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What's in the Feed? Part I.
by David W. Ramey, D.V.M. |
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| From his book, Horsefeathers: Facts Vs. Myths About Your Horse's Health, David W. Ramey, D.V.M. shares his insights about the feed requirements of horses. A portion of his chapter, "What's in the Feed?" follows: |
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Horses need to be fed. They should be fed regularly. That being said, the myths begin.
An amazing amount of objective information about feeds and the feeding of horses exists. Scientific types have analyzed horse feed to its most minute components, fed varieties of combinations of these components to horses, fed diets lacking in some components to horses, studied, repeated studies and published the results (this is what scientists do for a living). Their results can be summed up and reported conclusively here. Adult horses need the following: hay or pasture for roughage, water (as much as they want) and possibly some access to salt and minerals.
That's it.
Sure, there's a little bit more to feeding the horse than that. Otherwise, this would be a very short chapter. Young horses up to two years of age have different nutritional requirements than adults. But there's not much more to feeding adult horses than that. With feeds, remember the following acronym: KISS, which stands for "Keep It Simple, Silly." When someone says that you have to do this or you can't do that with regard to feeding, smile politely and then walk away. You're about to know better.
All feeds provide different amounts of the same things. All feeds contain energy, protein, vitamins and minerals. Anything else they provide, like ash and fiber and water, is basically filler that comes with the package. Feed is just fancy packaging for its component parts.
Energy. The most important component of feed is energy. Energy is the gasoline that runs the engine that is your horse. Energy provides the fuel to keep the heart beating, the lungs pumping and so forth. A certain amount of it is needed to keep things running--the level needed for maintenance--and more may be needed if you ask your horse to do strenuous things like jump fences, ford raging rivers or have babies. And you can be certain that if your horse is getting enough energy in his diet, he's getting enough of everything else, too. Energy is measured in calories (which is a measurement of heat produced when food is burned). Energy in feed comes from three sources: carbohydrates, fats and protein. Carbohydrates are easy to digest, supply lots of calories and are found in the highest levels in grains. Most of the energy in any diet comes from carbohydrates. Fats have even more energy than carbohydrates, two and a half times as much as the same amount of carbohydrate. Horse feed does not contain much fat, but fat is a good energy supplement for the horse.
Proteins, the third potential source of energy in food, are the building blocks from which body tissue, enzymes and many hormones are made, and any extra protein beyond that which is required is used for energy. Protein, however, is not a good source of energy. It is hard for the body to digest, and it's the most expensive form of energy you can buy. Protein supplements cost a lot of money, and adult horses almost never need them. There is a lesson to be learned from this: Don't overfeed protein. You won't hurt the horse--feeding extra protein probably doesn't do anything except increase the amount of water the horse drinks (and the amount of urine he produces)--you'll just waste money.
What does hard or easy to digest mean, anyway? Food is made up of a bunch of chemicals that are tied together by chemical bonds. In order for anything to be digested, these bonds have to be broken apart by the body, so that the chemicals can be absorbed and used by the body to keep the system operating. The ease with which these chemical bonds are broken down is what nutritionists mean by "hard" or "easy" to digest.
Carbohydrates are fairly simple chemical compounds, and the body breaks up their chemical bonds with ease and disdain. Complex chemical compounds, like proteins, are broken down slowly, and the body spends a good deal of digestive energy to harvest the energy that is available from there. The result is that there is less net energy available from protein than from carbohydrates or fats because so much energy is used by the body in getting the energy from the protein out of the feed. That's why overfeeding protein is wasteful, expensive and dumb. |
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Vet Talk with Dr. David Ramey
is a monthly column for tips on horse care. Dr. Ramey, author of numerous books and articles, is Dominion Saddlery's resident online vet. Dr. David Ramey is a 1983 graduate of Colorado State University. After completing an internship in equine medicine and surgery at Iowa State University in 1984, he moved to Southern California and began general equine practice, specializing in the care and treatment of performance horses from a variety of disciplines. Dr. Ramey is the author of numerous articles in the lay and professional press, as well as several books, including Horsefeathers: Facts vs. Myths about Your Horse's Health and the Concise Guide Series on equine health care. Look for them at Dominion Saddlery. |
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