Proper feeding schedule?

[Doc-t]

Welcome!! Here are some thoughts:

1) as a member, you have access to the nutrition course so dig in!

2) A 17h horse probably weighs about 1200 to 1400 pounds (lb BW). If she has excess body fat and you want to reduce that, feed 1.5% body weight in forage. This rate calculates to be 21 pounds of forage at 1400 lb BW. However, if she is lean at 1400 lb BW, feed 2.0% BW in forage (28 lb).

You are now feeding 21 lb Timothy hay plus 4 lb alfalfa = 25 lb forage PLUS what she eats for 2 hours outside. Depending on her body fat and your goals, you are either overfeeding her or maintaining her.

3) Scheduling feeding is a human concept. We don’t allow for hormesis, a period to rest the digestive tract, and all the cells to repair and clean up. Humans practice time-restricted feeding (intermittent fasting), but we shy away from this in our horses. There is no proof that horses should always have forage in front of them. In my opinion, horses with excess body fat are probably on their way to metabolic syndrome just like humans, especially when sedentary. Hormesis helps reduce the inflammatory effects of metabolic syndrome, such as removing free radicals.

A 6-year-old is like a teenager with the ability to eat everything in the house and not get fat. Then, as they turn 30, they start gaining body fat and developing health issues. Many report cardiovascular damage as early as 30 years, so the damage we see later in life begins in young humans and horses.

If your horse is an athlete, eliminate all inflammatory foods (you have done this) and reduce the sugar of hay fed all year. Remember, hay is last summer’s grass with all the sugar of a summer pasture now fed in winter when there should be low sugar. As you go through the nutrition course, you will learn about gut microbe digestion of cellulose into fat, creating an efficient fuel.

4) Minerals such as selenium (Se) require amino acids (the building blocks of protein) to be absorbed, so adding soybean meal (SBM) will help with that. Everyone claims they are low in Se where they live, yet I don’t see Se deficient horses. Additionally, I don’t believe we have a Vet E deficiency but rather an increased consumption of Vet E (proven in the Morgan breed). Removing inflammation and adding the required amino acids may alleviate this.

5) There is no need to gradually reduce the grain and supplements if they are all inflammatory. The sooner they are removed, the better.

6) Your own eyes tell you that your mare had inflammation (better hair coat, loss of skin bumps). But changes in a 6-year-old are not eye-popping like in a chronically inflamed and protein deficient 12-year-old. You are lucky because you have started early before any damage has occurred.

Congratulations! Remember to keep a journal because time will slip by, and you will begin to think that adding something, as suggested by marketing teams, will “help” your horse. Going back to read about your mare’s condition at the old barn, then the transitions you see as you go through the next 12 months will help keep you on track.

Remember, there is a podcast and the replays of the rounds – all filled with info to help you understand this better. Again, welcome! Doc T

[mila.and.me]

Hi Doc-t!

Thank you so much for your thorough reply and information! Mila is currently recovering from an injury and has been out of work for almost 4 months. Her main activities are daily hand-walking and turnout, but this will be changing in the next few weeks. She was very lean before I brought her home but now looks to be at the perfect body fat levels. She has lost a lot of muscle during her recovery but I’m hoping that will come back quickly as she resumes work. I’ll add a video I took of her yesterday so you can see how she looks. I would like to maintain her body weight exactly where it is while gradually adding back the proper muscling. Your insight about sugar in hay is really helpful. I think I will try lowering the lbs of hay I give and increase the alfalfa pellets, then see how she does. I’ll be sure to keep a journal and adjust as needed now that I know the amount of forage she should be getting.

I will be adding the SMB as soon as I can get my hands on it next week, but I’m unsure about the amounts I should be giving? I assume it will be on the label of the bag? When added, do I need to lessen the amount of forage she is getting so that her total food intake stays around 25-28lbs? Or are they unrelated? (Apologies if this is a dumb question! I will begin your nutrition course this week)

Regarding the Selenium and Vit E supplements…I think I will take her off of the Vit E for now. After reading your reply I reviewed her test results and her Vit E levels came back at 3.5 ppm, which is good. The selenium results on the other hand came back as .099 ppm and from what I’ve learned adequate levels should be at 0.275 ppm. Thank you for letting me know that an amino acid such as SMB is needed to absorb this mineral! I’m looking forward to adding it to her diet.

Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions!

//Lindsay

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[Doc-t]

You’re welcome!

There is no need to adjust the hay right now; however, if you start to see additional body fat, you will need to reduce the amount of hay fed daily. Remember that hay is last summer’s grass, and you should reduce the amount given (or soak it to remove the sugar) through the dormant winter months to mimic nature. This reduction allows for hormesis, which cleans up inflammation within the cells.

[mila.and.me]

Hi Doc-T!

 

I’ve started your nutrition course and I’m really enjoying it!

I also just picked up my SBM yesterday but I still don’t know how much of it to feed my horse per day, and I can’t find a simple answer anywhere.

My horse is around 1400 lbs and looks great, as you can see from the video I posted last week. Since I last wrote I have taken her off of all supplements including the ones I was clinging to like Selenium and Vit E, and give only Redmond mineral salt now. Other changes I’ve made are:

• I reduced the Timothy hay to 18lbs (6lbs 3x a day) because I was worried she was adding a bit of excess body fat to her frame. She is still not in work.
• Increased the alfalfa pellets to 6lbs (3lbs 2x a day).
• Turn out for 2 hours on grass pasture with a variety of grasses including fresh alfalfa and clover. Since I live in Reno she’ll also munch on the sagebrush that lines her sand paddock.

That works out to be around 28 to 29lbs depending on how many pounds of pasture she eats while she’s out there. I’ve heard that horses can consume up to 4lbs in an hour so I’m guessing she’s eating around 5-6lbs because she usually spends the last half hour running around or messing with the horses in the nearby paddocks and not grazing.

 

So, basically, took away 3lbs of hay and replaced it with 2lbs of alfalfa pellets… was this dumb? I figured that since alfalfa is low in sugar that it would be ok to replace the hay with it so that she’s still getting a good amount of forage for her frame. Do you feel like I should make any changes to these amounts? Should I add any other type of forage? Also, now that I have the SBM, how much should I give her a day?

 

Thanks again for your help!!

[Doc-t]

I’m glad you’re enjoying the nutrition course! Thank you!

Grass, legumes, grass hay, and legume hay are all the same: they all have non-structural carbohydrates (NSC, starch, sugar, fructans) and structural carbohydrates (SC, cellulose, non-digestible fiber). All these definitions complicate things because they are sugars (carbohydrates, carbon+hydrogen+oxygen). However, you can identify the two groups of carbohydrates in another way.

NSCs are digestible sugars that can be broken down into glucose or fructose using enzymes and placed into the metabolism, and used as fuel to drive the production of energy and promote life at the cell level. All of this by the animal consuming them; horses, humans, etc.

SCs are non-digestible sugars in all animals because they have no enzymes to digest them. Instead, the bacteria in the digestive system (usually the hindgut consisting of the cecum and colons) can digest these fibers and turn them into short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs). The animal can then absorb the SCFAs into the body and use these as a fuel to create energy through a different pathway than sugars.

The trick to feeding pasture and hay to horses is to balance their needs for fuel with the type and amount of raw material they can access. To add body fat for winter, the horse needs to eat more NSCs. To reduce body fat, the horse needs to eat fewer NSCs. It is this simple concept where horse owners adjust the percentage of pasture and hay and know the content of each—the eyes seeing the results of the decisions.

For protein consumption, two rules need to be understood: quality and quantity. Not all proteins have the same amino acid (AA) profile. Remember that AAs are like letters; without all the letters available, you cannot make all words. This letter and word analogy applies to proteins, so feeding a wide variety of the essential amino acids (EAAs, the amino acids the horse cannot make but need to ingest)) is necessary for a horse to thrive. Unfortunately, pasture and hay are only “good quality” proteins because they do not have a complete EAA profile. In addition, the proteins in pasture and hay are not absorbed well (about 50%), so the amount of protein used by a horse is about half of what they provide. This poor absorption of protein is why all grazing animals need to eat throughout the day; to ingest enough protein to meet their daily needs.

The other rule of proteins is the quantity to eat daily. The rule of thumb is between 0.5 and 1.0 grams per 1 pound of lean body weight (LBW) (1.1 to 2.2g per kilogram BW). This calculation becomes tricky because if you feed the maximum protein daily, but it is of good or poor quality, you are not meeting the daily requirements of EAA for the horse. Therefore, providing a high-quality protein, such as soybean meal (SBM), is essential to get the AAs into the horse daily.

The bottom line for feeding a 1400 lb (636 kg) horse is to provide an adjustable amount of pasture and hay, depending on if you want to increase or decrease body fat) and 700 g to 1400 g of total protein. If the pasture and hay provide 10% good quality protein and only 50% gets absorbed, the net is 5% protein. If your horse eats 28 lb of hay and pasture combined, the total protein is (28 x 10% protein) 2.8 pounds, but the net absorbed protein is half of this or 1.4 pounds. Converting 1.4 lb gives you 635 g of protein. This total amount of protein is less than the daily requirement, but remember, it also misses many of the EAAs. Adding 1 lb (0.5 kg) of SBM will add 174 g of high-quality protein and will also raise the total protein intake to (635 + 174) 809 g putting the total within the objective range (700 g to 1400 g). Each increment of SBM will help add more high-quality protein with all the EAAs needed for growth, performance and life. Keeping daily protein from exceeding the maximum range will keep the kidneys functioning correctly because this protein will be used and not excreted in damaging amounts through the kidneys.

Where horse owners fall short on these feeding concepts include 1) they don’t see the chronic protein loss as lost muscle covered by body fat, and 2) they don’t recognize the chronic protein loss until it has exceeded the horse’s ability to remain healthy (illness, unsoundness). However, adding enough high-quality protein and limiting the NSCs during the winter will yield a thriving horse that will last longer with longer usefulness.

[mila.and.me]

<div>Thank you so much! I completely understand now. Thank you for taking the time to break everything down for me. 🙂 I’m learning so much!</div>

Best,

Lindsay