What’s the Difference in Your Horse’s Diet? Horse owners often hear the words forage and fibre used interchangeably — but while they’re closely related, they don’t mean exactly the same thing. Understanding the difference helps you make better feeding decisions and ensure your horse’s diet supports optimal gut health, performance, and overall wellbeing. Forage: The […]
Review of Effect of diet composition on glandular gastric disease in horses My ears pricked when I received an email alert about a study that had just been published “Effect of diet composition on glandular gastric disease in horses”. That’s because up until recently, we’d thought that glandular disease risk factors were management and stress […]
Water-soluble carbohydrates (WSC) or Ethanol-soluble carbohydrates, that is the question There is ongoing debate within the equine community regarding whether water-soluble carbohydrates (WSC) or ethanol soluble carbohydrates (ESC) hold greater significance when evaluating the safety of forages and feeds for horses prone to laminitis. When discussing or calculating non-structural carbohydrates (NSC) in a diet, FeedXL […]
Entering ‘Pasture Quality’ for Accurate Diets We all know that forage should be a key component of your horse’s diet, but not all pasture is created equally. With pasture sometimes forming the majority, if not all, of our horse’s diets, it’s important to enter pasture quality as accurately as you can in FeedXL. Pasture quality […]
Straw is gaining favouritism among nutritionists and horse owners as part of diets for easy keepers. It allows energy intake of the diet to be reduced without drastic restriction in a horse’s daily feed intake. This strategy is thought to improve the welfare of easy keepers and reduce the risk of colic and gastric ulceration, […]
How can FeedXL help your horse with PSSM? Polysaccharide Storage Myopathy (PSSM) is an area of growing information. Dr Stephanie Valberg and colleagues at Michigan State University lead this movement and most information and nutritional guidelines we use today can be attributed to research performed by Dr Valberg and colleagues. The purpose of this article […]
Is using omeprazole for the prevention of gastric ulcers while treating horses with phenylbutazone (bute) best practice? Recent research indicates perhaps not. Prescribing ulcer medication and alongside bute for horses has become common to reduce the negative impact the pain medication is thought to have on gut health and development of gastric and colonic ulcers. […]
A brief review of some recent findings related to ACTH levels in horses and its use as a diagnostic test for PPID. Clear breed differences in ACTH levels in normal horses A normal autumn seasonal rise in ACTH was observed in ponies, Andalusian horses and Standardbreds however the greatest increases were seen in ponies (range […]
Does feeding horses straw help with weight loss? Weight loss in easy keepers can seem like an impossible task and is often the cause of frustration for owners, but feeding straw to your horse could be a potential solution. Despite a strict hay only diet, many easy keepers can still maintain their body condition. Owners […]
Confusion around what form of flaxseed (linseed) is best/safest to feed our horses is nothing new. While many of us thought the concerns around cyanide poisoning for horses were laid to rest, recent safety issues around flaxseed supplementation in human diets, more specifically for toddlers and children, has warranted us to look at this again […]
