Time for a change…? Many degenerative conditions are on the increase and many horse owners are concerned about their horses diets and are often mystified and bombarded with the marketing of specialised bags of feeds, it is often hard to know which way to go. Trying to keep things simple in this complex arena, human clinical nutrition has made direct comparisons between the quality of the diet and the onset of many modern chronic diseases (including MS) and have concluded that eating a large variety and proportion of fresh foods has a direct impact on prevention of degenerative disease. Is it possible to do the same for the horse? For interest sake let’s go back in time, say 200 years when horses were used for work and war, native ponies were turned out 24/7 or grazed on mixed pastures or heathland, intense farming methods were unknown and even the cattle ate grass from meadowland. To do a quick comparison, the total energy (protein intake) was higher 200 years ago for working horses this was provided from grains such as oats which have a protein content of up to 24%. Both native ponies and working horses would have access to a variety of wild green leafy plants such as cow parsley, lambs quarter, wild mustard and sorrels. Those types of green leafy plants contain over 23% of protein, chopped gorse contains 25% protein, Silver Birch branches and leaves are 20% protein, Marsh grass contains 20% protein including significant levels of lysine methionine and threonine. Compare this to the low protein values of bagged food which struggle to provide 12%, even racehorses are only provided around 12-14% with oats being abandoned by some trainers as they are now considered too high in protein. Protein is the building blocks of bone, muscle, tendons and it also provides regeneration for damaged tissue and renews the immune system, horses are eating perhaps only half the protein they used to have. 200 years ago the calorie intake was approximately 30% lower, it is now very much higher from feeding and reliance upon bagged feed and access to sugar high grass, plus the addition of wheat products and maize. Dietary bulk is also now lower due to limited access to high fibre foraging plants including trees and shrubs and herbs usually found in hedgerows, heathlands and mixed meadows. There has been a massive sugar increase in today’s diet both from the modern grass species (rather than older less sweet and therefore less edible varieties) and from the addition of molasses sprayed onto chaff and added to poor quality feed to make it more palatable. 200 years ago the horse would have had a massive exposure to anti -oxidants from the meadows and the dried flowering heads of the meadow hay. Oats are a classed as a human superfood and are equally as suitable for horses as they are easily digested and do not produce Volatile Fatty Acids in the hind gut as many other grains do, thus increasing the chance of colic. Oats can be bruised and can even be fed straight from the field without having to be processed to make them safe as other grains must be. Electrolytes levels were also different, a horse eating more plants would have almost double the potassium levels and the total acid base effect would have resulted in an alkaline body state rather than the acidic state of today’s diet, acidosis in the hind gut is cited as a cause of low grade laminitis. As the horse ages they are less able to excrete the acid from their bodies and then the bone must release minerals to act as buffers thus increasing the chance of developing orthopaedic disease. Maintenance of acid–base homeostasis is an absolute vital function of living organisms. Many biochemical reactions of metabolism either produce or consume acids and NEAP (net endogenous acid production) different diets create changes to the acid based equilibrium. High ingestion of a wide variety of different plants will have an impact on the horse’s health and how it manages disease. For instance bone and cartilage are part of the body’s buffer system and which help maintain and preserve the overall pH and an increase in the amount of varied ‘green stuff’ the horse eats is likely to decrease the leach of minerals from bone and cartilage. Feeding fat in the diet in the form of oils has also become popular and up to 20% has been mentioned as a safe addition, though horses aren’t designed to eat fat as they don’t have a gall bladder leaving the liver and the small intestines to do some of the job of breaking down. The argument is that it’s better to feed more oil than starch and sugar as an energy source, for easy keepers the recommended amount of oil added is approximately 3-4%, even small amounts of oil are likely to raise the pH levels especially over a long period of time. 200 years ago the fat intake of our horses especially the easy keepers was zero, whilst hardworking horses may have had a linseed mash. Oils are quoted as having a balanced omega content but plants are overall better providers of the omegas in particular lamb’s quarter, dandelions and pigweed, just 50 gm. of any of these plants will provide double the amount of balanced omega’s that oil supplementation will do as well as the addition of numerous vitamins, minerals and anti -oxidants. Fresh food for horses is as vital for their health as it is for human health and trusting that plants are able to supply those vital nutrients is sometimes easier than reading the back of a bag of feed and still being unsure of what it contains or even if is it enough! Thankfully there are a growing number of independent horse feed manufacturers who are making a contribution to good horse health by using simple quality ingredients with providence and who have knowledge of how diet and health are likely to interact, though a proportion of the diet might need to be hard feed to meet energy requirements it is vital to have green stuff as an equal or larger component . It is my vision to bring back more meadows and wooded grazing areas for horses especially the more sedentary and easy keepers and from the responses to this page it has made me aware that this is a vision many of us share.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 10:43:57 +0000
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