What You Should Know About Anaerobic Fungi
Anaerobic Fungi! These little critters live in our horses’ hindguts! And they are responsible for an estimated 30 to 40% of the fibre fermentation that occurs in there! So as well as thinking about how diet might affect our horse’s hindgut bacterial populations we also need to think about how it might affect their anaerobic fungal populations!
Problem is, we know so little about them that we don’t know what is good and what is not so good for them. Information on what we know so far was presented at EEHNC by the incredibly passionate researcher Dr Joan Edwards. Joan described the fungi as having potent fibre degrading enzymes, giving them an important role in a horse’s digestion process.
The fungi can survive outside the horse’s gut too, and are seemingly resistant to both oxygen (which kills many anaerobic bacteria that live in the hindgut) and desiccation (drying out). This makes me wonder if they are part of the reason why my horses will seek out specific dry manure piles and eat them on occasion… maybe?!
Anyway, there is some research published (e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/…/329954798_Anaerobic_fungal_c…)
And more research to come (https://www.wur.nl/en/project/Equine-Anaerobic-Fungi.htm)… so watch this space as we keep learning more.
In the meantime while we figure out how to look after these fungi, I suspect feeding in the way that will look after the bacteria in a horse’s hindgut will also look after the fungi… so keep your horse’s diet high in low fructan forage, keep grain/starch out of the hindgut by feeding only well-cooked grains where necessary and in as small meals as possible and make changes to the diet slowly.
I love info like this as it is exciting to know we are always understanding horses better. Part of me though is thinking great, yet another thing we have to think about!?
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