If a horse looks shiny they are healthy.
The gloss on a horses coat does not necessarily indicate that they are in good health. I
know many horses that have died of colic looking healthy and shiny on the outside, but
their gut was extremely compromised on the inside. People are conditioned to believe
that just because a horses coat is shiny, then their horse is healthy. Of course, that
makes it a lot easier to sell horse feed, when you can convince people that their horse
is really healthy because it has a shiny coat.
Horses are designed to eat a high-fat diet.
The power of commercialism comes into play, studies are biased to favor the use of oils
in feed to increase the calorific density. Humans are far more tolerant of fat in their
diet than horses are, yet we know the downfalls of eating a fat rich, junk food diet,
horses are no different, and don’t let the major feed companies convince you that it’s
okay. The truth is, horses are hind gut fermenters, and were designed to live primarily
on grass.
If a horse likes to eat something, then it’s good for them.
Like children, most horses are attracted to sweet tasting items. You can get wood fiber,
mix molasses with it, offer it to your horse, and more than likely they are going to eat
it. Is it good for them, not really.
My horse does well on grain based pelleted feed.
How do you know, have you taken a trip inside your horses digestive system, have you
seen their cecum burnt through the effects of fermenting starch? You don’t know what’s
happening inside your horse, up until the point that they start displaying a myriad of
problems, problems that don’t occur when horses are allowed to run free. The myriad of
issues horses have are primarily man-made, and do not occur in the wild.
You can tell a lot by what the label says.
Really! Feed tags are a masterpiece of ambiguity. Unless the actual ingredients are
stated, the descriptions can be, and are often broad based, and do not inform the
customer of what is in their product. For example, ground roughage products sounds
benign, but commonly refers to the inclusion of items like peanut shells in your horse
feed. In fact many of the generic descriptions are used to mask the inclusion of
low-grade, low quality fiber that is not nutritious for your horse. It is then coated
with molasses and oils to supply calories and palatability. The labels are written that
way so that companies can chop and change during the year, and include the cheapest
possible source of ingredients that falls within the category. This is called least cost
formulation, and is very common in the horse feed industry. You may think it’s okay, I
think it’s taking the low road and I won’t go there.
The ingredients are always listed in order of magnitude.
That is the case for human food, but not the case for animal feeds. There is no
requirement to list the ingredients of horse feed in order of magnitude. So a component
of the feed that may only represent 20 pounds in 1 ton can legally be first on the feed
tag. Now that makes you think, doesn't it?
