I am just reading about them from the course reader for the Equine Nutrition course I am enrolled in.
no real studies have been done on using them.
Probiotics are live bacteria and yeasts. They are "good" bacteria fed to your horse to keep him healthy.
Where to find
Fermented food and yoghurt have live bacteria (lactobacillus).
It is suggested to feed your horse yoghurt if he is on antibiotics to regain "good" bacteria that is killed by the antibiotic.
bifidobacterium, Entercoccus, lactobacillus are good bacteria fed to help digestion.
Horses that are grazing up to 18 hours a day ingest bacteria as they eat.
Stressed horses are the most likely to need probiotics. Being kept in a stall, paddock turn out, no friends, restricted movement, not enough exercise, not enough hay/forage all stress a horse.
Competition, travelling, fed grain/concnetrates are also stressors, sick, laid up horses, abrupt feed changes.
May be beneficial to horses. Feed at stressed times, not daily.
Research before feeding. Check out articles not written by a feed manufacturer.
Prebiotics
prebiotics are food for the microbes already in the horses's gut
feed daily
They support the beneficial bacteria, bind with strains of harmful bacteria and pass them out of the horse's gut.
Beetpulp, flax, and yeast (brewer's yeast?) contain prebiotics
Do not feed to neonatal foals.
Feed to horses that have trouble maintining their weight (and look into gastric ulcers), older horses with digestion/absorbtion problems, horses with a history of diarrhea, colic, or gas (look into gastric ulcers) and young horses up to age of 1 year. (you might want to change how the youngster is being kept if it need probitotics or prebiotics)
Do a search on these sites for current information
www.thehorse.com thehorsechannel.com www.thenaturallyhealthyhorse.com
Thursday 1 December 2016
Feeding
The current thought is to feed forage (hay, grass) 100% of the time to horses unless they cannot maintain their weight for the work the horse is doing.
I found one study with Standardbred horses in race training that were fed a grass/alfalfa hay. They maintained their weight.
Missing vitamin and minerals can be made up with a ration balancer (marketed around here as a feed that supplements...but no "ration balancer" used on the bag). Too bad.
Or the horse can be fed a mineral mix (18:18 ratio of calcium:phosphorous). Loose is best. Horses do not have cow tongues.
Gastric ulcers in horses seem to be rampant: up to 100% in racehorses, 90% in horses in race training. Pleasure horses are high beause they are fed well and exercised little. Show horses also have a high incidence of gastric ulcers.
Dr Kerry Ridgway has a wonderful article on gastric ulcers. You can pay for a scan but it will only detect gastric ulcers to the stomach.
The easiest way to determine if your horse has gastric ulcers (besides work history) is to feed a gastric ulcer med. If the horse gains weight then you got it.
Alfallfa is good for calming the acidic stomach. Free feeding hay helps too. The horse is meant to trickly graze (a little often) so free feeding hay is a good choice. Put the hay in a net or loose. Whichever you choose will depend on whether you want the horse to gain weight or not. In a net the horse will not gain weight (unless the horse rips a big hole in it).
One of my boarders has gastric ulcers and he has gained weigth since being put into a field with another horse and is being fed an unrolled hay bale. (the haybale is unrolled and left in the field). This will work in the winter as snow covering it will not be too big of an issue.
He has gained weight (from a 4 to a 6/9). The other horse is watching what she eats and has not gained too much weight. She may have gastric ulcers too as she can be quite cranky. Her ideal is to be left alone by humans. I suspect she is an ex-barrel racer. From her conformation she was quite a good one. She is a very nice looking horse.
I found one study with Standardbred horses in race training that were fed a grass/alfalfa hay. They maintained their weight.
Missing vitamin and minerals can be made up with a ration balancer (marketed around here as a feed that supplements...but no "ration balancer" used on the bag). Too bad.
Or the horse can be fed a mineral mix (18:18 ratio of calcium:phosphorous). Loose is best. Horses do not have cow tongues.
Gastric ulcers in horses seem to be rampant: up to 100% in racehorses, 90% in horses in race training. Pleasure horses are high beause they are fed well and exercised little. Show horses also have a high incidence of gastric ulcers.
Dr Kerry Ridgway has a wonderful article on gastric ulcers. You can pay for a scan but it will only detect gastric ulcers to the stomach.
The easiest way to determine if your horse has gastric ulcers (besides work history) is to feed a gastric ulcer med. If the horse gains weight then you got it.
Alfallfa is good for calming the acidic stomach. Free feeding hay helps too. The horse is meant to trickly graze (a little often) so free feeding hay is a good choice. Put the hay in a net or loose. Whichever you choose will depend on whether you want the horse to gain weight or not. In a net the horse will not gain weight (unless the horse rips a big hole in it).
The benefit of unrolling the haybale is great: horses eat the hay without creating a mess (manure piling up), everyone has room to eat, the field is fertilized and seed is spead out so the field is reseeded.
The downside is that the horses eat that much more hay.
This does not work well during the rainy season (unless also cold) if the horses do not eat it within a week. It won't work in the summer, either unless the horses eat the bale in a day.
He has gained weight (from a 4 to a 6/9). The other horse is watching what she eats and has not gained too much weight. She may have gastric ulcers too as she can be quite cranky. Her ideal is to be left alone by humans. I suspect she is an ex-barrel racer. From her conformation she was quite a good one. She is a very nice looking horse.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)