Ridecamp: Re: [RC] sweet feed & excited/nervous horses-Susan G?

>Kim Huck khuck@xxxxxxxx
>In another post, someone had mentioned taking their >horse off sweet feed
in order to calm the horse down.  >I've heard that so much over time.  I was
just wondering >(Susan G. or anyone else who might know), if there is >any
scientific data or research that has been done that >proves that sweet feed
really can affect a horse and >make him more hyper or nervous?

There was a study done a few years ago, where they fed a group of Arabians
several different diets, including one where the horses got about 4-5 pounds
of straight corn.  They were then ridden, had blood rawn and analyzed for a
few different things that they hoped would indicate excitement, etc.
Epinephrine (adrenalin) and so on.  They didn't find any differences based
on the grain diets, BUT---catecholamines like epinephrine are notoriously
hard to measure, because such tiny amounts are released.  So they just may
not have been able to accurately measure very small differences in a very
powerful substance.  The study was done by a friend of mine, but I've always
been more than a bit skeptical of the conclusions drawn.

KER has been working with a theory that some horses are insulin-resistant,
which would mean that high glucose after a grain meal would remain in the
bloodstream fueling high energy rather than getting neatly tucked away into
muscle and liver cells.  I think it makes a lot of sense, and is probably
true in some form or another, but it'll take awhile for the exact details to
get figured out.

Susan G



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