RC: Re: Re: carbs and heart rate

["hn.heather" <hn.heather@wanadoo.fr>]

> Trailrite@aol.com writes:
>
> <<  Lets
>  just say by the 5th day it could be possible that the horses consume
about
> 10
>  -12lbs of grain in a day.   Since we don't feed a lot of grain on a day
to
>  day feeding program, I think that is a large amount.  Do you?  What do
you
>  do?  How much grain.   >>
>
> Are you kidding?  My horses would either tie up or keel over on 10-12
pounds
> of grain a day.  Anybody out there who is just starting an endurance horse
> ... Please don't do this!!!  My horses don't get ANY grain at all.  They
are
> on a feed called Raemakers (pellets) and all the forage hay they want.  Be
> very careful with grain.  Not a necessity for endurance horses at all.
> (whew, I'm glad Tom is on vacation in Dubai -- or wherever -- otherwise
this
> could get nasty, eh?)
>
> Sylvia (don't flame me this is just my opinion and I HATE to watch a horse
> colic or tie up)

Hi everybody
I've come in on the middle of this one, can't remember where it all started.
Surely feeding on race-days, particularly multi-day rides, bears little
resemblance to feeding at home.
The quanitities quoted don't seem excessive for me for a horse in the latter
stages of a multi-day ride.  I've only done 1 multi-day (5 days) ride and I
know I had problems finding a way of getting the feed down my horse given
that he was on the trail most of the day with restricted time for eating
even at vets.  I fed him a small feed every 2 hrs from about an hour after
vetting thru till midnight, plus of course ad lib forage.
If the horse is going out on the trail every day I wouldn't have thought
tie-ing up was an issue and colic only fatigue was starting to interfere
with digestion.
It goes back to matching the feed to the work and the horse.
Heather