Deciphering Complicated Horse Feed Tags
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By Doreen Shumpert with Brady Karren
Horse owners can walk into any feed store and face a myriad of nutritional choices. Choosing the right one depends on many factors, including the age of the horse, its work load, any metabolic issues, and whether it’s a breeding animal—like a pregnant mare. Deciding what to feed your horse for optimum nutrition takes a concerted effort on the part of the owner and veterinarian. Often, the advice of a good nutritionist can be helpful as well.
Even after determining a horse’s needs, choosing the best feed based solely on the feed tag can be a daunting task, without help. Brady Karren, an equine nutritionist and consultant for Arenus helps decipher, in very simple layman’s terms, some of the ingredients horse owners are most likely to find on a feed tag and explains why they are included. Karren chose a pelleted “complete feed” to use for this illustration. For more details on different feed ingredients and their functions, he suggests accessing the National Research Council’s database at http://nrc88.nas.edu/nrh/ to help determine a horse’s specific nutritional needs, based on various factors. Also, Dr. Juliet Getty of Getty Equine Nutrition will be publishing a book early 2015 titled, “Deciphering Ingredient Lists and Analysis Reports” that may be a useful tool as well.
To begin, Karren describes common feed ingredients and the roles they play in equine nutrition.
Guaranteed Analysis
Crude Protein: Simply stated, proteins are essential for the growth and maintenance of many components of the horse, including muscle, hair, hooves, and more. The crude protein needed is based somewhat on what forage you feed and the horse’s stage of life. If you feed grass hay to a performance or growing horse, I like about 14% protein on the feed tag. For lower protein forage—I want higher protein feed/concentrate. If you feed alfalfa, which is higher protein, you may need less protein in the feed—10-12% is sufficient. Proteins are broken down into amino acids in the horse, which recombine to make more proteins. So, the most important thing to consider about protein is lysine.
Lysine: Lysine is the most important amino acid for a horse, because it is the first limiting amino acid. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. What that means is without lysine, growth and virtually every other process stops. You can fatten a horse with other amino acids, but you may not get the bone growth and muscle growth. When we say we want a high-quality protein feed, we are really talking about the lysine component. For a growing horse, I like a minimum of .75%; again, if feeding alfalfa, you may only need .6%. Nutritional needs really break down to life stage and type of forage. In considering pasture grass, it depends on what kind. Was it fertilized? Grass may be 10% protein, but we need to look at what kind of protein…does it contain mostly nitrogen, lysine, methionine, or threonine (amino acids). In a growing horse, I really prefer to have at least .8% lysine, as well as for mares in the third trimester because that’s when the foal inside is growing so much. It’s important to get high quality feed to that mare; as the foal grows, the mare can’t consume enough hay because there’s just not enough room, so we need to increase that concentrate. Alfalfa is high in lysine. Soybean meal is high in lysine, so a lot of feeds will have soybean meal as part of that protein package.
Methionine/Threonine: Both are also amino acids, which are very important for growth. There is debate on which is the second limiting amino acid. Every function of the body depends on amino acids, as they are the building blocks. Methionine is an ingredient in most hoof products.
Biotin: Biotin is a B vitamin that’s utilized for hoof health. If we are depending on biotin for hoof health, I would suggest 25 mg/day (with a feed tag that lists 3.5 mg/lb). So, if we feed about 10 pounds of this concentrate per day, then we should have enough biotin to do some good. If we feed less than 25 mg/day, it may still be helpful, but I really wouldn’t look to the feed as a main biotin source. You will see biotin and methionine in most hoof products. Biotin is actually made in the hindgut of the horse with all of the other B vitamins. If we fix the hindgut, the horse is able to produce its own biotin, which is more beneficial than feeding it. This is why I like a product called Assure Hoof; it works really well because it addresses the hindgut allowing the horse to manufacture its own biotin. Some efficacy depends on where a product is absorbed as well. A lot of absorption of minerals and vitamins takes place in the small intestine; that’s where a horse is more like a human than a cow, for example.
Crude Fat/Crude Fiber: If you look at the fat and fiber in the feed, there’s a relationship. They give you an idea of the amount of starches and carbohydrates in the feed. There are basically two sources of energy for horses, starches/sugars and carbohydrates/fats. Amino acids can be turned into energy, but that’s an inefficient use of them. We really look for fats or carbohydrates to be our energy sources. A number of studies show that fat is a much more effective energy source, a cooler burning fuel than carbohydrates, and there is 2.5 times the amount of energy in one gram of fat than there is in one gram of starch/sugar. With fats, you don’t have the glucose insulin spikes you get with starches; that’s what makes our horses ‘hot.’ So, the starches/sugars are not usually the types of energy we want. If a feed contains a higher fat content (over 3% or 4 %), then we also want to see a higher fiber content. If we see a lower fat/lower fiber content, then we could guess it is probably a higher starch and higher carbohydrate feed. I think 7% to 8% fat is great for the average horse; again it depends on the life stage of the horse. I don’t want to see more than 20% of the diet as fat, because too much fat causes loose stool and other issues. Fiber is also an energy source, helps keep the gut full, soaks up water, and acts as lubricant/digestion aid.
Calcium/Phosphorus: Both are minerals that play a huge role in bone development, along with other functions in the body. I look for the calcium to phosphorus ratio in a feed to be about a 2.5 to 1%.
Salt: Salt is an electrolyte that attracts and retains water, and we want to make sure there’s enough salt in the horse’s system, especially during the summer months when they sweat a lot or in hot climates. The key is, especially with a growing horse, we want a balance of vitamins and minerals—not too much of one or too little of another or we can cause major developmental issues. In other words, don’t supplement with just one mineral; that can cause more problems than it helps. I recommend a complete vitamin/mineral package; if you feed a complete feed, for a normal size horse, as long as they receive the recommended amount of feed per day—usually the vitamin and mineral needs are met.
Zinc/Manganese/Copper: All three of these are major minerals that play important roles in horse health. Zinc helps with bone, soft tissue, and enzymatic function. Manganese also helps with bone and cartilage; a deficiency of Manganese can greatly affect the development of a growing horse. Copper also plays a major role in bone, soft tissue, and enzymatic functions; without copper, soft tissue can’t repair itself properly.
Selenium: Selenium is a very important mineral; the line between too much and not enough is very, very thin. I suggest being careful here concerning toxicity. A horse owner shouldn’t have to worry about amounts in packaged feed, unless they live in a selenium-rich environment or it’s a drought year and the plants are concentrating it. Just be careful and be aware. Otherwise, selenium has an important role as a central mineral in an enzyme that’s a free radical scavenger. A free radical is oxygen with an unpaired number of electrons, so it’s out there trying to fill that other spot by hooking onto cell walls causing cell death and other problems. Selenium and Vitamin E are often utilized in concert as free radical scavengers to control free radicals.
Vitamin E/Vitamin D/Vitamin A: Vitamin E is another free radical scavenger and antioxidant. It also plays a role in reproduction, immune response, and nerve and muscle function. Vitamin D is obtained from the sun, but horses kept in stalls may not get adequate Vitamin D. Vitamin D is essential for proper function of bones, joints, and muscles. Vitamin A is essential to the health of a horse’s night vision.
Thiamin (B1)/Riboflavin (B2): Both of these are B vitamins. Generally speaking, B vitamins help convert nutrients to tissues and metabolize fats, carbohydrates, and proteins. Riboflavin is also important for energy and growth.
The Ingredients List
Ingredients list: After the “guaranteed analysis” you will likely find an “ingredients list.” Simply stated, the ingredients list is a specific breakdown of what elements make up the guaranteed analysis. It’s not a list of more substances in the feed. If I browse through this list, I like to see some specific things, such as:
Ground Flaxseed: This is a fat source. Flaxseed provides short chain Omega 3 fatty acids, which help with haircoat, heart, and eyesight, but will not provide anti-inflammatory properties; long chain Omega 3s (DHA/EPA), from fish oil, provide that. Often, consumers think they all do the same thing.
Plain Dried Beet Pulp: This is a great fermentable fiber that provides carbohydrates in slow-release form. I like it as part of a feed, but not fed alone and unprocessed, due to the choking danger.
Soybean Oil: This is a good fat source; let me say that I’m personally not a fan of feeding corn to horses. Corn is high in Omega 6 fatty acids, and is difficult to break down in hindgut, which often causes issues. There’s a place for corn, but I think 90% of horses don’t need it.
Oxides and Sulfates: These are types of salts.
Proteinates: These are chelated minerals. Some may disagree, but I firmly believe that chelated minerals are far superior to salt-bound minerals. A chelated mineral is bound to an amino acid, not to salt. When chelated minerals hit the pH of the stomach, they stay bound, meaning they don’t get picked up by something else and ushered through the system without the chance to be effective. Chelated minerals stay bound and make it to the small intestine where they are absorbed and used. The Assure System products that I really like actually use double-chelated minerals, meaning they are bound to two amino acids for even more effectiveness.
Yeast Culture (Saccharomyces Cerevisiae): The thing I look at here is that the analysis for this feed doesn’t say how many CFUs (colony forming units) it contains; so I know these aren’t live cells. Although not live, they can still be helpful and act as prebiotic source for live cells.
Other Tips
Minimum and Maximum amounts: On many feed tags, consumers will see amounts listed as “minimum” and “maximum.” Just like it sounds, which means the listed amounts provide a range of the least and greatest amount that will be found of that particular ingredient.
Pelleted feed versus “cob” feed: I like pelleted feed. I don’t like feeding horses “cob mix” or cereal grains. If you do, make sure it is processed. I don’t feed whole oats either; I want processed/steamed/flaked, so the bugs can get to it and work on it in the gut. In a pelleted feed, each pellet should have a good, consistent combination of ingredients in it; cob or mix will yield a different mix with each scoop. Pellets give much better uniformity of feed, in my opinion.
Reading the feed tags will help your horse to better health and physical well-being.
