FeedXL

Feeding a Cushing's horse

2008-07-22T05:54:00Z

Feeding a horse with Cushing's Disease is a fraught business. Anyone who has a horse with Cushing's will know that one wrong step with an unsuitable feed can mean more painful laminitis for your horse. There only a handful of feeds actually suitable for a Cushing's horse, but company literature and marketing make the task of finding appropriate feeds a daunting and difficult task.

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Red listed feeds in the FeedXL diet builder

There are a number of feeds on the market that sound like they should be OK, and sometimes even make the claim that they are OK for a horse with Cushing's Disease. Unfortunately, when you have a look at what's actually in them and test for the level of non-structural carbohydrates you soon realise that many of them are totally unsuitable.

As a horse nutritionist, Cushing's Disease is one of the problems that I run into frequently enough for me to want a better way of trying to navigate the feed minefield when formulating diets. This is why we've tackled the problem head-on in FeedXL. When formulating diets in FeedXL, you can specify which diseases your horse has from a list of diseases that are sensitive to different kinds of feeds—including Cushing's Disease. FeedXL then "red lists" any feed that we consider to be unsuitable for your horse. Once all the unsuitable feeds on the market are taken out of the picture, only a handful of suitable ones are left, meaning developing a diet becomes a far simpler task.

One of our FeedXL Alpha Testers reported a few days ago that the red listing really does make feeding a Cushing's horse so much easier. Shell has a pony that has just been diagnosed with Cushing's Disease and she posted this on our user forums:

Well, I have had my daughter's pony officially diagnosed with Cushing's last week. He is now on the prescribed medication and some herbs. Hoping to see an improvement soon. Without this program I probably would still be fumbling my way through the minefields of suitable feeds. He is now on an appropriate diet and loves it. Fingers crossed that by xmas we still have a pony plodding round the paddock.

In addition to Cushing's Disease, you can also tell FeedXL if your horse has any of the following:

Colic
Developmental Orthopaedic Disease
Hyperkalemic Periodic Paralysis (HYPP)
Insulin Resistance
Laminitis
Tying Up (RER or PSSM)

And the software then takes it into account. Depending on which diseases you tell it your horse has, FeedXL will:

Apply red listing to the feeds available to your horse
Modify the recommended daily intake of various nutrients important to that disease
Provide warnings when the diet you formulate may be harmful to your horse
Give you additional management information for dealing with your horse

Disease management notes in FeedXL analysis results

And, as a horse nutritionist, it's my job to stay on top of the science in this area. We will always be looking at ways to integrate the results of new research into FeedXL to simplify life for horse owners and keep horses safe, happy and healthy.

Catch Nerida at Raymond Terrace on Sunday

2008-05-21T05:12:26Z

This Sunday the 25th of May the Raymond Terrace & Lower Hunter RDA and "The Equine Health All-Star Cast" are presenting the Hands On: Horse Health Expo at Raymond Terrace in NSW. The event promises useful information on all aspects of equine health care from industry professionals including:

Dr John Kohnke - Veterinarian & Equine Nutritionist
Glynis Nairn - Independent Saddle Fitter
Charlene Goodworth - Equine Dentist
Dr Jenny Stewart - Veterinarian & Equine Nutritionist
Andrew Bowe - Trade Accredited Master Farrier & Equethy Accredited Barefoot Specialist
And, FeedXL's very own Equine Nutrition expert, Dr Nerida Richards.

There will also be the 'handy hints' competition and loads of prizes (including horse health products and feed) to be won.

Cost is $50/person (includes entry, lunch, morning/afternoon tea and tea/coffee). For more information, download the brochure. Even though the brochure says that registrations were supposed to be in by the 19th, you are still allowed to just show up on the day.

It should be a great, information packed day and an excellent chance to catch up with some top industry professionals. Nerida might even show off FeedXL.

FeedXL is coming!

2008-05-17T02:53:20Z

The FeedXL team have been working very hard getting FeedXL ready to release to the wild. We have a few major items to complete before we can open up access to all but the core of FeedXL is mostly complete and is working like a charm.

We are about to enter a period of Alpha testing the software with a small group of horse owners. The aim is to identify major bugs before we unleash FeedXL on the world and work further on the incomplete bits. Once we complete all of the major components of the software we will be moving to a Beta test which will involve a larger group of testers. During this phase we will be attempting to iron out any "show-stopper" bugs. If you're interested in participating in our Beta test, fill in a request to be kept informed; we'll be selecting people at random from this list so we have enough people to ensure a thorough workout of the software.

]]> FeedXL is based on the popular Equilize software by Nerida Richards, although existing Equilize users may not recognise the new software as FeedXL has been built from the ground up. Nerida's extensive expertise and understanding of horse nutrition has been built into FeedXL and will be constantly updated by her in response to research from all around the world and her daily experience in her role as consultant to some of Australia's peak horse owners.

Tango's Calcium looks OK, but his Energy intake is a bit low

There are 2 core principles that guide us as we develop FeedXL:

Taking the most up-to-date horse nutrition research and embedding it into software in a form that is accessible to horse owners of all types and experience levels.
Building software that is usable--unfortunately, a lot of software is released to the market that is built by computer people with little consideration for how people in the real world will understand and interact with it. Since the early prototypes of FeedXL, we have been conducting "user tests" on real horse owners, including people who have little computer expertise. Our goal is that everybody will find FeedXL a joy to use and that confusion is not part of the experience.

Unfortunately we are unable to give a firm release date and we don't want to commit to a timeframe that may lead to us releasing software that is really not ready. The best we can do at this time is say that we hope to have a public release within a few months from now. Unfortunately for our international visitors, the initial release will only be available to Australian users but we are already working on expanding our feeds database to other countries.

Over the coming months we'll keep you updated through this blog and via email for those who have filled in the form. Nerida will also be using this blog to post on a whole range of horse nutrition topics and we encourage everyone to join in on the discussion by using the comment feature.

If you haven't already done so, be sure to check out our new Tour page. It's been recently updated to include 35 new screenshots of FeedXL in action. Click on each of the main images to see more about each part of FeedXL.