Tag Archive for: feed ingredients

Q. Do You Need to Get Every Nutrient to 100% On The FeedXL Graph?

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A. No. And in fact it would be impossible to create a diet that met exactly 100% of your horse’s requirements for every nutrient shown here.

Q. So if not 100%, where should the nutrient levels be sitting? And what is normal? Because some of the amounts on this graph look really high?! Isn’t that dangerous???

A. Good question! And the answer is it depends on the nutrient. Forages, for example, contain high levels of some nutrients like iron and potassium. Because diets often have lots of forage, these nutrients will almost always be high in the diet.

BUT that doesn’t mean it is dangerous. In fact if you push a nutrient to a dangerous level, the bar for that nutrient will turn red, like this, to warn you that the nutrient is now at its ‘upper safe limit’ and needs to be reduced.

Q. OK, that’s good! So I know if I get a nutrient WAY too high FeedXL will warn me. BUT I still don’t know what is normal for all of the nutrients. Where should I expect to see them?

A. Yep, let me walk you through them all! Let’s use this graph and go through each nutrient.

Digestible Energy

This should sit, for most horses, somewhere between 90% and 105% of requirements. SOME horses have a lower or higher need for digestible energy (calories) so you may see the odd horse sitting below 90% or above 105%.

BUT, if you do enter a horse and the Digestible Energy is low or high and this does not correspond accurately with what you are seeing in your actual horse (meaning if the Digestible Energy is low in the diet you enter into FeedXL, normally you would expect to see weight loss. If it is high, normally you would expect to see weight gain) you MAY need to double check the information you have entered into FeedXL as this is a small red flag that something has not been entered right.

For example, if you have entered bodyweight that is too high, the Digestible Energy level will be low and vice versa. Or if you haven’t weighed your feeds and hay or classified your pasture correctly and you have entered amounts or qualities that are too low, then Digestible Energy will appear low and vice versa.

Quick Tip: If Digestible Energy in your horse’s diet is below 90% or above 105%, check that you have entered your horse’s bodyweight and weights of feed and forages correctly.

Crude Protein

The Crude Protein level in the diet should always be at or above 100%. And it is best to try to keep it less than 200%. For performance horses that are stabled and in work I like to try to keep Crude Protein below 160%, if I can… it is not always possible!

Depending on your forages, you may see Crude Protein go very high (well above 200%). Is this an issue? Generally it’s not, but there are some situations (like very hot, humid climates or when a horse is stabled) that it is not ideal. Sometimes, if it is your pasture for example that is high in protein, there is not a lot you can do about it. If the horse is stabled and fed hay, you should try to switch some of the higher protein forage (e.g. alfalfa/lucerne) for a lower protein forage (like a meadow/grass hay), to bring the overall amount of Crude Protein in the diet down.

For detailed information on whether too much protein is an issue or not read our article here: https://feedxl.com/37-protein-can-you-feed-too-much/

Lysine

Lysine is your indicator of protein quality (you can read about Protein Quality here https://feedxl.com/30-understanding-protein-quality/). Lysine should sit between 100% and 150%. If it is lower, it indicates your protein quality is low and your horse will struggle to do things like build muscle or make milk. In fact, when lysine is low in a diet you will likely see your horse losing muscle over his topline… it’s an important nutrient to get right in the diet.

Lysine may get quite high in some diets depending on the amount and source of crude protein. But if you follow the guidelines above for Crude Protein, you will find Lysine levels will adjust accordingly.

Calcium

Calcium should be at or above 100% in the diet and I like to keep it below 200%. Ideally, I like it sitting below 150% but depending on the feeds and forages being used, it is not always possible to achieve this. The amount in the diet shown here is lovely, more than the horse needs but well below 200%.

It is important with calcium to also check the calcium to phosphorus ratio in the diet (look in the Nutrient Table) to make sure it is within the right limits with phosphorus. And if you like to use the extra ratios, you can also check its ratio with magnesium, which as a guide, should be 3: 1 or less.

Phosphorus

Phosphorus should be at or above 90% and ideally below 150%. You may see some diets with high phosphorus ingredients like Rice Bran pushing phosphorus higher than this. If it is above 150%, be sure to check the calcium to phosphorus ratio on the nutrient table to make sure this is still balanced (there MUST be more calcium in a diet than phosphorus).

NOTE: You cannot calculate the diets calcium to phosphorus ratio off the numbers on the graph. It is always best to read the ratio off the nutrient table. FeedXL will warn you if the calcium to phosphorus ratio is too high or low!

Copper, Zinc, Selenium and Iodine

I am grouping all of these trace minerals together because they all share the same characteristic that they are almost ALWAYS at low levels in forages. Which means they are nearly always deficient in diets before you add fortified feeds or supplements.

This means that you can aim to keep these nutrients as close to 100% as possible. The diet shown here uses a single vitamin/mineral supplement to meet trace mineral requirements.

This is what the diet looked like before I added the supplement:

You can see these 4 minerals are all low. I used the Supplement Finder (i.e. The BIG PINK BUTTON) to find a supplement that would fill all of these gaps. Ideally what you want to see when you use a single supplement is that at least one of these minerals is sitting very close to 100%. That is your green flag that you have the amount of supplement at the right level. Increasing the amount from this point is just a waste as all requirements are already met, while reducing it would mean the amount of this nutrient (selenium in this example, which is sitting at 101%) would no longer be meeting requirements.

The same rules also apply when using a fortified feed to meet vitamin and mineral requirements. Except that you also have to consider the amount of Digestible Energy the feed is adding.

This is not a super simple concept, so if you are confused, please keep asking questions, as the more you understand this, the easier it will be to use FeedXL effectively.

Quick tip: You can try to keep copper, zinc, selenium and iodine as close to 100% of requirements as possible. If these nutrients are above 200% I would be trying to find ways to reduce them. This may mean switching feeds or supplements!

Manganese, Iron, Magnesium and Potassium

These minerals are almost always HIGH in forages. Therefore you will almost always see them sitting well above your horse’s 100% level in the diet. Is this a concern? No. There are always exceptions, but for the majority of horses, no, it is not a problem when these minerals are well above 200%.

Thing is, because these nutrients are rich in forages, it is almost impossible to get them closer to the 100% mark. You could reduce the amount of forage, but the downside of that (higher risk of ulcers, boredom, compromised hindgut health, higher risk of dehydration and colic) far outweighs any potential upside. In fact unless levels in the forage are extreme and the bar for a nutrient goes red, there really is no upside to reducing forage.

If you are concerned, because sometimes it does look scary, just read the notes in the Nutrient Table or the hover box on the graph to put your mind at ease. For example, Iron in this diet is at 331%. Which seems really high! But, the notes will tell you:

“While Poet’s iron is higher than it needs to be it is still within the safe range. Poet’s upper safe level for iron is 6,019 mg or 943% of his RDI”

So the upper safe limit is 943%. This diet is a long way off that, so even though 331% seems high, it is very much within the safe zone!

For those of you who like to look at the iron: copper: zinc: manganese ratio, it is calculated for you in the Nutrient Table.

Sodium and Chloride

Sodium and chloride are the two components of ordinary table salt. So together they can make a feed taste very salty. If a feed gets too salty your horse may stop eating it, because it simply doesn’t taste good (and can’t blame them!). So I like to keep sodium as close to 100% as I can, by adjusting the amount of salt in the diet.

There are a few exceptions. If your horse is in a very hot and humid climate you may need to feed more (more info here https://feedxl.com/40-electrolytes/) or if you are trying to increase water intake for some reason, more salt is useful. But under normal conditions, sitting sodium at or very close to 100% is best. BUT also always make sure your horse has access to free choice salt!

Chloride is a bit of a lucky dip and its final level in a diet will depend on the amount in your forages. I don’t pay too much attention to where chloride ends up. In fact I don’t think I have ever had to adjust a diet specifically to change the level of chloride (for any dairy nutritionists reading this, it does play a big role in DCAD, but that is another story for another day 🙂 ).

Vitamin A

If you are obsessive about getting nutrients close to 100%, Vitamin A is your friend! You will notice it is nearly always sitting on 100% of requirements. Why?

Well, in forage, the ‘vitamin A’ content is not active vitamin A. It is in the form of Beta Carotene which can be converted to vitamin A IF your horse needs vitamin A. So they will only convert it if they need it.

FeedXL models this physiology and takes into account ALL vitamin A from feeds and supplements as this will be an active form of vitamin A (which can become toxic so we need to count all of it). But then FeedXL will only convert vitamin A to active form from forages IF your horse needs more vitamin A.

For example, if your feed + supplement provides 80% of your horse’s requirement for vitamin A, FeedXL will just top up the remaining 20% of vitamin A from forages to meet 100% of your horse’s requirement. Which is why Vitamin A is very often sitting right on 100%.

If your feeds and supplements provide more than 100% of your horse’s requirement for vitamin A you will see it above 100%. This is OK, as long as it is within safe limits (though personally I would keep it under 200%).

Vitamin E, Vitamin B1 and Folic Acid

I am grouping these three together because they will often be low in diets before you add some kind of fortified feed or supplement. And they are all relatively expensive nutrients, so for the sake of cost, you want to make sure your horse’s requirement is met, but if levels of these vitamins go above 200%, you may be paying a lot for nutrients your horse doesn’t really need. I like to keep them between 100% and 200% if I can. In the case of this diet, the supplement I used was rich in Folic Acid so it has tipped above 200%, but the E and B1 are at nice levels so I am not going to worry about the Folic Acid in this case.

Quick Tip: Keeping these nutrients below 200% will make sure the diet is not excessively expensive!

Vitamin B2, Niacin, Vitamin B5 and Vitamin B6

This crew are all grouped together because forage is OFTEN high in these vitamins so you will normally see levels WELL ABOVE 100% for all of these vitamins. Is that something you should be concerned about? Not at all. In fact all of these except vitamin B6 are considered non-toxic. And the vitamin B6 upper safe level is very high (in this diet the upper safe limit is 5000%!!).

Quick Tip: I essentially ignore these nutrients as long as they are ‘green’. They will almost always be well above 100%, but it is nothing to be concerned about!

I hope that helps you a little to read the graph and to put your mind at ease about what is and is not normal for certain nutrients. If you have questions, please be sure to ask in the FeedXL Horse Nutrition Forum on Facebook!! We truly want you to know as much as you can about what FeedXL is showing you!

 

 

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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5 Ways One Balanced Diet Can Be Better Than Another

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We recently had a member of our nutrition forum ask ‘Can one balanced diet be better than another, or is the key point that it is balanced?’

This is probably the best question I have ever been asked! And the answer is absolutely YES! One balanced diet can be better than another!

BUT, before I explain why, I just want to say that diets balanced using FeedXL will be 1000 (or more) times better than a diet that is unbalanced and not meeting a horse’s basic nutrient requirements. So take heart that if your diet is balanced on FeedXL, you are way ahead in keeping your horse healthy.

So balanced diets that meet all of your horse’s known nutrient requirements are better than unbalanced diets that do not meet requirements.

But, one balanced diet can certainly be better than another.

Here are 5 examples of what makes one diet better than another:

 

Factor OK Option Better Option Why is this better?
Forage Amount Diet just meets the FeedXL minimum forage requirement. Forage is a major component of the diet and is used to meet as much of a horse’s daily digestible energy requirement as possible. The more forage in a diet the better your horse’s gut health will be. If you feed a balanced diet but your horse’s gut is unhealthy, your horse’s overall health will be limited.
Forage Variety You feed only one or two different types of forage. For example Teff hay and alfalfa/lucerne chaff or pellets. Your forage (pasture, hay, chaff, forage pellets or cubes) is made up of several different plant species. For example, your pasture has 3 different grass species plus clover, and you feed a mixed meadow hay plus alfalfa/lucerne chaff. Lots of forage variety gives good fibre variety and this supports a diverse and robust hindgut microbiome that is less prone to disturbance and more able to provide the nutrients, immune function and hormone support a horse needs. PLUS…while we know a lot about many nutrients a horse needs (like copper, vitamin E etc) there are MANY nutrients (like the omega fatty acids and most of the essential amino acids) that we know your horse needs. We just don’t know how much he needs. Feeding a large variety of forages improves the chances you will meet requirements for all of these nutrients we don’t understand very well yet.
Uncooked Grains The ONLY OK option for uncooked grain is oats. ALL other grains must be cooked. They are definitely not OK to feed uncooked. All grains are easier to digest when they are cooked (boiled, extruded, steam flaked, micronized). In fact you must only feed barley, corn and rice if it has been cooked. Feeding any of these grains uncooked is going to make your horse sick. The starch from cooked grains can be almost fully digested in your horse’s small intestine. Meaning less starch is allowed to get into your horse’s hindgut to feed the ‘bad’ bacteria. If you do feed raw grains, your horse’s hindgut will become acidic, bad bacteria will flourish and your horse’s gut and overall health will suffer.
Using Oil All oils are ‘safe’ and all provide the same amount of digestible energy in a diet. But, some oils like sunflower and corn oil are extremely high in omega 6 and can unbalance your horse’s omega 3 to 6 ratio. Canola oil provides a good blend of omega 3 and 6 fatty acids and is particularly useful in diets that contain no grain to provide the omega 6 your horse will need. Flax/Linseed oil is very high in omega 3 and is super useful in high grain diets to balance the omega 3 to 6 ratio. If you feed too much omega 6 in a diet it can result in excessive inflammation. Choosing your oils to match your diet (a little like choosing your wine to match your meal) means you will meet omega 3 and 6 requirements and keep the ratio between the two balanced.
Protein Quality As long as you meet your horse’s protein AND lysine requirement in FeedXL you will be doing a good job of providing enough protein and essential amino acids. BUT, not all proteins are created equally. Cottonseed meal, for example, contains lysine, but 60% of it is unavailable for absorption. Or flax/linseed meal is high in protein but it is low in essential amino acids. Choose premium quality proteins for your horse’s diet so that when FeedXL shows you that crude protein and lysine requirements are met, you also have an excellent chance of meeting all requirements for the essential amino acids. This includes choosing things like a component of soybean in preference to an unnamed ‘vegetable protein meal’ and/or using some alfalfa/lucerne together with your grassy forages. When you feed better quality protein you will get more muscle! When you are able to use high-quality sources of protein that meet your horse’s essential amino acid requirements you will have a better chance of 1. Providing enough of the amino acid ‘Leucine’ to switch muscle building on; and 2. Providing the building blocks needed to actually build muscle.

 

So if you want the best possible diet, here are my top 5 tips:

  1. Feed as much forage as possible to meet digestible energy requirements.
  2. Use as many different types of forage as possible.
  3. Never feed uncooked grains!
  4. Use oils that have an omega 3 to 6 profile that will complement your horse’s diet; and
  5. Use high quality proteins.

If you can do all of that AND have a balanced diet, your horse will be ready to take on the world!

 

 

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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Magnesium Oxide for Horses

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Magnesium oxide. It’s one of those ingredients people love to disagree over, should we use it, shouldn’t we use it, is it bioavailable or not for horses??

Part of this contention is due to the fact that magnesium oxide is a created ingredient… it is cooked in a process called calcination, that reacts magnesite with oxygen to create magnesium oxide.

Like all things, it can be made well, or it can be made poorly, and this then impacts on whether it will be bioavailable or not. So it’s not like limestone (calcium carbonate) that is mined for example and is generally always the same.

So when reading about magnesium oxide for horses, keep in mind that most studies do not report the conditions under which it was manufactured OR its final particle size, both of which have a huge impact on final bioavailability.

I still believe that quality magnesium oxide is a very useful source of magnesium for horses, but then I am very fussy when it comes to where it comes from and how it is produced!

We have information on various sources of magnesium for anyone who would like to read some more here: https://feedxl.com/36-which-form-of-magnesium-is-best/

And for anyone who loves details, this is a now old but still informative paper on this subject (Beede et al 1992). It is a Dairy paper but talks in detail about factors affecting magnesium oxide bioavailability: https://animal.ifas.ufl.edu/apps/dairymedia/dpc/1992/Beede.pdf

 

 

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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Grain Free Horse Feed: What Does it Actually Mean?

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It can be a bit confusing to get to the bottom of what grain free horse feed really means, especially when you see it printed on a feed bag derived mostly from grain products. In this post we’re unravelling the technical classification of ‘grain free’, and helping you find a suitable feed, even if your horse is grain-intolerant.

How we classify ‘grain free’ in FeedXL

Here at FeedXL we classify feeds in our database as being either ‘grain-free’ or ‘contains grain’, so that if one of our members clicks that their horse is ‘grain intolerant’ they will see the feeds and supplements available to them listed either in black (meaning it is grain free) or ‘red’ (meaning it contains grain).

Occasionally though we are questioned about certain feeds that we have classified as ‘contains grain’ and are sometimes told we have them classified incorrectly because the feed only contains a grain by-product like wheat midds (or bran, pollard, broll, millmix, millrun… many names for similar ingredients).

So does containing a grain by-product mean the feed should be classified as ‘grain-free’ or as ‘contains grain’?

Our position on ‘grain free’ horse feeds

There are companies who make feeds that are almost 100% wheat midds or rice bran and splashed all over the packaging it says grain free! Technically they aren’t but they are classified like this because they only contain PARTS of a grain and no whole grains.

The issue (for us and for horses) is that these by-products, while not whole grains, are derived 100% from grain and still have many of the same characteristics (same proteins, still high in starch, albeit not as high as the whole grains etc). So if someone really needs to avoid wheat or starch for example and they find one of these ‘grain-free’ feeds made with wheat midds there is an issue born from a technical classification that doesn’t tell the full story.

Calling feeds with wheat midds or rice bran ‘grain-free’ would be like saying soybean meal is ‘soybean free’ just because it no longer contains any whole soybeans. Or saying copra meal is coconut free because there are no whole coconuts. Technically yes, they don’t contain the entire original ingredient but for us (and thus FeedXL) we are just not comfortable saying something is grain free when it isn’t.

Imagine the consequences in human foods if manufacturers were allowed to say ‘wheat free’ if a product only contained midds or peanut free if it only contained peanut oil. Much more serious in humans we know but just using them as examples to make the point.

Keep an eye on starch and sugar content!

For horses, what starts to become more important in many cases though is the actual level of starch and sugars in a product. So if we were looking at a diet for a laminitic pony and considering using a feed with wheat midds in it, the important thing is how much starch are those midds contribution to the final feed. If total starch and sugar content is still below 10 to 12% then it should be OK. If it isn’t, then it doesn’t matter how much a feed might claim to be grain free, its analysis says it won’t be safe based on its actual starch and sugar content.

Here at FeedXL, we firmly believe we need to stop confusing horse people with technical classifications to allow loophole claims on feed packaging. This is just our opinion but we have seen pretty devastating effects in horses because they have been fed a feed claiming to be grain-free and therefore their owners believed it would be safe to feed. It is something that shouldn’t happen!

How FeedXL can help you choose the best feed for your horse

When you click ‘grain-intolerance’ in FeedXL you will be able to see which feeds are truly grain free and which are not. If you select that your horse has laminitis or insulin resistance you will see the feed ingredient options classified instead by starch and sugar content.

If you want to save yourself some time finding suitable feeds for horses with conditions that require either grain-free or low starch and sugar feeds give FeedXL a go! Check out our plans and pricing here and start your free trial today!

 

 

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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What You Should Know About Phosphorus and Phytate

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Horses are unique because they absorb phosphorus from their hindgut… which is a stroke of genius on a horse’s part… here is why.

Phosphorus in grains, legumes/oilseeds is bound up in a compound called phytate. ‘Phytate bound phosphorus’ is as good as indigestible for most monogastrics who absorb phosphorus from their small intestine (like pigs and poultry).

But horses enlist the help of their oh so useful hindgut bacteria to break down the phytate for them and release the phosphorus for absorption! Clever!!

So if you ever read statements about specific ingredients like soybean meal containing indigestible phosphorus because they contain phytate, think two things:

1. ALL grains and legumes/oilseeds contain phytate; and
2. Horses have got a useful arrangement with bacteria and a different site of absorption (their hindgut) that allows them to access the phosphorus.

It’s a very well designed aspect of the horse’s gastrointestinal tract!!

 

 

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

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Trypsin Inhibitor in Soybean

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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?!

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.

To check soybean products to see if they have been cooked properly there is a test kit called Soycheck (https://canadianbio.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 Tuesday this week. 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 Pryde’s Protein Pak, 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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Vitamin B6 for Horses

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This little vitamin is not talked about much in equine nutrition, mainly because we still don’t know exactly what a horse’s dietary requirement is. We also assume a large part of their requirement is fulfilled by the Vitamin B6 produced by the bacteria in their hindgut.

We do know B6 is important for building muscle. I just saw a very recently published paper looking at Vitamin B6 supplementation and muscle development in rabbits. (https://www.publish.csiro.au/AN/AN15807…)

I know a rabbit is very different animal to a horse, but from a gut physiology and nutrition perspective they are actually really similar, so I thought I would take a look to see what the researchers found.

Vitamin B6 supplementation was shown to significantly alter protein metabolism and increase the ratio of fore + hindleg muscle weight to body weight (i.e. supplemented rabbits had more leg muscle). Interesting!

How FeedXL Can Help

We do track B6 intake in our Pro FeedXL plans … this just reinforces to me though how important a horse’s base diet is when it comes to achieving specific outcomes. For example, if you are wanting your horse to build muscle but you aren’t meeting basic nutrient requirements (like vitamin B6) you could add all the fancy muscle building supplements you like to the diet and they won’t help!

You can’t build muscle unless you get your basics right first! Here at FeedXL, we can help you with that! Take a look at our plans and pricing 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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What Is an Organic Mineral?

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We all hear the term ‘organic mineral’ being used in horse nutrition. But what does it actually mean?

Its definition is pretty basic… an organic mineral is simply a mineral that is attached to something that contains carbon.

For anyone who can stretch their mind back far enough to the sometimes dreaded chemistry classroom, you might remember a subject called ‘Organic Chemistry’ which dealt with the chemical goings on of ‘carbon-containing compounds’. So a mineral attached to a carbon-containing compound is called an ‘organic mineral’.

For example, copper sulfate is an inorganic mineral, as it is simply one copper attached to one sulfur and four oxygen atoms (i.e. no carbon). Copper proteinate on the other hand is copper attached to a tiny piece of protein. Protein contains carbon atoms, so a copper proteinate is classified as an organic mineral.

It is easy to be confused by the word ‘organic’ these days as it is most commonly used to describe food produced without the use of synthetic herbicides, fertilisers or feed additives. You need to be careful not to transfer the mostly positive associations of organic food onto the use of organic minerals in horse nutrition.

The benefits of organic minerals for horses, perhaps with the exception of organic selenium, are largely undocumented… yet, unfortunately, widely claimed. I will write more on this another day! 

 

 

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

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Benefits of Oats for Horses

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It has been known for a very long time that oats and horses just seem to get along well. Of all of the cereal grains we can feed to horses, oats is the only grain that can be fed safely without being cooked. Why? Horses are able to digest a large portion of the starch that oats contains in their small intestine. Which means only small amounts of starch will be deposited into the hindgut.

Oats vs Other Grains

If we feed corn or barley uncooked, only about 25% of the starch they contain is digested in the small intestine. The rest is fermented in the hindgut.

When starch gets into the hindgut, starch fermenting bacteria ferment it very quickly and cause a build-up of acid and create a condition called hindgut acidosis which has all sort of negative consequences for your horse (including changes in behaviour and laminitis). The balance between fibre fermenting and starch fermenting bacteria is also put out of balance… the ‘good’ fibre fermenting bacterial populations are reduced while the less desirable starch fermenting bacteria increase in numbers.

All of this we have known for a while. More recent research however (Harlow, 2015) has also shown that corn starch is potentially more of a problem in the hindgut than oat starch. This researcher incubated corn and oat starch in test tubes with faecal material from horses and found (briefly) that corn starch caused a significantly greater increase in starch fermenting bacteria than the oat starch and gave rise to higher lactic acid production.

Double Safety Catch in Oats

So oats seems to have a double safety catch built in for our horses. First, most of its starch appears to be digested in the small intestine. Second, if some starch does end up in the hindgut it appears less likely to upset the hindgut bacterial populations present there, which should mean it allows your horse to maintain a healthy population of the ‘good’ fibre fermenting bacteria.

So if you need to feed a grain and either don’t have access to or don’t like ‘cooked’ grains for some reason, go for oats, they are the safest choice for your horse.

 

 

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

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Chickpeas For Horses: Should They Be Cooked First?

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There has been a little bit of discussion of late about chickpeas and whether they need to be cooked prior to being fed to horses. Big apology from me (Nerida) as it seems I have confused the issue and created some angst. So, to clear the waters I have muddied, here is some better information:

4 things to consider when feeding chickpeas to horses

  1. Chickpeas do contain anti-nutritional factors including trypsin inhibitor, which is the same as the main anti-nutritional factor found in soybeans. Trypsin inhibitor does exactly as its name suggests, it inhibits/stops trypsin, an enzyme in the small intestine which chops up protein into smaller pieces so it can be absorbed. Too much trypsin inhibitor in the gut can reduce protein digestion to such an extent that protein deficiency will become apparent. This doesn’t sound good for chickpeas!
  2. BUT, on reading about the amount of trypsin inhibitor in chickpeas it is much, much lower than soybean. I can find published values of 15 TUI (Trypsin Units Inhibited – reflects quantity of trypsin that has its activity inhibited) for chickpeas while values for soybean are more like 80 TUI. Reading papers and interpreting units is proving exceedingly difficult as it seems everyone likes to express their TUI units in slightly different ways so just be careful with this!
  3. Chickpeas have been fed raw to pigs at levels of up to 88% without affecting measured parameters to determine growth and feed conversion. A pretty good indication the anti-nutritional factors aren’t too anti-nutritional as growing pigs will show us very quickly if something is not right. This study did however find that adding additional methionine improved growth performance in chickpeas.
  4. Chickpeas are routinely used uncooked in pig diets in Australia at levels up to 20% of the diet without any ill effect. They typically aren’t fed to younger pigs less than 20 kg bodyweight.

Updates in FeedXL…

Based on all of this we have now updated our information in FeedXL to read:

Chickpeas are classified as a pulse, which is a seed from a leguminous plant. Chickpeas are rarely included in horse diets but can be fed as a protein and energy supplement in much the same way lupins or faba beans are used. The protein is of moderate to good quality with good concentrations of the essential amino acid lysine. They may however be too low in methionine for some classes of horses.

Like most pulses, chickpeas appear to contain some anti-nutritional factors including a trypsin inhibitor, which blocks the activity of the protein digesting trypsin enzyme in the gut and can negatively affect protein digestion. The anti-trypsin activity of chickpeas is however much lower than that of soybean, with chickpeas expected to ‘block’ around 15% of trypsin enzyme activity in the gut compared to more than 80% of trypsin activity being blocked when raw soybean is fed.

Chickpeas should therefore be safe to feed without any form of heat treatment to mature horses at levels of no more than 20% of their ‘hard feed’. If larger amounts were to be fed, heat treatment is recommended. Chickpeas would be best heat treated prior to feeding if being fed to horses younger than 12 months of age.

As always our information is quite conservative, but we prefer to play it safe with so many people using our service with so many varied scenarios.

I hope that helps everyone who has had a recent interest in the use of chickpeas in horse rations.

 

 

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