A. Equine Insulin Resistance Hay – Goal – slow, sustained release of nutrients all day long with no long periods of fasting. 1. Hay is essential in helping prevent Laminitis. Your horse can not be on grass all day and cannot get grass in the winter/bad weather. Hay provides fiber to steady Glucose levels. Hay provides eating activity for your horse (they eat 70-80% of the day). Hay decreases stress which can steady stress hormones. Hay stimulates the gut tone and motility. Steady hay eating avoids a problem. If the horse has fasted several hours and then is fed, can get Insulin surge beyond the normal which can be harmful. We want a slow, constant, low level of hay moving through. Good products to ensure long/slow hay feeding to avoid gobble/starve/gobble…problem which leads to huge insulin surging and foot pain. nets 2. Spread the hay — make horses walk to multiple small piles in the field to increase exercise. box-dirtlot3. Soaking hay— this can lower Carbohydrate levels and as a bonus has been shown to decrease allergens in “heave” horse reactions. At times this is not practical in cold weather — you get a “hay sickle” in the bucket — the water freezes into ice. This is a great time to test hay in fall when you are stocking up to feed it in the winter. If it has low ESC/sugar/starch you will not need to soak it. Also, test your horse’s Insulin level after a few days on the new hay. This will let you know if all is OK. Most Laminitis is via fresh grass and not hay. Pasture-associated Laminitis accounts for 54% of Equine Laminitis. (USDA Lameness and Laminitis National Health System 2000) Dr. Watt’s work on grass/hay sugar levels has been very helpful. 4. What hay to feed and what levels do I look for if tested? Timothy Grass Hay – Good choice, easy to get. If tested, want 8-12% protein, low end of normal range of ESC (Simple Sugars) that is 4.7-10.9%, and low end of normal range of starch that is 1.5-4%. Example: If 15% ESC and 6% starch, do not buy it – probable Laminitis trigger. If it is 5.7% ESC and 1.8% starch is OK to buy and no need to soak. Alfalfa Hay – Can mix with Timothy up to a 50:50 ratio. It has a slightly lower ESC, starch, and sugar than Timothy Hay. The Equi-Analytical web site has a printout showing its safety. If someone tells you Alfalfa is a problem in Insulin Resistant horses, they do not have the facts. ESC is 4.2-8.2% Starch is 0.8-3.2%. I usually will not go above a 50:50 ratio because higher amounts of Alfalfa seems to cause more gas and runny manure. Orchard Grass Hay – Very similar to Timothy Grass Hay. A good choice.box-teffhay_0 Teff Grass – Tests we have run show it to be safe on sugar and starch, so, again, it is a good choice, When you test, you want similar values as Timothy. Can have mixes of Teff with Orchard or Timothy. Bermuda or “Coastal” Hay – These have double the starch of Orchard or Timothy, so you would need to soak these overnight and during the day prior to feed. 6% starch average, range 3.1-9.0. Since most Bermuda Hay is fed in the south, freezing “hay sickles” will not factor in. Timothy, Orchard, Timothy/Alfalfa, Orchard/Alfalfa are better choices. Avoid Totally: Wheat hay, Oat hay, Barley hay – all very bad. Huge starch. teffhay-copy box-slowsteadyeat5. Your horse, if not getting any fresh grass, will need 2% of body weight in hay daily. In most Insulin Resistance horses, we want to reduce weight, so will feed less hay. A normal 1,000 pound horse needs 20 pounds of hay. To assist your horse in weight loss, instead of feeding the normal horse 2%, feed 1.8% or 18 pounds of hay. To slow him down on eating, we covered the ways of putting in a field alone, blocking their view if in a stall. A new way is to put the hay in a hay net. The net will slow their ability to get big mouthfuls of hay. At times, a horse may still go through his hay too fast even with a hay net and hence get stressed, get Insulin surges due to fasting. Put the net into another net. This is your plan B, because it will really slow the rate of eating down. Perhaps do a double net in the night and a single during the day — your horse will talk to you. To weigh hay, now is the time to get the bathroom scale to weigh a bale. 6. Avoid feeding Blue Seal’s Hay Stretcher – it has molasses and a NSC of 22%. It comes in a large pellet. 7. Often, the horse grazes during the day and is in at night. They eat the hay given to them between the 6:00 PM feeding and 9:00 PM, the horse is out of food, and goes with no food for 10 hours until the 7:00 AM feeding. When they are re-fed, they get a huge Insulin surge that can be 700% higher than normal. Essentially, the horse is being given a high-dose shot of Insulin every morning. No wonder they put on lots of fat and get Laminitic. The fresh grass intake is monitored but its the “in the stall with hay that doesn’t last” scenario that can be the real health danger. Ten pounds of hay that they eat throughout the night will cause less weight gain and protect the feet better than feeding five pounds of hay with almost half a day (or night) with no food.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 14:49:14 +0000
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