Everything Horse magazine Magazine, October 2014 | Page 30

gall bladder. Bagged feeds tend to be fed in two large
portions, morning and night. This means that it cannot
be digested properly, particularly our old friend starch,
which passes more quickly into the hind gut, where it
causes further problems. To try and compensate for
this, the gut draws fluid from the blood. Blood plasma
levels have been shown to drop by between 15-24% in
ponies fed on cereal based feeds 1 hour after eating,
causing a form of dehydration. This is not seen in
horses fed on a hay based diet.

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The large intestine is essentially a delicately balanced
fermentation vat designed to extract the goodness from
a forage based diet. As mentioned, large grain meals
overwhelm the digestive capacity of the stomach and
small intestine leading to rapid fermentation of starch
in the hind gut, which brings about a decrease in the
PH. This can cause a serious chain of events including
an increase in harmful bacteria at the expense of good
bacteria. The net effect of the two large meals, high in
starch, can be a release of entoxins and damage to the
lining of the hind gut. This in turn, allows the absorption
of toxins, and various other pathogens, with potential
clinical consequences, including colic, diarrhoea and
laminitis.

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I take it we all know what the bum does? Except that
even here, the effects of bagged cereal based feeds can
be seen, giving rise to more frequent loose stools, that
carry with them a greater proportion of the vits and
mins that would be retained by a horse fed on fibre.

These days, horses are restricted to small paddocks, with
very little natural variety. That is why we recommend that
hay (or forage) should always be available to the horse, so it
can trickle feed as nature intended.
FEEDING RECOMMENDATION
To compensate for the relatively low diversity of the
pasture, we add Advance Complete or Pro - Bio (depending
on how much work the horse is doing). Both will supply an
excellent range of vitamins and very bio-available minerals,
along with pre and pro-biotics and a particular strain of
saccharomyces cerivisae yeast for fibre digestion in the hind
gut.
Should the horse be in a lot of work, and require more
calories, we would recommend adding oil to its diet, (as it
is 2.5 X the calorific value of cereal), in the form of either
our micronised cooked linseed, which has the advantage of
having all the plant fibre as well as the oil, or Equimins Glow
and Shine Omega Oil.
One last point. In these cost conscious times, consider
this: it costs a horse owner around £294 to feed an average
horse for 6 months on a proprietary Pasture Mix or similar.
It would cost them between £107 and £143 depending on
the size of horse for Advance Complete and even less for
Pro-Bio over the same period. Even given that they would
need to increase the amount of the all important hay, this
still represents a huge saving.
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Image credit MichellePhotography UK
Everything Horse UK Magazine • Issue 13 • October 2014