Diets Making Horses Hot
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Diets Making Horses Hot
Is it true feeding oats can make a horse overly nervous, exciteable and harder to handle? My horse has been getting equine senior w/1.5 lbs of oats per feeding (2 x per day), He used to be like a puppy dog, now he is hard to handle. what are your thoughts.
Answer:
Liz, Hi! Every food made for horses can react to each one totally differently. With the current 4 that I own/show, 2 are naturally very hot...one can eat Alfalfa & Alfalfa pellets and be totally "ho-hum" the other one can not even eat 14% Complete without scaling the walls, yet can eat Oats and local hay, and be "ho-hum". The "one that is totally dead" in natural nature, when he eats 12% pellets becomes a "perfect horse with a normal amount of gas", yet if he eats "extruded" feeds he becomes borderline "hot" which is difficult for him to handle mentally, because he is completely "dead" by natural nature. You have to experiment with each horse to find out the food that works best for them....both in effect on temperment and the effect on the physical condition. Extruded feeds often times will make horses with active digestion (such as in people that have high metabolic rates...you know the guy that can literally eat anything and every thing and never gain a pound) very hot or hard to handle, due to the added processing of the feed breaking down the feed into it's most palatable state...which in lay terms means the feed is so processed that all a horse need to do is swallow, digest, and "pfff" it will receive EVERYTHING the feed has to offer! Now with horses that have poor digestion the extruded feeds are great, as the horses system does not have to process the feed in order for the horse to receive the maximum benefit from the feed. As far as I know, Equine Senior is an extruded feed. I would try discontinuing the Oats, and if the condition of the horse stays the same (after a month) then you know that the added energy is coming from the Extruded Feed. I would then put the horse back on Oats if he did well on it before. Why did you change over to the Equine Senior? Hope this helps you out! Bye, Best, Mary.
Comments
4/9/2007 10:40:32 PMMike in Maryland said:
I have a daughter in law who changes the diet of her horse, which she boards here, as frequently as I change socks. The story is always, she's too hot. That poor mare has eaten everything from sweet feed to calf manna to some mystery potion with veggie oil and Knox gelatin, feed soaked in vinegar, blah, blah, blah.
Here's your sign girls, and I'm sure lots of others can take this advice too:
Don't get on the nag once a quarter and then complain about your inability to control the horse. They need to be worked/used/trained a little more often than once in a blue moon to behave as normal as possible.
