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September/October 2007 Display until October 22, 2007 $5.95 USA/Canada
VOLUME 2 ISSUE 5
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equine wellness
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features
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The green, green grass of home
The latest on avoiding pasture laminitis
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Learning label-ese
24
4 ways to intuitively
equine wellness
Big shots!
32
Poop patrol
34
Classic moves
How to figure out what’s in the product you’re buying
understand your horse Understanding and respect are keys to a trusting partnership
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Vaccination – part 2
What your horse’s manure can tell you about his health
9 tips for the gaited horse
Whole Horse Herbs™ Chinese herbal formulas for horses Custom blended & individualized herbal formulas to meet your horse’s unique needs
Classic herbal formulas:
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• Movement & Flexibility • Performance & Show • Increased endurance • EPM & ERU support • Immunity support • Calming & Focus Veterinarian tested & recommended. Endorsed by performance horse trainers and owners
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Smile pretty Is your horse getting the right dental care?
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How to create harmonious stomach chi
Nature’s bounty How to supplement your horse naturally
Digestion dilemma
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Enter our 1st Ever Equine Wellness Photo Contest!
Healing hands
Theft! 68 Stop! How to protect your equine partner
issues 101 72 Dental A guide to the most common problems
Why equines are especially receptive to Reiki
Send us your best shots and you could win! equine wellness
Learning Label-ese What’s in the product you’re buying? by Lisa Ross-Williams
“Grow a whole new hoof in 30 days!” “Formulated for all horses: foals, maintenance, performance and seniors!” “Change your horse’s color from bay to gray in just a week!”
Okay, the claims made by some feed and supplement companies aren’t quite this outrageous, but they’re pretty close. With big marketing strategies, any supplement or feed can be made out to be the next miracle product. Going by all the claims out there, we should have a world full of healthy horses. This isn’t so. Luckily, armed with some basic information, any horse guardian can sort out the good, the bad and the ugly.
equine partner a much better chance at a balanced diet. Total equine nutrition is a complex subject beyond the scope of this article, but knowledge of some basic guidelines such as ingredients, key ratios and comparison techniques will help you understand labels and make more informed decisions.
An ability to look past the fancy marketing and packaging and really understand what labels are telling you will give your
This category of products includes a feed base with added vitamins and minerals, either in sweet feed form or pellets. These
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equine wellness
What’s really in concentrated feeds?
feeds are very common and designed for convenience. Unfortunately, due to over-processing and often second-rate ingredients or fillers, they are often not a good choice. The first step in reading a feed label is to look at the ingredient list. Watch for sub-standard filler products. Keep in mind that the first listed ingredients are often in order of the amount in the overall mix. Here are some common ingredients to watch for: •Wheat middlings: A by-product of
What about starches and sugar?
wheat milling and an inexpensive filler with little nutritional value. •Artificial flavorings: Undisclosed synhetic materials that are not overseen by the USDA. •Alfalfa meal or Bermuda straw: Filler ingredients with very low nutritional value often made from poor quality and older hay. Green dye is often added to enhance the color. •Soybean or oat hulls: The outer covering of the grain or seed left over after the nutritious portion is milled. Another inexpensive filler. •By-products: This term is more commonly seen in dog and cat food but also in some horse feeds. A by-product is left over from processing another material. There is no law governing what is considered a by-product.
Beneficial levels or not? Some concentrated feeds also contain ingredients that may be pleasing to the horse guardian’s eyes but aren’t at levels that could benefit the horse. Two common ones are MSM, a source of sulfur and a joint health aid, and probiotics. Often, the amount of MSM listed in the guaranteed analysis is way below the maintenance dose of ten grams per day. With probiotics, only one or two strains of beneficial bacteria are often added where a minimum of six or seven are needed by the horse’s intestinal track. This doesn’t necessarily rule out such products, but additional supplementation with specialty products will be needed.
A low starch/sugar diet is extremely important for easy-keeper breeds who may be prone to insulin resistance, as well as Cushing’s horses, although the “better safe than sorry” approach may be appropriate with most horses. If grain use is warranted, such as with high competition horses, a small quantity of high quality whole oats is much better than lower quality, over-processed grain materials.
HINT
Crude protein does not mean digestible protein. If protein sources are inferior and have a low digestibility, the horse will not be able to utilize them. This is especially important for growing horses. Ingredients contributing to starch and sugar in feeds include grains and also molasses, which can wreck havoc on a horse’s glucose levels. Molasses is often added to concentrated products to make it palatable to horses. It’s high in sugar and over-taxes the liver. Some companies aiming for a low starch/ sugar diet are using the strategy of including inferior grain ingredients such as middlings or hulls; although low in starch, these are also low in nutritional value. Quality companies are using rice bran, flaxseed and/or beet pulp.
What effect does overprocessing and storage have? Most concentrated feed products are highly processed mechanically and by heat. This destroys beneficial enzymes equine wellness
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