Good evening, everyone. My name is Charlotte, and thank you for joining us for tonight's webinar, Feeding Fact or Feeding Fiction, presented by Emma Short. Tonight we are taking a closer look at some long accepted feeding wisdoms and sort the myths from the facts, drawing on research and modern practise to help you help your clients provide the equines with an appropriate healthy diet.

So a little bit about Emma, our speaker this evening. Emma's role is varied, covering the provision of feed advice for general horse owners working on specialist feeding programmes for larger yards and professionals, and providing technical support for the Bailey sales and marketing teams. She enjoys applied and clinical nutrition, having seen plenty of changes in progression over the years within the industry.

She helps supply any new research to the benefit of the welfare and performance of the horse through Bailey's product development programme, as well as providing educational talks to horse owners, equestrian associations, veterinary practises and retailers. Today's webinar has been kindly sponsored by Bailey's Horse Feeds, so a big thank you to Bailey's Horse Feeds for making tonight's webinar possible. I wish to let you all know that today's session will be recorded and available on playback, and you will all receive a certificate for today's attendance also.

Please use the Q&A box for any questions you may have for Emma throughout the presentation, and at the end of today's session, we'll see if we can answer any of these questions that you may have. If we run out of time with the questions submitted, we will email out any responses to you in the next few days. So with no further ado, I'd now like to hand over to Emma just to to start tonight's session.

Thank you, Emma. Thanks so much, Charlotte. I'm gonna probably turn my video off guys, as I chat through the webinar and I will click on my video, to take any questions at the end.

So thanks very much for joining. What we're going to look at this evening is we will be looking at some of the facts. Oh, hang on.

Bear with me. There we go. I do apologise.

We're gonna be looking at some of the facts around modern forages and pasture, and what they do and don't provide. We were gonna look at, today, some of today's feed ingredients, and what they bring to the menu and why they may be misunderstood. Looking at when to recommend cutting back feed and when not to.

And also looking at dietary protein levels and why this is an essential nutrient and it's not necessarily the root of so many evils that's quite often perceived. And hopefully along the way, we're gonna cover some common feeding misconceptions also. Actually, let's have a look at some of the facts or fiction surrounding forage.

So some of the myths that we come across, we have grass and forage is all a horse or pony needs, especially the good doer or those at rest or those that are retired, and that haulage is more fattening than hay and quite often makes our horses excitable. So I've put false here, but how do we know that? So.

From our own experience of feeding horses over the years, and also analysing lots of forage, that forage alone is not usually sufficient to meet our horses' nutritional requirements. So you can find that those horses on a forage only diet may show evidence of this through maybe a poor coat, poor hooves, they may be lacking in energy, or also possibly lacking in muscle. And through our own data collected, we have collected up to 830 hay samples, 948 hailage samples from between 2007, 202021, and 435 grass samples from 2002 to again 2021.

So we can compare our data and forage analysis results to the guidance from the National Research Council's nutrient requirements for horses, which basically is a document or book it's based on the best peer reviewed research internationally, which is updated regularly. And this is typically considered the gold standard for reference in diet formulation. And it gives us suggested minimum daily intake requirements for nutrients, for horses with different body weights and also workloads.

Now we looked at recommendations based on a dry matter and forage intake of between 2 to 2.5% of body weight, and we were able to work out how much of each nutrient our average hay, haulage or grass would provide. And pasture.

Be in nutrient content according to the time of year, environmental conditions as well as the type of sward, this fluctuation along with harvest times will also affect the quality of hay or haulage. Whereby spring or hay or hailish that's cut earlier in the season will be lower in indigestible fibre and higher in both energy and protein, and this declines as the pasture matures. So this slide is illustrating, .

The amount of crude protein within grass pasture, and we can see clearly that average protein was highest in the spring, so in April time, when pasture is growing and it declines as your grass pasture matures into summer, usually with a late flurry of grass growth in the autumn. And these typically would be expected to then decline over the winter months before again rising in the spring. So putting this into practise, when you're dealing with horses that may be struggling to build muscle tone or topline, this shows the importance of taking the time of year and also the amount of access to grass into account.

That the horse has. So even if the grass looks plentiful, if it's matured coming into summer, then actually the amount of nutrients or protein that that grass is supplying may not be sufficient. Here we can see the difference between crude protein in hay, hailage and grass, and unsurprisingly, you can see that your grass has a much higher average crude protein content compared to hail haage, which is to be expected.

Hailage had a marginally higher average crude protein content than hay, but there's not a huge difference between both hay and hailage, and it's that individual cut of hay or hailage that will vary. Sohailage will not always have a be higher in protein than hay. And it's also really important to consider the individual forage quality and maturity, so whether that forage is soft or leafy or coarse and stalky may also affect the availability of the protein content to the horse.

So let's have a little look at your fibre levels. I just want to clarify really what we look at when we're analysing forage. So firstly, we have our ADF and our NDF, both of which are good measures of plant digestibility and maturity.

Your ADF, which is known as your acid detergent fibre, . Measures the crude fibre and soluble lignum portions of the plant structure, and you have your NDF or your neutral detergent fibre, which looks at your hemicellulose, your cellulose and the nine contents, these are basically the structural components of the plant cell walls. And a higher ADF or NDF value indicates that the plant is more mature and that the hay or haliage may have been sort of cut slight slightly past sort of the optimum time.

And haze and hailages with higher ADF and NDF are usually co coarser and stalpier to the touch. They may also be less palatable for the horse, whereas forages with a lower fibre level may appear to be softer and leafier and may have been cut slightly earlier on in the season. So as the fibre portion of the plant increases, the other nutrients tend to decrease, resulting in the forage becoming less digestible and also available to the horse.

You can see in the little graph here that there's not much difference in the average fibre levels between your hay and haulage, which may be surprising to some people. Most people think that haage is much more digestible than hay, and in some cases it can be, but it's very much down to. Individual samples.

So in the samples that we had over those years, you can see that actually haage is less digestible than hay, which is surprising. On the other hand, and just to give a comparison, you can see here that the grass is more digestible as you would expect. This graph here is basically showing you the differences in ADF, so fibre and content of grass as it matures over the seasons, and this is almost the opposite to what you'll find with the protein charts.

So you will find that the average ADF content is typically much lower, in the spring when the grass is growing. And it tends to mature, peaking at around July, and it starts to sort of plateau off as we gain as we come into autumn. We would expect, the fibre levels to remain relatively high, and then it would start to drop again, so relatively high coming into winter, and it would start to drop again, as we move back into spring.

So what's I think quite interesting here is this can certainly sort of affect how mature I suppose or how digestible our haze and haages are. As you can see, if you've got a hay or haliage that's been cut potentially later on in the grass growing season, then the fibre levels are likely to be much higher than if it's been cut much earlier on. So it does have quite a big impact on our dried or conserved forages.

Oh, the ADF has changed over the years with both hay and hailage, basically following the same pattern, of peaks and troughs, and it's very similar in both hay and hailage, which indicates that these changes are not just due to chance, but likely due to weather conditions such as rainfall levels prior to harvest. What we typically find is the high rainfall can result in increased levels of ADF and NDF, so fibre. Whereby if it's raining a lot around the time when farmers would normally harvest their hay, or haulage, then they may actually have to wait longer to cut it.

So therefore, the forage is much later cut, it can be more mature, which then leads to obviously higher levels of ADF and NDF. So just have a little. Look at some of the peaks and troughs here.

So in 2010, you can see that the ADFs were pretty low in both haze and hailages. And when we had a look at some of the weather conditions that we record, there was a drought recorded in the UK in 2010 to 2011, and whereby most of England actually received less than 85% of average rainfall. So you can see that the ADFs tend to drop here.

202012 was quite wet, so again, the ADF levels are starting to go up. Again, maybe that could be due to the fact that maybe harvest times were delayed because it was too wet to cut, and 2013 again was relatively dry. And you can also see that it shoots right up in 2019, as that was also quite a wet year.

In fact, it was the 7th wettest year overall in the UK since records began. So you can see the relevance there. So we can use this in practise by looking at our own observations of the weather to get a rough idea of how our forage quality and digestibility might be affected, and particularly for yards which change haze suppliers regularly.

However, this isn't always guaranteed, so you do always get some outliers, which is to be expected. Early cut forage with a low ADF or NDF is typically more digestible for the horse, but are these forages also higher in calories or energy? So this chart here has around 830 green dots, and each dot represents, a result for each of our haze samples that we analysed.

The position of the green dot basically corresponds with the ADF, the fibre contents for that sample along the bottom of the axis and the digestible energy value for that sample along the top. So you can see here where you've got the little sort of red dots there and the little lines, for this particular green dot or hay sample, it has a digestible energy of around 7 megajoules per kilo, and the ADF value was around 36%. There is generally a downwards pattern here.

So as your ADF or your fibre increases and your forage is less digestible, the digestible energy decreases. So you can assume that a forage with a lower ADF or fibre content, will probably have a high digestible energy and a forage with a higher ADF will probably have a low DE. So in practise, if you're looking at a very soft leafy forage that you may think, .

That you think might have a low sort of ADF or fibre content, you can probably assume that the digestible energy levels will be high, as well, so it's gonna be more calorific and also vice versa. We did also find, and I haven't given you a chart here cos it's becomes quite charty otherwise, we also found that we had a similar pattern when we plotted our haulage samples as well. So here you can see that we are looking at the average digestible energy levels for each type of forage.

And you can see that actually your hay and haage was relatively similar, though the digestible energy for hay was marginally higher, which is surprising. We quite often think again that our haulage typically has a higher digestible energy value. Energy and calories being the same thing, so again you would expect potentially that hailage to be possibly more calorific as well.

And in actual fact we found within all the samples that we analysed that actually your hay has a higher digestible energy value. So possibly conflicting to what typically is sort of said. We also know that obviously the fibre levels that we've just seen.

Were also fairly consistent with both haze and haulages. So the hailage actually wasn't any necessarily any more digestible than the hay, which could also have an impact on how available some of the nutrients are. And you can see here again in comparison, we've put the grass levels there again, digestible energy is higher, which you would expect, but again, not hugely.

If you look at your hay at 9.07. Your grass is only 9.47, so there's not a huge difference there.

Again, it's really important to look at individual cuts of your haze or haages and also your grass, rather than sort of maybe generalising what we typically would think. So grass, especially in the spring, supplies considerably more nutrients and energy or calories compared to hay or haulage. It's likely that the energy or calorie demands will be partially if not fully satisfied and in some instances exceeded by what each horse grazes each day, but also obviously the quality of the grazing available.

And what will be less obvious is whether his requirements for vitamins, minerals, and also quality protein are fully met through grass intake alone. Because your animals may be looking very well because they're holding lots of lovely weights, because there's plenty of calories within their forage. But what's happening with sort of the micro nutrient contents of their diet?

So let's have a little look here at some of the trace minerals that that we looked at. So this graph here shows the average intakes of trace minerals for a 500 kg horse at rest, on either a single type or mixed forage diet, which is consumed at 2% of body weight, compared to our minimum NRC guidelines. And your NSC, your NIC, is our minimum sort of nutrient goal, and this is seen in the dark green in the chart, so the one on the left.

The bar chart on the left, and although in all diets, your manganese and your iron are exceeding minimum requirements, both your copper and your zinc are below this minimum in all forage diets, which is interesting. So what we found is for all ages, workloads and reproductive stages on average hay and hailage, it will not provide enough sulphur, copper and zinc to meet minimum requirements. So again, looking at that 500 kg horse in light levels of work, hay and hailish typically will provide less than 50% of daily zinc requirements and less than 30% of daily copper requirements.

On average, grass parley will also not provide enough copper and zinc to meet minimum NRC requirements for all types of horse or pony. Those sulphur requirements will generally will will generally be met. And generally speaking, incorporating some grass access into the diet did help to improve nutrient levels compared to just using hay or haulage alone.

However, copper and zinc levels were still not sufficient for all horse ages, workloads and reproductive stages, even with the addition of grass. Your copper, your zinc, and your sulphur were the biggest shortfalls for all types of horse, but as we move up into higher workloads, because we're just looking at light levels of work here, nutrient demands will obviously increase and the shortfalls become much greater. So for those animals in more moderate, harder workloads, actually the phosphorus, magnesium and sodium levels were also not sufficient to meet minimum minimum requirements.

So remember, these are just minimum requirements when we're looking at NRC. So what you might find is there's no safety buffer there. And also just remember that we are assuming that these horses are consuming the suggested percentage of hay or hailage at around 2 to 2.5% of their body weight on a dry matter basis.

So actually if these horses are good doers or they're on a lower calorie diet because we're looking for them to lose weight or they're on restricted pastures or haze or hailages, then actually less forage is gonna be consumed and your nutrient intakes will also be much lower as a result. We also looked at brood mares and young stock and as requirements increase, particularly in your lactating mares and your growing young stock, young stock, other nutrients such as your protein, your calcium and your phosphorus will also not be provided in adequate levels to meet minimum requirements, particularly in your hay and haulages, as well as your copper, your sulphur and your zinc. And even with the addition of grass past.

Your access alongside your haze and your hailages. Nutrient intake did improve. So your crude protein levels, with respect to crude protein levels, they were still not sufficient for lactating brood mares, and the levels of protein, calcium, phosphorus was still not adequate for growing youngsters.

And the diet that you see here on the slides, so we looked at the 6 month old fold. That's due to mature, to 500 kg, and this is just based on average hay, and it will only provide 53% of the minimum calcium requirements, 48% of your phosphorus, 57% of your protein, 25% of copper, and 42% of zinc. So your shortfalls are, are, are quite significant, in these instances.

So we've obviously mentioned that all horses, for all horses, the levels of copper, zinc, and sulphur in the average forage will not be sufficient. It's really important to remember that low levels of some minerals can then impact on the digestibility of others, resulting in further deficiencies. You.

You can see here that this mineral wheel sort of shows just how many different interactions there are between all the different minerals. So for example, if we take copper, you can, it has sort of a, a direct effect on zinc, iron, molybium and sulphur. And this effect is the reason that single nutrients should not be focused on unless there is a known quantified deficiency or excess of a certain mineral in the animal.

So we need to really be looking at a balanced diet as a whole, making sure that we're supplying all vitamins and minerals, etc. Not just concentrating on one or two minerals, because the balance could be out of kilter. Some take home messages.

There's a wide range of factors that affect the nutrient content and digestibility of forages, including weather conditions during growth and harvest, you got geographical regions and the time of year for your grass, stocking density on grass. Turnout in confined areas will also affect nutrient intake. We mustn't generalise our haze and hailages and we must look at them on an individual basis.

The only consistent difference is the moisture content, and you need to feed more haage than hay. Your low ADF usually equals higher calorie and vice versa. An average forage does not provide enough copper or zinc in most cases.

You can add grazing into the ration alongside your haze and haages and it will improve the nutrient intake. However, it's really important to look at the diet as a whole and have a balanced diet, and supplementation with something like a balancer is likely to be necessary. So let's move on to another another fact or fiction.

So let's have a little look at protein and whether it really is as awful as we all think. So some of the myths that we come across all the time are protein causes, lots of clinical issues such as lam. It makes our horses really excitable.

It can cause muscle related problems, growth problems with our young stock. And also looking at sort of feeds and supplements, so balances and some other feeds contain too much protein and we can't possibly feed them. So again, I would say this is false.

So again, how do we know? They It's basically the building blocks are amino acids of all body tissues including muscle, tendons, ligaments and hooves. So it's an essential nutrient and just as just as essential as fibre in the diet, I would say.

It is only used as an energy source by the horse's body, when all other sources of energy have been exhausted and it's metabolism is inefficient and slow, and this means it does not have any effect on temperament, nor is it implicated in other issues like laminitis or growth problems in young stock. So what does the research say? Well, nutritional laminitis, for example, is caused by an overload of water soluble carbohydrates, starch, sugar, fructon.

We can look at equine rhabdomyolysis syndrome, muscle related problems, and actually. It's thought that a well designed exercise programme and a nutritionally balanced diet with appropriate energy intake and adequate levels of vitamin and minerals are the core elements of preventing future episodes. We can look at our PSSM or polysaccharide storage myopathy, and as the problem is related to glycogen storage, its source needs to be removed again, so looking at removing carbohydrates, starch and sugar from the diet.

And diets that are most likely to result in developmental orthopaedic disease in our young stock and foals is due to a high level of energy and low levels of minerals. So none of this research mentions excessive levels of protein. Tin is supplied in limited amounts by our forage.

We also know the amount of indigestible fibre within forage will affect how well the horse can digest and thus absorb available protein. The harder a horse works, the greater demand for protein to build, and repair muscle, and it's this quality is really as important as the amount of protein that's within the diet. And it's the quality which is determined by the individual amino acids, of which it is made up.

Lysine is one of the most important essential amino acids that we have in the horse's diet. I mean this is the first what we call limiting amino acid, which means basically that if it's insufficient in the diet. Then protein synthesis is adversely affected.

And with forage quality varying, particularly when you're looking at things like your grass will vary, as we go sort of through the, through the months of the season, and hay and haage can vary hugely depending on when it's cut, etc. Then diets are not consistent. So this slide here, I wanted to sort of talk about because this is showing you different requirements.

Again, we're going back to that 500 kg horse. We're looking at light work, moderate work and hard work, so looking at varying, crude protein, which is the CP, the crude protein levels for different workloads. And also different levels of lysine.

So that essentially amino acid that is required in the diet. And you can see here from the charts, on the left, that you've got different, basically different levels of protein coming through. So what I wanted to have a look at was maybe looking at sort of your typical grass hay, with an average.

Crude protein content of 7%, and your lysin will be around 0.38%. If our 500 kg horse is consuming 7.5 kgs of hay per day, and it's getting a reasonable amount of protein at 52 5 grammes, and your lyin is reasonable at 28.5.

It's still under what that horse requires in like levels of work. We could add some grass into the equation which again steps up our crude protein levels and also our lysine levels. But remember that these are almost a snapshot in time if you like, and that your forage is changing, particularly your grass will change.

Depending on how wet it is also coming into winter when it's particularly, we have a higher rainfall, the horse will have to consume more grass in order to meet its dramatic intake. So these levels will vary continuously as we go on. I put the balancer levels up there as well, because people get very concerned with the amount of protein, or nutrients that you find within a balancer because they do look much higher than what you would find in a typical sort of high fibre or lower energy sort of mix or cube.

And you can see that again for a 500 kg horse that's fed 500 grammes of a balancer. With a balance that has, say, 16% crude protein, you would be getting 80 grammes of your crude protein and 7 grammes of lysine, and a balancer that maybe has higher levels of protein at 26%, you're looking at 130 grammes and 11 grammes. I wanted to just compare this with a high fibre cube because quite often I'll be speaking to people and they will say, well, you know, I've been.

Recommended to feed a high fibre cube. It's got a much lower protein content than our balances. Well, actually, it's all to do with your feeding rates.

So if you were looking at that 500 kg horse in light levels of work and you were feeding it, say, a high fibre cube, which would potentially provide say 9% crude protein, you would need to feed that product at 2.5 kg in order to meet vitamin and mineral requirements. .

And therefore, that product will actually supply 225 grammes of crude protein, and your lysine level would be typical at around 7.5 grammes. So they're usually around 0.3 to maybe 0.4% lysine, those types of products.

So you can actually see that the lysine level is not as high as if you are feeding that 26% crude protein, balancer. And actually the protein level is actually higher, so actually you're better off to potentially to choose a balance set in that instance. So let's have a little look at some take home messages.

Forage alone in some instances, will supply adequate levels of protein, but it will potentially be low in essential amino acids such as your lysine. Forage fluctuates throughout the season, so it's not consistent, so that's something that we really do need to sort of bear in mind, particularly if you've got a horse that's maybe working at a moderate to harder level or you've got breeding stock whereby you need, they have a higher protein or lysine requirements. Excess protein is generally excreted and shouldn't affect temperament or energy levels.

And although in some clinical diseases such as your liver disease, for example, protein does need to be controlled. It is an essential nutrient and restricting it can be detrimental. So it's all about having that balance, a balanced feed, making sure that we are meeting at least NRC recommendations, so minimum recommendations.

So let's move on again to our next fact or fiction, and I wanted to have a little look at ingredients and processing because I think that word processing sort of conjures up, well, bad feelings basically. So miss, is processing bad? I've put co-products or we could say byproducts are bad, and is sugar bad?

False. But let's look at why the manufacturers process, certain ingredients. So there's a myriad of products and supplements on the market to choose from.

So how do you decide on what is best for your clients or the horse that you're recommending? And I think having knowledge of what ingredient and why it goes into your bag of feed will help you make a much more informed choice and hopefully have more confidence in what you're recommending and feeding. As a manufacturer, we need to consider the digestive and metabolic function of a particular ingredient that we use.

We also need to look at the bioavailability of nutrients and also the digestibility of ingredients. So raw raw materials are chosen for the quality, we want the best quality ingredients going into our products, but also we need to look at quantity, cost and also availability. We don't least cost formulate, which means that we don't change our recipes at all.

So we need to make sure that whatever ingredient we want and choose within our product is available all the time so that we can ensure that that product is as consistent as possible. We also need to make sure that those ingredients are obviously palatable. Because if we've got this amazing ingredient that does, has all these bells and whistles, but the horse isn't actually going to consume it, then we're gonna have a little bit of a problem.

So Let's have a look at the ingredients and why we choose and how we process. I think feeding process. And it also poses the question to why this is necessary when our horses have evolved to be forage eaters grazing and browsing for most of their time.

Our domestic horses are often stabled for lengthy periods of time with limited grazing and supplemented with hay or haulage, of which, as we know from our previous slides has a varying quality. We also put different demands on our horses, particularly for those, Who are competing either regularly or working at a much higher level, and this means that our horses potentially could be missing out on some essential nutrients, . And therefore additional supplementation potentially with the processed feed is often necessary.

So correct processing means that the manufacturer can provide hopefully optimum digestion and absorption, so I think. Processing horse feed is very different to what we associate with processed food in our own diets. And it does mean that we can improve the digestibility of an ingredient, ensuring that the feed is safer, that it's easier to chew, that it's more palatable and potentially we're increasing its shelf life.

So this also means that the feed is more consistent, guaranteeing nutrient intake, which also helps to simplify feeding methods. And particularly I would say these days to label many sort of highly nutritious feed ingredients as almost waste or fillers or just bulk. And this particularly falls on anything that might be classified as sort of a buy or a or a co-product.

So ingredients may be co-products from human food processing, but they're not waste and they're still nutritionally valuable to the horse, it was a basically a different digestive system to our own. So what are they? So basically your co-pro co-products, your byproducts are generated during the processing of a food to remove a certain portion of it.

Well, we just to list a few of them essentially. So we have things like beet pulp, soya bean holes or meal. We have Decillers grains, rice bran, linseed meal, copra or coconut milk, you may know it as.

All of these are co or byproducts of our equine to the feed industry. So things like your beet pulp, for example, is basically the dried remains of your sugar beet after the sugar has been extracted for human consumption. It contains low levels of sugar, around 5%, as long as there's no molasses added back into it.

And it's a brilliant source of super fibres. It's a really very digestible source of fibre, it provides good levels of calories, and actually the pectin, the soluble fibre that's incorporated within your sugar meat can also help to protect protect sort of your stomach lining, which is advantageous for your ulcer prone horses. You've got things like your soya holes, which is the outer husk of the soya bean, which is a really, again, a really rich source of super fibre, and provides some protein and a reasonable amount of energy contents, similar to that of an alfalfa.

Soya bean meal, like all seed meals is again a buyer or a co-product of the oil extraction industry, it's basically what's left once the oil's been removed from the bean. And it provides a more concentrated source of protein and has a really good amino acid profile, which is high in the essential amino acid lysine, so we do use that a lot. You've also got things like your distillers grains again, a co-product from the distillery industry whereby the starches and your sugars have been removed, to make alcohol, so this product is low in both starches and sugars, and is used as a, as a good digestible fibre and also protein source.

The co-products may be criticised because they're not whole foods, but we don't eat everything. I wouldn't eat, you know, my banana skin after eating my banana, for example, although I do have a friend that does eat kiwi skins, which I do find a little odd. But co-products may have enhanced nutritional qualities for the horse.

Things like your beat pork, your distillers grains, oat feed are safer because they're greatly reduced in sugar and starch levels. And things like your seed meals have also got reduced calories because of the fat removal, and they have a really good protein content. So although they, so they can enhance the diet when they use correctly, just like any whole food, any can't speak, sorry, any whole food, essentially.

The debate, because sugar gets a lot of bad press, but it's actually a very natural part of the horse's diet. We quite often come across people that say that my horse cannot eat or is intolerant to sugar. Well, grass, for example, can contain as much as 20 to 40%, so that 500 kg horse grazing on summer pasture could potentially consume 10 kg of grass in dry matter per day, of which 2 kg of that could be sugar.

The storage sugar fructon is a grass made up of simple sugars, as is starch from cereals, and all forms are broken down to glucose, which is the simplest sugar. This is used as a primary energy source of body tissues from the brain to the muscles, and so sugar is an essential element of the diet and easily digested by the horse, with simple sugars and starches being broken down and absorbed in the small intestine and your fructons essentially fermented in the large intestine or the hind gut. Sticking to the rules of feeding and keeping meal sizes small will help support this basically efficient digestive process.

However, overloading the system can, as with anything, cause problems. So if a horse is prone to nutrition related disorders such as laminitis, for example, then controlling sugar intake is really important, but it's not the complete answer, and it's rather the total carbohydrate intake with respect to sugars, starch and fructon that we should be restricting. So again, let's have a look at this table because this illustrates, I think some interesting levels.

We often associate maybe a traditional course mix ration with having high levels of sugar. So I've put in our top line conditioning mix here. Which is a conditioning or a competition, sort of type product.

It has 4% sugar. And even when you're feeding large quantities at about 6 kg, to that 500 kg horse again in hard levels of work, it's still only supplying 240 grammes of sugar. You compare that to maybe 10 kg of hay, which could have 10% sugar, then actually you're doing 1 kg.

And you can compare that to something like a balancer that's fed in considerably smaller quantities. Those types of products are supplying about 27.5 grammes.

There's quite a big varying amount of sort of sugar levels between ingredients, and we've really got to take into account feeding rates here. You might have something that's maybe got a higher sugar intake, but if you're only feeding a few grammes of it, then actually you're not gonna be supplying a huge amount in the diet in any one, go. So even your molasses-free feeds will contain sugar that is naturally occurring in all ingredients.

So straw, alfalfa, contains sugar, just like grass, hay and haulage. So really a sugar free feed is really nigh on an impossibility for our horses. Majority of the sugar in any horse's diet will be coming from its forage.

And without a laboratory sort of test or analysis, levels can be really hard to assess. Even when we're taking grass samples, the carbohydrate levels, your sugar levels will be fluctuating on an hourly basis. So they're changing all the time, depending on sort of weather conditions.

For those that are on a reduced or sugar or reduced calorie diet, then soaking hay can really help to wash out any extra water soluble carbohydrates, including sugars. So it's evident really, just it, just as it is for us, that it's a case of everything in moderation, and sugar in its various forms is I put a dietary friend, but if it's not consumed to excess or to too much in one go. Then there's no reason why it's not safe to have in the diet.

And whilst its control is key to the management of certain clinical conditions, clinical conditions such as things like your laminitis, a sens sensible approach, as with anything to a diet, to achieving both that balanced diet and ensuring sufficient exercise, that should really help to avoid some of these situations from arising basically in the first place. So let's look at some take home messages. So basically we want to be aware of the ingredients and what they provide within your feed.

Processing simply ensures that an ingredient is more digestible and provides enhanced nutritional qualities. And after all, hay and haulage is also processed, and we would quite happily feed those to our horses without even questioning it sometimes. Sugar is an essential nutrient, but it should be controlled and fed correctly and be aware of all aspects of the diet, including both forage and bucket feed alike.

And then we're gonna move on to our last fact or fiction, . And looking at whether we should look at reducing or stopping feeding in certain circumstances. So I wanted to have a look at some of the myths around youngsters and brood mares.

They should not be fed as this can cause growth problems or youngsters with growth problems should not be fed. Laminitic, so let's look at some clinical situations, should not get any supplementary feed, and those who tie up or have muscle related issues, should also require their feed, either cutting back or removing altogether. And also horses in box rest don't need any feed at all.

Again, you can probably guess what I'm gonna say, again, false. So let's have a little look at the brood mare to start with. So mares may have feed reduced due to the foal possibly growing too quickly, may have a larger foal that may be at a higher risk of developmental orthopaedic disease or DOD.

The, the foal may also have DOD, so they may already have growth problems. And why is that? So, basically the mare could be potentially producing large quantities of energy rich milk, generally with insufficient minerals.

So the quality and quantity of mare's milk is mostly genetic, but it can be optimised by the provision of quality energy and also protein in the diet. And the lactating mare's energy requirements increase as much as 44%, as well as her nutrients will be in high demand. The mayor will give up to 3% of her body weight daily in milk production, and if the mares.

Diet is deficient, in calories at this stage. She will basically start to potentially lose weight. If she's deficient in protein at this stage, she will start to what we call milk off her back.

So she will start to utilise her muscle stores, to basically provide enough protein to support milk production. And if there's an inadequate supply of minerals, this basically means that both liver and bone stores will be sacrificed. So you can see in this chart here that you can see sort of around the 5 week mark that lactation yield peaks at this time, so at 5 weeks, this is when the mayor is producing the most amount of milk.

And we flicked to this slide here and you can see that this coincides, again, if we look at the 5 weeks, which is along the bottom there, we can see that this coincides with the mare's milk mineral density declining. So this basically results in the foal at this time of its life, receiving a large quantity of milk with lots of energy, but also the mare's mineral density is dwindling at that 5 weeks. So the foal's getting a lot of energy with insufficient minerals at that 5 week mark.

So what causes nutritional developmental problems? So the diet that's most likely to result in DOD is those that are high in energy and also low in minerals, so exactly what I've just said. So we quite often see growth problems around that 5 week mark into lactation for that very reason.

Basically, your energy stimulates the rate of growth and the minerals are basically there to build the tissues. And this could actually have been a result of an imbalanced diet being fed for up to 30 days before a problem is actually noticeable to the eye. Foals that are born to mares that have not been supplemented correctly during pregnancy are also at higher risk, so.

Basically, foals will accumulate mineral liver stores throughout gestation to use at this time, so at this 5 week mark after birth. And if the mare has not been supplemented correctly, then the foal don't, doesn't have that ability to store those additional minerals to utilise later on. So this combined with the mare's milk being low in essential minerals and generally high in energy, can increase the risk of your DOD.

Some appropriate action. So cutting back on the measured nutrition may simply lead to the milk quality declining further with regards to the mineral supply. Whilst still high in energy.

And to top it off, med the meds requirements are really high, and so they're not going to be being supported, which could affect respiratory efficiency, it could also affect their health and also her overall wellbeing. So what we want to do in this instance is actually treat the source. We want to support the false growth by supplementing with these essential minerals to support tissue growth.

You may possibly need to be. Looking at reducing the mare's energy or calorie intake, if she's able to tolerate that reduction. If you have a mare that's already struggling to support weight and condition, then this may not be a suitable option.

And you may want to move and maybe off of a higher calorie stud cube or mix or off of a very high calorie, nutrient rich grass, and consider things like a stud balancer, that's lower in calorie but high in nutrients. And if the foal continues to grow incredibly, sort of quickly and you can't steady his growth rates, then you may actually need to consider weaning him early so you can control his diet, much more easily. So I also want to have a look at some of the clinical cutbacks that we come across.

So I want to have a look at, laminitis. We've already touched on this a few slides back. We know that from a nutritional standpoint, that laminitis is caused by an overload of soluble carbohydrates.

So it makes sense that we want to be controlling these dietary carbohydrates, so controlling the amount of starch, sugar, and fructon our laminitic horses or ponies have got within the diet. We need to be maintaining correct vitamins, minerals and also quality protein in terms of the amino acids, for muscle structure and function as well as overall tissue repair. And potentially if required, we need to be looking at appropriate calorie or energy sources for maybe oils or fibres.

Which to feeding our laminitics is to essentially remove bucket feed straight away, maybe before we've even established if that product is suitable. So is it already low in these soluble carbohydrates, but nutrient rich? We tend to restrict grazing, and rightly so, and possibly cut grazing altogether.

We quite often look at limiting the amount of forage that we're providing. And also looking at soaking it. And we know already through the research that we've looked at and research has already been done, the forage alone is already deficient in minerals.

So we're going to restrict forage, which we may need to do most certainly, and particularly grazing. We may need to look at limiting, forage if we're trying to reduce calorie intake. We may need to soak it because that forage may have higher levels of soluble carbohydrates, so we may need to remove sugar.

But we're also going to find that that diet is going to be unbalanced, so the nutrient content is not going to be sufficient to support basically a, a balanced diet to support repair and recovery. So what we do need to be looking at is we need to be focusing on providing low levels of soluble carbohydrates, so reduced amounts of starch, sugar or fructon. We need to be looking at a safe source of digestible calories, only if necessary, potentially from oils and fibres, maybe later on, not necessarily initially when the disease has been.

Sort of diagnosed. We need to be looking at healthy levels of fibre. We really should be looking at a balanced diet that's supplying that quality protein, so those amino acids and vitamins and minerals, so potentially a feed balancer.

We needed to be looking at small regular meals, we need to look at, look at maximising chew time. You know our horses are designed as forage eaters and also looking at digestive support, so potentially a digestive enhancer to support a healthy gut. Often another knee jerk reaction is to reduce feed to those also with equine rhabdomyolysis syndrome.

We, what, basically what we know is there's no procedure, feed or management that can guarantee against a further episode. What we do know is that a well designed exercise programme along with a nutritionally balanced diet with appropriate energy intake, and also adequate vitamins and minerals are the core elements of preventing future episodes of ER. So we do, however, want to be reducing feed on rest days, however.

So if the horse is being fed a higher energy concentrate, then this should be ideally halved from the evening before until the evening afterwards. This does, however, not apply if you're already feeding a lower energy, basically cube or mix or even a balancer because the calories or the energy levels are going to be low. And if rest days are prolonged, then the diet may need to be re-evaluated for one that is designed for a horse at rest or in lighter levels of work.

The price of those on box rest due to injury. So again, we know that our forage-based diet does not supply essential vitamins and minerals and actually cutting back too much or removing feed could result in an imbalanced diet and things like your protein, your vitamins. Are essential to help rebuild, and, you know, support recovery and it's also essential for correct immune response, which is really important for, for recovery.

So you might want to be looking at reducing or changing bucket feed if required, again, if they're on a higher calorie or higher energy based product. Maybe moving to something like a balancer or a lower calorie or energy based product. You might be able to simply just reduce the current fee to maintenance rations, depending on how long that animal is going to be on box rest and ensure that the bucket is placed ideally at a comfortable height, depending on the injury.

We want to be ensuring that there's adequate levels of forage. We need to consider potentially alternative forage sources, so something like a low calorie chaff, unmolass, sugar beets, things like fibre nuts, all help to provide interest and keep the horse occupied and busy whilst they're stabled. And again, looking at digestive enhancers if medication is given.

You may also possibly want to look at some tempers, because some horses will back off, such as herbs, garlic, etc. Which can be useful. So that does bring us to the end of our presentation.

There was a lot of information there to cover, to cover, so I hope I haven't bamboozled you with all that information, and thank you so much for for listening. Thank you, Emma. Oh, no, my video doesn't want to come on for some reason.

Oh, I can't start my video. Oh, OK, that's fine. I'll just leave my, oh, here we go.

Oh thank you. There we are. Welcome back.

Thank you, Emma, for presenting today's webinar. So we've had a couple of questions submitted, so I'll, go through those now, and if we do run out of time, then we can email responses if we can't get through them. Brilliant, thank you.

So the first one we've got is, does the 8 hour grazing values include hay feed, for the rest of the day, or those, are those values solely for the 8 hours worth of grazing? Or was that the slide, it depends on what slide we're talking about. Were we talking about?

When we, yeah, OK, I think if we're talking about the same side and I apologise if I'm getting myself confused here. So I think we were talking about, we were talking about the protein levels and where the balances are necessary, etc. So those levels that were on that side were just purely for 8 hours grazing and didn't include the, the fibre as well.

So for example, if we were looking at that 500 kg horse, we would expect them on a dry matter intake, to be, be around, so a minimum of around sort of 7.5 kgs of dry matter intake on a day. Daily basis, in light levels of work.

So what you'd possibly suggest, you've got 3.5 kg of, grass coming from your 8 hours of grazing. It's quite difficult to calculate that level as well.

So it will potentially vary slightly. And then on top of that, you would potentially supplement the diet with, say, 4 kg of hay. For argument's sake.

So you could have the two together. So actually, you will find that your protein and lysine levels aren't that far away from what you need. But what I would say is that it fluctuates.

So this isn't just a level that's gonna stay on a level playing field all the way through the year, it will go up and down. And remember, this is just based on minimum requirements. So it doesn't offer sort of that, that sort of safety buffer.

So you may find that your diet isn't completely consistent. So I hope, I hope I've answered the right question based on the right slide, and if I haven't, let me know and I'll do it later. Thank you.

So yeah, obviously resubmit that question for us if, if that will. I will check. The next one we've got is what's the potential impacts, effects of an unbalanced diet or, one not meeting mineral requirements.

Or crumbs, I mean, there's a there's a myriad of issues that that it can, that it can cause, and I would say long term, if it's just for a very short period of time, you're unlikely to see a difference, but obviously the longer it goes on for, I mean your vitamins, minerals, protein, I mean protein, for example, it would result in muscle loss. You may find that, you know, hair, horn quality, so hoof quality is is not as good. So all those kinds of things for mares and young stock again, they have really high requirements for proteins for correct growth and development.

Vitamins and minerals, I mean they have so many, so many different roles within our bodies, so from the use of enzymes, calcium, phosphorus is obviously. Really important for bone density and, and again, regeneration. Calcium is important for muscle contraction, for example.

Copper and zinc are important for ligaments, tendon, elasticity. So again, really important with with young stock. So.

There are lots of issues that you might that you might find. You may not see it immediately, but certainly long term you may potentially find that your horses are not thriving, they may not have the energy levels that you're looking for. Vitamins and minerals are really important in metabolising energy in the diet.

So all these things are interlinked, so if that balance isn't there, then you will find, just like with our own diets, you might not notice it initially if you've had a week of eating takeaways, you might be fine, but if you continue to do that week in, week out, eventually there will be issues. Yeah, that was a a great explanation there. Another one we've got is, should tyrosine be supplemented, if added, what amount and what ingredient, will additional tyrosine affect the horse's colour?

I don't know the answer to that I'm afraid, but I can look into it for you. So I'm sorry off the top of my head, I don't have the answer. But I can, I will certainly have a little look for you and get back to you if that's OK.

Not a problem. So I think that is it for, the time being. Oh, I've got another question that's just popped through.

Just someone wants someone wants you to send the slide through on the ERS as the internet went off. Of course, that's fine. Yeah, perfect.

And I think, oh, we've got one more come through. Is it beneficial to, give a, forage or feed before you ride to help with energy levels or to make sure the horse isn't using its requirements, . When riding, I think they're meant to write.

I think before, from an energy point of view, probably no, because realistically, by the time the feed has, you know, come through the stomach and emptied and gone into the intestine, you're not gonna see the benefits of that, you know, just before, before you ride. However, feeding forage, for example, just prior to you riding is actually beneficial. So whether you, you know, whether Your horse has got access to hay, haulage, grass, right up until you get onto it.

Or you feed maybe a small bucket feed or something like an alfalfa or even maybe a sugar beet pulp. That certainly is beneficial with respect to gastric ulcers, because you have then fibre sitting within the stomach as a physical barrier, which can help to reduce sort of acid injury, basically in, in the stomach. Lovely, thank you.

So that pretty much brings us, to the end of the session now. So thank you again, Emma, for You're very informative session. Thank you again, Bailey's horse feed for sponsoring tonight's session as well, and we hope everyone enjoyed tonight's webinar.

Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you so much.