choosing a Sea buckthorn Product For Your Animal

As with virtually anything, not all sea buckthorn products are the same. It can lose its nutritional / medicinal properties if it's stored for long periods of time. Or if quality control hasn't been the best it could. So choose carefully! In particular, see if your sea buckthorn product:

• Contains any other ingredients? Is it pure (100%) sea buckthorn?
• Is sourced and processed quickly to ensure it's as fresh and nutritious as possible?
• Uses sea buckthorn which is grown naturally, without chemicals? Is it organic?

Where can you buy sea buckthorn? Many good equestrian and animal feed stores now sell it. Or there are reputable animal supplement companies online who specialise in its retail.

Like more information about sea buckthorn? Read these:

• Sea Buckthorn: A Multipurpose Medicinal Plant from Upper Himalayas. In: Joshee N., Dhekney S., Parajuli P. (eds) Medicinal Plants. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31269-5_17
• Zielińska, A., & Nowak, I. (2017). Abundance of active ingredients in sea-buckthorn oil. Lipids in health and disease, 16(1), 95. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12944-017-0469-7
• Phytochemical characterization and evaluation of anticataract potential of seabuckthorn leaf extract. Suchita Dubey, Prakash Deep, Amrit K. Singh (2015). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/vop.12271

Please remember that no complementary therapy treatment can replace medical advice from a qualified physician - and professional advice should always be sought if you (or your animal) are at all unwell before using any product/supplements.

You can get more information on many complementary therapies for animals here at Taranet. Take a look at the sitemap here for a list.