Category: Digestive System

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Fiber in Horse Feeds

In our previous post, we learned what fiber is and how a horse digests it,and we also learned that a horse consuming 1-1.5% of it’s bodyweight in quality roughage will satisfy its daily fiber requirements.

When it comes to any grain sources that may be added to your horse’s diet, fiber plays a much smaller role since the amount of fiber that is added by grains is relatively little, but the effect and digestive process is similar.

When feeding the grain portion of the diet, ensure that your horse is not receiving high quantities of grain meals all at once – typically no more than 5-6 pounds of grain per meal at most. Because grains tend to be higher in starch than roughage, feeding too much at once can overwhelm the small size and quick rate of passage of food through the stomach and small intestine, and allow starches to pass undigested to the hindgut. Digestion of starches in the hindgut releases lactic acids that are toxic to the fiber-digesting microorganisms, which can result in a gas colic episode or laminitis.

Generally speaking, when you look at a the tag from a basic equine ration, the higher the crude fiber level listed, the lower the energy content of the feed.  Of course, there are other factors that must be looked at, such as the fat level, and also possibly the sources of fiber.

Beet pulp, for example, is often referred to as a “super-fiber” due to the high level of fiber it provides while also providing roughly the same energy level as oats.  While soy hulls and dehydrated alfalfa are common ingredients used to increase fiber levels, a performance horse ration with a higher fiber level may make use of beet pulp to achieve both increased energy and increased fiber levels.

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Using Nutrition to Manage Horses with Gastric Ulcers

A horse owner recently contacted us about changing her horse’s diet. She stated that they are ¾ of the way through show season and he is just “off his game”. It seems that the horse was showing a lack of appetite and not finishing his grain. In addition, his disposition became rather grumpy and his performance level was suffering. In addition, a few times he had shown signs of mild colic over the past two months.

We suggested the owner contact her veterinarian, as it sounded like the horse may have an ulcer. The percentage of horses with ulcers continues to increase, and higher intensity levels of training are correlated with an increase in ulcer incidence. The ulcers often occur in the upper third of the stomach, which does not have a mucus layer and does not secrete bicarbonate that helps to buffer stomach acid. In general, horses managed with 24-hour access to well-established, high-quality pasture are less likely to have gastric ulcers; however, studies have shown that the prevalence of squamous ulcers in horses exposed to pasture varies by regions of the U.S. and management. This is likely due to the fact that as a horse grazes, it produces large amounts of saliva, which contain the bicarbonate and amylase needed to provide a buffer for the stomach lining.

Within the week she contacted me and said the horse had been diagnosed with a gastric ulcer. He was now on medication, but we needed to make dietary changes as well. I suggested the following “back to basic” steps to help manage her horse’s condition:

  1. Allow the horse to be turned out or hand grazed.
  2. If access to pasture is not possible, good quality hay is a must. Recent studies indicate that legume hay such as alfalfa is an excellent choice due to the high calcium content which may help to serve as a buffer.
  1. Breaking the daily rations into smaller more frequent meals helps keep saliva production constant and protect the stomach lining – more like “grazers” instead of “meal eaters”. If possible, use a slow feed hay net (also called a nibble net) to allow the horse to consume hay more slowly and increase chewing time. Also, it’s a good idea to feed hay prior to grain.
  2. High starch diets also tend to aggravate ulcers due to increased acid production. A high fat, high fiber feed is ideal.
  3. Consider a digestive supplement such as Nutrena Empower Digestive Balance which contains marine sourced calcite. It is a highly porous form of calcium, includes other trace minerals such as magnesium, and has twice the buffering capacity of regular calcium carbonate.

It’s important to remember that all horses are unique and respond differently to stressors. If you can minimize stressors as much as possible, provide your horse with access to pasture and light exercise, offer quality nutrition and forage, you are helping to limit the chance your horse will develop ulcers.

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Horse Drooling? Ask the Expert: Slobbers

Horse DroolingQuestion:  My horse is drooling excessively and I’ve heard this is from eating clover. Will this hurt my horse?

Answer:  Recently, there have been several reports of “slobbers” in horses. Slobbers, characterized by excessive salivation or drooling, is caused by a compound (slaframine) produced by the fungus Slafractonia leguminicola, which can be found on red clover.

The fungus can be identified by looking at the underside of red clover leaves, where it appears as small black dots (as though someone dotted the leaf with a felt tip marker). The fungus grows best in hot, humid conditions and can cause slobbers when eaten fresh in pasture or when consumed in dried hay.

Although unsightly, slobbers is not a concern for horses as long as they stay hydrated.

Written by Devon Catalano, M.S. and Krishona Martinson, PhD, University of Minnesota. This and other horse nutrition articles can be found at http://www.extension.umn.edu/agriculture/horse/nutrition/.

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Dieticians Boast Healthful Benefits…What About Your Horse?

The nutrition industry is beginning to understand what role fermentation, gut bacteria and gut microbiome play in human and animal health.

Science has just scratched the surface and is beginning to understand the activity of the microorganisms in the digestive tract and the mechanisms of action related to those microorganisms and food choices.

Fermented foods are gaining attention in the human nutrition space, but what Dieticians Boast Healthful Benefits does that mean for our equine companions?

Increasing amounts of research studies are suggesting fermented foods have powerful health benefits ranging from promoting gut health, controlling inflammation, and providing other healthful experiences. “Fermented foods” are being emphasized by registered dietitians as something to not ignore in food selections.

So, how do we share these benefits with our horses without inviting them to eat Kombucha, yogurt, avocados, sauerkraut, and pickles?

A balance of good quality forage as the base of the horse’s diet and a feed concentrate that includes fermentation metabolites is key to maintaining healthy gut flora and a strong immune system. You might be asking, how do I know what is an effective and beneficial fermentation product? And how do I know my feed or balancer concentrate contains this?

I have invited a guest writer Christine W. of Diamond V to share more information and some supporting science regarding fermentation metabolites.

“Fermentation metabolites produced by Diamond V are unique, bioactive compounds that work naturally with the biology of the horse to strengthen and empower the immune system, support digestive tissue integrity, and promote a healthy microbial community.  Hundreds of these compounds are produced from a proprietary anaerobic fermentation process of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and work synergistically inside the animal to help them perform to their full genetic potential.  

These compounds help the horse’s immune and digestive system function normally in face of the many stressors and challenges, specifically hauling, training, breeding, herd dynamics, and environmental factors.

In other words, this specific species of yeast, produce several products or compounds that are beneficial to the microbiome in the horse’s hind-gut.  When the horse’s gut is working optimally, everything from digestive to immune function is set up to be resilient in the face of stressors and challenges that might otherwise compromise animal health and performance.”

Fermentation metabolites benefit your horse’s digestive tract by supporting a healthy gastrointestinal microbiome. The millions of little bacteria that live in the digestive tract all have names and each one ferments complex carbohydrates resulting in volatile fatty acid production. These acids impact digestion, absorption and the overall gut health. On a feed label you might see yeast culture listed (or S. cerevisiae extract). When fermented by the horse’s microbiome, these specific S. cerevisiae yeast culture metabolites have been shown by to support tissue strength and integrity, contribute to a stable hind-gut pH and support a healthy gut microbial community as well as a balanced immune response when challenged by stressors.

So why is improved tissue strength, integrity, and digestive health important to horses?

Horses with a strong digestive tract are better able to absorb nutrients from the foods that they eat. Research has shown that harmful substances are less likely to permeate the gastrointestinal cellular wall. Think of it as closing your screens on your windows to keep bugs out of your house, but to allow fresh air and good things to flow in. Horses need to have a strong gut to absorb amino acids, fats, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients, and prevent unhealthy bacteria or harmful substances from getting into circulation and causing problems. By absorbing the good nutrients and getting rid of the potentially harmful substances horses are more likely to perform to their full potential. Their immune and digestive systems are supported to handle the challenges that come with hauling, training, and just being a horse in changing environments.

This article was written with collaborative authors Heidi A., Emily L., and Christine W.

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Tour the Equine Digestive Tract

Ever wonder how your horse’s digestive system works? What goes on in there? Why are they so sensitive? And why should I divide the feed ration into 2 or 3 feedings per day? Let’s take a closer look to better understand.

The Equine Digestive Tract:

Digestive Horse Cecum_logo

Mouth & Teeth: Teeth are the beginning of the entire process. Designed to grind foodstuffs into smaller pieces, the act of chewing also stimulates three glands in the mouth to produce saliva. These glands can produce up to 10 gallons per day of saliva. The saliva contains bicarbonate (a natural acid buffer) and amylase (assists with carbohydrate digestion). Teeth are an important component to digestion and should be checked annually to insure proper function. A horse that is unable to effectively chew long stem forage, such as a senior horse, is at higher risk of impaction colic. If you have a horse like this, be sure to consult with your veterinarian for a comprehensive care and feeding program.

Esophagus: The purpose of the esophagus is to funnel food from the mouth to the stomach. Approximately sixty inches in length, this is a one-way passage. Unlike humans, horses cannot vomit. This is why horses who ‘bolt’ their feed (eat too fast and don’t chew adequately) can get into trouble and feeding practices need to be adjusted to reduce the risk of bolting feed.

Stomach: Small in size compared to the rest of the horse’s body, food will only spend about 15 minutes in the stomach before it moves on. The stomach is designed to function best when it is ¾ full; therefore, care takers are encouraged to provide horses with a steady supply of forage throughout the day. Because of the small size, a horse should not be fed more than 0.5% of body weight in one meal. Meals of grain are best divided into 2 or 3 portions per day.

Small Intestine: After leaving the stomach, food will spend anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes here; a good thing with the many nutrients that are absorbed. Nutrients such as proteins (amino acids), vitamins A, D, E and K, calcium, phosphorus, and other minerals along with starches and sugars. Cereal grains such as oats, barley, and corn that are high in carbohydrates (starch and sugar) are easily digested here. The horse doesn’t have a gall bladder, so bile from the liver flows directly into the small intestine to aid in the digestion of fat.

Large Intestine: is comprised of the cecum, large colon, small colon and rectum.

  • The cecum is located on the right side of the horse and is where fiber is digested and converted to energy and heat. The shape of the cecum is unique because the entrance and exit are located at the top of the organ. Able to hold up to 10 gallons of food and water, the cecum contains populations of bacteria and microbes which further break down food (fiber) for digestion and absorption. These microbes are accustomed to digesting a horse’s ‘normal’ diet, so any adjustments in feed or forage should be done slowly, allowing the microbes to adjust.
    • If a horse consumes too much starch in one meal, it is unlikely to be digested fully in the small intestine. It would pass through the small intestine into the cecum where the microbial organisms rapidly ferment the starch, producing excessive gas and lactic acid that could ultimately cause digestive upset or colic.
  • The large colon continues the digestive process by absorbing additional fiber components and water. This is where B vitamins are absorbed.
  • The small colon is where excess moisture is reclaimed to the body. This is also where the formation of fecal balls occurs.
  • The rectum is where the fecal balls are expelled.

With this short tour and explanation, we hope you have a better understanding of how your horse digests and absorbs nutrients, and that this also sheds light on why good feeding management and regular dentistry care are important aspect for the digestive health and overall well-being of your horse.

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Pre and Probiotics in Horse Feed

While scanning information about various horse feeds, you may have come across the phrase ‘contains prebiotics and probiotics’….Hmmm, sounds impressive, but what are they, what do they do for your horse, and why are they important?  Pre- and probiotics are considered “functional ingredients” that are added to horse feed to provide benefits to your horse. Here is some information about them and what they can mean for the digestive tract and overall wellbeing of your horse.

Healthy, inside and out
Rosie shows a dappled coat, indicating good health shining from the inside out.

It starts with the gut. The environment of the intestine (a.k.a. gut) contains naturally occurring beneficial microorganisms commonly called  ‘bugs’. Gut bugs are found in all species, including humans, and are essential to the digestion process. For the horse, gut bugs work to break down components of forage and feed as they pass through the digestive tract.  The bugs deconstruct complex molecules within feedstuffs, which releases nutrients and allows the synthesis of energy substrates and important vitamins. Those nutrients are then absorbed through the intestines into the bloodstream, where they become available to cells in the body to support basic maintenance, growth and activity.

Feed that is broken down and digested more completely allows for more nutrients to be readily available for absorption.  This is essentially what probiotics do. Adding probiotics to a horse feed means adding more beneficial bugs to the existing population in the horse’s gut. Probiotics such as yeast culture, work with the naturally occurring bug population to enhance the digestive process, further breaking down complex protein and fiber fractions in the gut and making them more available for absorption into the blood stream. As a probiotic, yeast culture has also been shown to balance and stabilize the digestive microbial ecosystem in the cecum of the horse, as well as help prevent the colonization of bad bacteria in the gut.  A stable microbial ecosystem is beneficial to the horse beyond improvements in digestive and absorption efficiency, it also reduces the risk of digestive upset, such as gas colic, that a horse might experience with changes in feed or hay, or while under stress from transportation, shows, changes in weather or other.

Prebiotics can be thought of as an energy jolt for the gut bugs.  Prebiotics are a rich nutrient source for the gut bugs (e.g. lactobacilli, bifidobacterial) which in turn stimulates their growth and activity, making them more effective at their job. Research has shown that prebiotics help stabilize the population of gut bugs even through sudden changes in the diet, which helps to reduce incidents of digestive upset.  For performance horses who require energy dense diets that include higher levels of starches and sugars, prebiotics can help reduce the incidence of digestive disorders and support optimal performance.  Prebiotics such as inulin and oligofructose are selectively fermented by the gut bugs, stimulating their growth and activity, which benefits the horse by enhancing the absorption and retention of certain minerals, which in turn can support the immune system, skeletal tissue, and more.

The population of bugs in the gut are sensitive to changes in their environment brought on by stress, illness or the ingestion of undesirable materials .The addition of pre- and probiotics to a diet has been shown to be beneficial in reducing the incidence of digestive upset, namely diarrhea. For senior horses, the use of pre- and probiotics in feeds has been shown to improve the digestibility and absorption of nutrients, which can translate into an enhanced quality of life.  In summary, pre- and probiotics work with the naturally occurring gut bugs to support optimal gut health, aid in the digestion process, as well as provide a buffer against negative bacteria.

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Carbohydrates in Horse Diets

There is a lot of discussion these days about carbohydrates, the good and the bad.  In reality, they are all related.  Carbohydrates contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen in varied chemical relationships. 

  • Sugars are the simplest of the carbohydrates and can be simple sugars such as glucose or more complex sugars. 
  • Starches are strings of sugars linked together in such a way that most starches can be broken down into glucose by the action of enzymes, primarily amylase. 
  • Fibers (lignin, cellulose, hemicelluloses etc.) are also chains of sugars that cannot be broken down easily by enzymes and must be fermented by the animal to release the energy. 

Starches and sugars are produced by plants as a means to store energy, so they contain energy that is more readily available than the energy in fiber.

Because horses produce less amylase, the enzyme used to break down starch, than some other animals, say perhaps pigs, they are more limited in their ability to digest large quantities of starch. However, they digest smaller quantities very efficiently and very effectively! 

Starches and sugars are a fairly concentrated source of Calories to be used as a source of energy when extra energy is required to maintain body condition and do more work.  In the wild, horses would consume seed heads (grain) when available in the fall to help them gain weight (added Calories) to be ready for winter, so starches and sugars are a part of the diet in horses in the wild.  Today’s working horse requires Calories, and a combination of fiber, starch, sugar and fat can be the best way to support the horse to maintain the balance of optimal health and optimal performance.

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High-Fat Horse Diets: Performance Horses

A high-performing horse can have up to twice the calorie requirement as the same horse in a maintenance stage. Owners and trainers of performance horses often give more feed to meet that calorie need. Because horses can use fat as a calorie source efficiently, and fat contains more than double the calories of starch, high-fat horse feeds make perfect sense to increase the energy intake without greatly increasing the quantity of feed needed. 

Feeding higher-fat, controlled starch level feeds can play a role in lowering the chance of colic and laminitis by reducing the amount of starch (carbohydrates) in the ration.  Here’s why: 

  • Horses with a very high grain ration are often at risk because high levels of grain feeding can cause a starch overload in the small intestine and cecum.
  • Overloading the small intestine with starch allows that extra starch to pass in to the cecum and large colon, which is where forage is digested.
  • Fiber digestion is accomplished by the bacterial and protozoal populations residing in these organs. When starch enters the cecum the pH drops and this bacterial population dies.
  • This can result in a cascade of events that may include colic, laminitis and death.

Keep in mind that starch is still a crucial part of a horse’s diet, and is required for proper muscle function.  As horse owners, it is best to work towards an optimal balance of all nutrients in the diet, not the use of one to replace another.   A proper balance of controlled starch levels, along with increased fat levels in the horse feed, will help deliver a horse that is ready to go and has the fuel in the tank to keep on going.

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Feeding Fat to Horses

Lately there has been tremendous interest in the horse world about fat. In regards to human nutrition, “fat” is often considered a bad word, and low-fat diets are popular. But we should remember that in people, some fats are necessary and healthy. This is equally true for horses: fats play a very important role in horse feeds and nutrition.

There are many reasons to feed horses added fat. The best reason for using added fat is for an energy (calorie) source. The primary purpose for grain feeding is to provide energy for maintenance, performance, growth and reproduction.  Because fat contains more than twice the calorie content of starch, and horses digest and utilize fat well, higher fat horse feeds offer an excellent opportunity to increase calorie intake without greatly increasing the quantity of feed.

Other reasons for adding fat to a feed ration include improved endurance, heat tolerance, hair coat and attitude:

  • Horses on fat supplemented diets experience increased endurance because of a glycogen sparing effect. Glycogen is the fuel for muscular activity that is stored in the muscle cells. Horses that are on high fat diets conserve glycogen, which can help them finish a performance event stronger. This is particularly important in racing, eventing, cutting and other activities that require high performance over time.
  • Horses trained in hot, humid environments show improvement to heat tolerance because fat supplemented rations generate less heat as a by-product of digestion. This becomes important in parts of the country where heat is prevalent.
  • A shiny hair coat, a side benefit of added fat in the diet, is important to horse owners who are showing or selling horses. Higher fat levels, especially those that contain a balance of omega three and omega six fatty acids, are good choices for those in the show ring or sale ring business.
  • Horse owners often report that horses that are fed lower-starch diets with added fat have a calmer attitude than those that are fed a conventional high starch and forage diet.

It is important to keep in mind that indiscriminate fat supplementation can create deficiencies of other nutrients. This is known as empty calories; where energy levels are adequate, but protein, lysine and mineral levels are not. Developmental bone problems can result which may precipitate injuries in young horses.

There also is a period of adjustment of about three to four weeks for horses to receive benefits from added fat. Any change in diet should be done gradually over seven to10 days to avoid the possibility of digestive upsets.

A balanced diet, tailored to the use and age of the horse, is the most important consideration. A trained nutritional consultant can make recommendations that will best fit your horse and the activity involved.

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