A Leg Up
Prebiotics And Probiotics For Horses by Heather smith Thomas Horses have a unique digestive system that enables them to process and utilize forages. microbes in the hindgut break down and ferment fibrous portions of roughages, producing volatile fatty acids that serve as a significant energy source. b vitamins and other nutrients essential to the health and well being of the animal are also created. The microbial population (which includes bacteria, protozoa, yeasts and fungi) of the hindgut must be healthy and their numbers at appropriate levels for proper digestion. bacteria make up the largest group, but the others play an important role.
Probiotics many horse owners use supplements or commercial feeds containing some of these essential microbes. These living products are called probiotics. Amy Gill, Ph.D., equine nutritionist in Lexington, Ky., says the purpose of feeding probiotics is to keep the hindgut stabilized. “it is very easy to disrupt the horse’s hindgut,” she explains. “An abrupt change in feed, or any kind of stress—even the stress of putting a horse in a trailer and taking him somewhere, a visit by the veterinarian or farrier, a strenuous showing or work schedule—can disrupt the gut. A highgrain, high-concentrate, low-fiber diet is also hard on microbes in the hindgut. This type of diet has a more negative impact than anything else.” Adding probiotics on a daily basis can be helpful. “We now call them direct fed microbials (DFm),” she says.
“You are directly feeding the horse the microbes it needs to sustain normal gut function. These include bacteria such as Lactobacillus acidophilus, Enterococcus or Streptococcus faecium and Lactobacillus lactis. High-end feed manufacturers put these in most of their products, listed on the feed label.” stephen Duren, Ph.D., owner of Performance Horse nutrition and official nutritionist for Alltech®, says this field of nutrition is rapidly growing. special feeds for performance horses and older horses typically contain probiotics. “A performance horse that’s traveling is always under stress,” he says, “and older horses tend to lose some of their ability to digest and utilize nutrients.” “i feel it’s very beneficial to have a small amount of these important microbes added to the diet on a daily basis, because we don’t know all the things that can stress horses,” says Gill. “The life cycle of these microbes within the gut is around 15 minutes. it’s very easy to change the population very quickly. Thus, it’s a good idea to include them in the ration. it’s an inexpensive insurance policy. i feel it is better to have the microbes available in each feeding, as opposed to waiting until something bad happens and then trying to fix it.” since these are living organisms, some people ask about the shelf life of the product, and whether the microbes actually make it to the hindgut when fed—whether they can withstand the digestive process through the first part of
Probiotics Are Not New The term comes from the Greek words “for” and “life,” to describe the “good” microbes within the gut. The concept of consuming beneficial bacteria first arose in the early 1900s, according to newman, but the popularity of probiotic use has gone through ups and downs. “every now and then people think this is new science and rediscover it,” he says. “Probiotics are popular now because it’s become more feasible to create these products, and there are some good ones that have been on the market for awhile.” research has shown there is some merit to using them. Duren says the initial use of probiotics in recent years was in situations where animals had been given large oral doses of antibiotics to treat disease. “We added various bacterial and yeast cultures designed to repopulate the hindgut. At first, veterinary clinics collected manure from healthy horses, strained it to get some of the juice containing these microbes, and dosed the horse with that.” Later, the desired microbes were cultured and grown, and added to commercial paste products for dosing horses recovering from illness or undergoing stress. 320 | A r A bi A n Hor se T i mes