Tag Archive for: digestion

Four horses looking over a white fence

Too Much Salt Might Be Killing Gut Bacteria

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Salt for horses – how much is too much?

Extreme weather can increase the trend for people to add large amounts of salt to their horse’s daily feeds, despite actual requirements or what may be coming from the rest of their diet. While horses need sodium or chloride to continue to sweat, it’s important to remember that commonplace blanket recommendations like “add 10g of salt per 100kg of bodyweight” don’t take into account a horse’s specific condition.

Take this horse’s diet for example, shown in the graph below. If we add 10g/100kg of bodyweight to his diet, his sodium intake is well over 200% of what he needs. In extreme heat conditions, this may well be accurate, but once it cools off, this is way more sodium than he needs.

What does excessive salt do to the bacteria in their gut? Salt is, after all, one of the best-known and most widely used anti-bacterial agents in the world.

A paper published in ‘Nature’ (one of the most reputable journals in the world) showed that in both humans and mice, adding more salt than normal to a diet affected the gut bacterial populations – in some cases even entirely wiping out certain strains of bacteria. The researchers were then able to link those shifts in gut bacteria to high blood pressure, which may help to explain the link between high salt diets and hypertension.

For horses, feeding excessive salt is unlikely to have any benefit and may be negatively affecting the good bacteria in your horse’s gut. When using FeedXL, be sure to meet but not exceed your horse’s requirement for sodium with salt that is added to the diet. Then leave free choice salt out so that they can top up any extra requirements they may have.

The Nature paper is here if you’d like to read it in more detail:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24628

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

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A close up picture of the side of a horse's face

Gastric Ulcer Medication for Horses and Their Effect on Digestion

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Question: Does gastric ulcer medication reduce nutrient digestion in horses?
Answer: Yes

Research shows that starch from grains that were exposed to equine stomach fluid before being digested by small intestinal enzymes was between 17% (extruded rice) and 104% (cracked triticale) more digested than starch that wasn’t exposed to the stomach fluid.

While the research can’t say how much of this increased starch digestion was due to the stomach acid and how much was due to the protein digesting enzymes that are present in the stomach fluid, the stomach fluid was having a definite positive influence on the digestion of starch.

It’s important to remember that the protein digesting enzymes in a horse’s stomach fluid rely on the stomach acid to activate them, so regardless of whether the improved digestion was due to the avid itself or the protein digesting enzymes, if you stop acid production using ulcer medications you will lose both the acid and the enzymes.

If you use gastric ulcer medications for horses like ranitidine and omneprazole to reduce gastric acid secretion, you are very likely reducing the digestion of at least some nutrients further down the gastrointestinal tract.

What should you do about this?

If your horse has ulcers, treating and getting rid of the ulcers as quickly and effectively as possible is by far the most important consideration. However, once the ulcers are gone, it is recommended to use good management practices to keep your horses chewing, their stomachs full and buffered with saliva, and their minds calm instead of constantly using medication to prevent ulcers. This way allows their gastrointestinal tract to function the way it was designed and allows the digestion process to be as effective as possible.

For more info on feeding to prevent ulcers, read our article ‘Avoiding Gastric Ulcers’ here.

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

We would love to welcome you to our FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group. Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. It’s free!

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Gut Bacteria and Human Health

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We talk a lot about a horse’s gut bacteria and how they impact health… have you ever stopped to think about your gut bacteria and how they might be influencing your health?? This relatively new area of science is quite literally mind blowing. These tiny critters control us in so many ways and have such a massive impact on our life that it is truly worth thinking about how what you eat affects them (and then how they affect you).

Here are a few very quick bits of info that are quite amazing… you ready?!

1. Bacteria in your body outnumber your human cells by 10 to 1, so in actual fact, we are 10 parts bacteria, 1 part human.

2. Bacterial DNA in our body outnumbers our human DNA by 100 to 1, so in that respect we are only 1% human (Don’t think about that too much!!)

3. Bacteria like to tell us what to eat. Certain foods are their favorites so in order for them to survive, they will make us go and eat their favorite foods! This is OK if you have a nice healthy population of fibre/vegetable loving bacteria in your gut. But it becomes an issue when you have accidentally bred up a sugar or fat loving bunch of microbes. Next time you are craving sugar or fatty food you can probably blame your bacteria! In saying that, if you starve the ones you don’t want in there (e.g. stop eating sugar) the cravings should lessen!

4. Bacteria produce mood altering hormones like dopamine and serotonin. Studies suggest half of these hormones in our body come from our intestine! Get the wrong bacteria and you could very likely be in the ‘wrong’ mood!

5. Bacteria can reduce or increase anxiety. In mice, taking the gut bacteria from nervous mice and introducing them to calm mice made the calm mice anxious! Scary huh!!

This list could go on (and on… and on!). There are known relationships between diseases like asthma and Type 2 Diabetes and gut bacteria for example. Suffice to say they are important little critters and probably have far more of an influence on you (and your horse) than you realise.

Eat well! Keep those bacteria healthy… we can’t help you much there (other than eat more real food and less junk) but certainly when it comes to feeding your horses, always think about how what you are feeding is affecting their gut bacteria. If you have time, have a read of our article on feeding for hindgut health!
https://feedxl.com/15-keeping-the-hindgut-healthy/

And if you’d like to read some more about all the amazing interactions you have with your own bacteria, this article is good! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270213/

Enjoy!!

 

 

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

We would love to welcome you to our FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group. Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. It’s free!

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A horse wearing a saddle and bridle being led up a rocky hill

The Link Between Regular Forage Meals and Gut Health

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From experienced horsemen to attendees at educational seminars, many equine enthusiasts don’t actually know how a horse’s gut works and why forage is so important for horse health.

Did you know that the equine stomach never stops secreting gastric acid? So even when your horse is not eating, it is filling the lower part of its stomach up with acidic gastric juices. While the stomach is full, this isn’t an issue as the dense mat of fibre in the gut will stop the acid from splashing around and burning the unprotected lining of the upper section of the stomach.

Problems start when horses are off feed for long periods of time and end up with a pool of acid and an empty stomach. Combine that with the movement of being ridden and you get acid splashing up and quite literally burning holes, causing ulcers, in the top part of the stomach.

What can you do to help prevent this?

  1. Don’t exercise horses on an empty stomach – Provide a small meal of alfalfa (lucerne) hay before and after exercise.
  2. Provide regular small meals and constant access to hay, especially during times of stress such as trailering
  3. Provide turnout and grazing time as often as possible

Help us to educate people on how a horse’s stomach works so they can understand why forage and horse health go hand-in-hand, plus some very simple things they can do to keep their horse’s stomach healthy. Share this article on Avoiding Gastric Ulcers with them and have them understand that a horse’s stomach should never be empty and that as much as is practical you should never work a horse on an empty stomach.

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

We would love to welcome you to our FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group. Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. It’s free!

Click here to join the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group

 

The Impact of Proton Pump Inhibitors on Gut Bacteria

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The pros and cons of proton pump inhibitors in horses

Proton pump inhibitors (like omeprazole) are a common and effective way to manage gastric ulcers in horses. However, have you ever thought about the potential side effects of long-term use on your horse’s gut bacteria?

Omeprazole in humans – is there a correlation?

This is an interesting read on the impact of proton pump inhibitors (PPI) like Omeprazole (the major drug we use to treat equine gastric ulcer syndrome) on the gut bacteria in humans: https://gut.bmj.com/content/65/5/740.

The research on horses

While these drugs are a huge help in setting up an environment in the equine stomach where ulcers can heal, they are overused in many horses (some racehorses are never taken off these drugs) to prevent ulcers in place of management systems that will reduce a horse’s risk of ulcers (like feeding a forage meal to fill the stomach prior to work).

What are PPIs doing to the equine gut bacterial populations? One study  (https://beva.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/eve.07_12792) shows no impact on equine fecal bacterial populations, but use of omeprazole in these horses was only short term and the study doesn’t specify the dose used. The fecal microbiota also aren’t necessarily reflective of what is happening further up the gastrointestinal tract.

Something to keep in mind if you have a horse on a PPI medication long-term. More research is needed.

 

 

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

We would love to welcome you to our FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group. Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. It’s free!

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Horses standing by a wooden fence

How to ‘Measure’ Gut Health

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Faecal pH = gut health = horse health

Gut health! It’s so important for horses but also really hard to ‘measure’. One way to get a bit of an indication of what your horse’s hindgut health is like is to check faecal pH.

Interpreting faecal pH

A healthy hindgut will stay at quite a neutral pH, close to 7. At this pH, the good fibre fermenting bacteria will be living happily ever after and doing an amazing job of digesting fibre for your horse.

A high pH (over 8) may indicate that there is not a lot of fibre fermentation happening in the hindgut for some reason, while a low pH (less than 6.5) may indicate that there is too much fermentation of starch and sugars happening. The good fibre fermenting bacteria don’t like living in these lower pH conditions and will be starting to shut down. If pH goes below 6.2 you can be almost certain that a lot of your good fibre fermenting bacteria will be starting to die and your horse will lose the ability to digest fibre (which then causes all sorts of problems including weight loss and vitamin deficiency).

An easy DIY hindgut health check

So, if you want to do a quick check on hindgut health, grab a ‘soil pH test kit’ (google that, you will find plenty of options for inexpensive kits) and use it on a fresh pile of your horse’s manure. You might find that pH is just right, or you may just find that something is a little out of kilter and you need to adjust the diet to get it back to a more neutral pH.

Have fun!

 

 

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

We would love to welcome you to our FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group. Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. It’s free!

Click here to join the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group

 

Many horses grazing on grass and eating out of buckets on the ground

Digestive Enzymes – What Do They Do for Your Horse?

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When a horse eats, much of its feed is made up of LARGE carbohydrate, fat and protein molecules. The horse can only absorb tiny little molecules from its gut (because if big stuff was able to cross from the gut into your horse’s body all sorts of bacteria, toxins and general muck would pass into the body and cause disease havoc!). This is where digestive enzymes come into the picture.

Why are digestive enzymes important for your horse?

Before absorption from the small intestine can occur, the big stuff must be chopped up into little stuff. And it is enzymes in your horse’s gut that do this chopping.

It is easiest to think of digestive enzymes as little pairs of scissors. Let’s look at starch as an example. Starch (found in cereal grains like barley and corn/maize) is made up of lots of glucose molecules, all joined together. The job of the starch digesting enzymes in your horse’s small intestine is to cut starch into single pieces of glucose. Then it is the glucose that your horse is able to absorb.

Each nutrient has its own specific set of digestive enzymes in your horse’s small intestine. So, there are specific enzymes to digest/chop up starch, protein and fats/oils.

To learn more about enzymes and your horse’s digestive system, read our article The Gastrointestinal Tract: The Key to Feeding Your Horse

 

 

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

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An image of two types of soybeans tested for trypsin inhibitors, the left is red indicating the presence of trypsin inhibitors and the right is yellow, indicating that it is safe for horses

The Role of Trypsin Inhibitor in Soybean for Horses

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What is a trypsin inhibitor and how does it affect your horse?

Soybean naturally contains an anti-nutritional factor called trypsin inhibitor. Trypsin inhibitor is a compound that actually blocks the action of trypsin (which is an enzyme, or as I call them, a little pair of scissors, in the horses gut that cuts up protein so it can be absorbed by the horse). When trypsin is blocked by soybean a horse can no longer digest protein… not very useful right?!

Why would you feed soybean to horses?

So, if soybean contains stuff that stops a horse from digesting protein, why on earth would we use it in a horse’s ration?

This is talked about a lot and often given as a reason why soybean should not be fed to horses. BUT, if you’ve been hanging around us here at FeedXL for a while you will have heard us say many times that if soybean is cooked properly trypsin inhibitor is destroyed which then makes soybean perfectly safe to feed. And given it is the best of the best when it comes to quality plant protein it makes a valuable addition to diets in so many ways.

Make sure your soybean is safe for your horse

To check soybean products to see if they have been cooked properly there is a test kit called FeedCheck Soy (https://cbsbioplatforms.com/Store)… this kit gives a rapid visual check on whether soybean has been cooked enough to destroy the trypsin inhibitor. Soybean products that still have active trypsin inhibitor will show red coloring while properly cooked products will have no red coloring at all.

The photo above shows a test we did on two samples. We had completely raw full fat soybean on the left which is clearly bright red indicating it has all of its trypsin inhibitor still present. The product on the right is a commercially available (branded) product, which has been extruded and shows no hint of red coloring to demonstrate beautifully how, when done properly, trypsin inhibitor can be destroyed without destroying the actual soybean and all of its amazing protein! Happy days for those of us who love the benefits soybean can bring to a diet!

 

 

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

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Three horses standing together looking at the camera

Hindgut Bacteria, Vitamin B1, and Behaviour: Are They Linked?

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The short answer is yes! Here is how:

How Vitamin B1 affects your horse’s gut bacteria

Vitamin B1 has been observed to have an influence on behaviour in multiple animal species, including horses. A horse will meet its vitamin B1 requirements via the vitamin B1 it eats in its diet and from vitamin B1 produced by the bacteria in its hindgut.

There are two main families of bacteria living in your horse’s hindgut:

1. The fiber fermenting bacteria who love to ferment fibre from the forage your horse eats. These little critters are the ones we consider the ‘good bacteria’; and
2. The starch and sugar fermenting bacteria who prefer to ferment starch and sugars. These we generally consider to be the ‘bad bacteria’.

The good bacteria PRODUCE vitamin B1 that your horse can then absorb and use.

On the other hand, the bad bacteria produce a compound called ‘Thiaminase’ that actually destroys vitamin B1 (also known as thiamine) that is in the gut, making it useless to your horse.

How hindgut bacteria affects your horse’s behaviour

If your horse has too many bad bacteria in its hindgut, and not enough of the good ones, your horse may not get enough vitamin B1 and behavioural changes may occur.

What you can do

How do you avoid this? Keep your horse’s hindgut healthy with an abundant population of good bacteria. The main two things you should do to achieve this are:

1. Feed lots of forage!
2. Never feed uncooked grains (with the exception of oats for some horses)

For more tips on caring for your horse’s hindgut, read our article Keeping the Hindgut Healthy.

 

 

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

We would love to welcome you to our FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group. Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. It’s free!

Click here to join the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group

 

Many horses grazing on grass and eating out of buckets on the ground

Meal Size: Why Should it Be Little and Often?

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What is the ideal meal size for a horse?

We have all been told ‘little and often’ when it comes to feeding horses. But why?

Well, when you consider horses are ‘grazers’ and their gut has been designed to work best with small amounts being consumed constantly over long periods of the day and night (they eat for up to 17 hours a day, can you imagine having to do that!) it makes sense that horses should be fed small meals frequently.

But here is a visual (in words) on why it is best to feed little and often… In the horse’s small intestine there are things called enzymes, which are like tiny pairs of scissors. An enzyme’s job is to cut big things like protein, starch and fats up into very small things like amino acids (the building blocks of protein), glucose (the building block of starch) and fatty acids (a building block of fats).

If these proteins, starches and fats don’t get chopped up they will not get absorbed because they are far too big to cross the intestinal wall intact. So for absorption to occur, these enzymes MUST chop the big stuff into little stuff!

Picture this…

Imagine you have a pair of scissors and are tasked with the job of cutting up a long piece of ribbon. The ribbon is trailing from a person going past you very slowly. If you have plenty of time to chop the ribbon multiple times then you can get it into small pieces. This is what happens in the gut. If a piece of protein for example goes moving through the small intestine very very slowly, the little enzymes have plenty of time to chop it up into amino acids so it can be absorbed.

Now imagine if the person holding the ribbon runs past you and you have to chop it up… you might get one shot at it before it is gone. And this is exactly what happens in the gut. If feed is moving too quickly through the gut the poor little enzymes simply don’t get enough time to chop anything up. Meaning the feed simply won’t be absorbed.

So back to meal size and the little and often concept… when you feed small meals, the feed will move nice and slowly through the gut and the enzymes will be able to do their job and fully digest it so your horse gains full benefit.

Feed large meals and all of a sudden you increase the speed with which it will travel through the gut and reduce the amount of time the enzymes have to do their cutting… meaning your horse misses out on a lot of the value from that feed. It will be digested to some extent in the hind gut but a lot of value is lost (and your $ wasted).

So while not the only reason you should feed little and often, it is a really important one to keep in mind.

If you have a horse struggling to gain weight eating huge feeds, something to consider is that you might find you get better results by feeding less.

 

Do you have a question or comment? Do you need help with feeding?

We would love to welcome you to our FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group. Ask questions and have them answered by PhD and Masters qualified equine nutritionists and spend time with like-minded horse owners. It’s free!

Click here to join the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Facebook Group

 

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