Ridecamp: [RC] How much grain to feed (was beet pulp??)

 In any event, the rule of thumb is don't 
> >feed
> >more than about four pounds of grain max per meal to any horse.  

> Interesting. My vet once said not to feed over 10 lbs at a time. (which I 
> never did). But the x-trainer fed her tb lesson horses 15 lbs 2x a day. And 
> our tb  and qh got 8-10 lb 2x a day grain plus 24 hr hay and the lactating 



Hmmm.  There might have been a breakdown in communication there somewhere 
along the way---I usually don't like a horse getting more than ten pounds of 
grain a day TOTAL, never mind per meal.  It's not to say that horses *don't* 
get fed a lot more than 4 lbs of grain at one meal, or that they'll drop dead 
if you do.  But here's the reason why limiting it to around four pounds per 
meal is ideal.  It's been well identified that four or five pounds is about 
all that the small intestinal enzymes can handle at once to effectively break 
down the starch in the grain.  If more than that at once is dumped into the 
small intestine, a large part of it will sluice undigested into the cecum.   
Anything dumped into the cecum, including undigested grain, is going to be 
treated as a fiber and fermented via the microbial population of bugs.  That's 
not a big deal in and of itself, except that fermentation is a less efficient 
means of digestion, and your horse isn't getting quite the same bang for your 
buck as he is if the grain had been fed in smaller meals that the small 
intestine could handle.  A lot of people argue for grain based on its cheaper 
price, but once you balance out the loss of digetive efficiency issues, it's 
not as cheap as you think.

An additional problem is that certain species of bugs in the cecum (and the 
rest of the large intestine) are particularly fond of the starch in grains, 
and increase very rapidly in numbers if a lot of starch/grain is provided.  A 
by-product of this is lactic acid, which potentially adversely upsets the rest 
of the microbial population.  Although the exact pathway hasn't been quite 
identified, the result can be endotoxemia, damage to the lining of the GI 
tract, laminitis, cecal acidosis, colic, GI ulceration and so on.  I'm not 
saying every horse that gets a big load of grain *IS* going to have problems, 
but horses that do have these problems very often have large grain meals in 
their recent history.

Okay, so you mentioned that limiting grain meals to four or five pounds would 
mean feeding your horse three or four times a day, not practical for most 
people.  There are some ways around that.  First of all, think about WHY 
you're feeding that much grain---presumably it's for the calories, but you can 
almost always get equivalent calories from substituting a large portion of the 
grain with a combination of beet pulp and fats.  I don't have a calculator 
right here in front of me (actually, I'm answering this on a plane somewhere 
between Boston and LAX), but beet pulp is digestible enough that the calorie 
content pound for pound is pretty close to grain, and it doesn't carry the 
same overload issues that grain does.  Add in some sort of a fat source and 
you're providing as many or more calories with a lot better overall nutrition.

I realize beet pulp in bulk is an issue, and in a large training stable, 
providing one of the processed beet pulp based feeds (Purina Complete 
Advantage or Race Ready, Manna Pro Sweet Rely, Buckeye Unbeetable, etc) is 
probably a good way to go.  The processed beet pulp feeds don't have to be 
soaked, still takes fat well, and also provides a good vitamin-mineral premix 
as well.

Even if you still want to feed a fair amount of grain per day once or twice a 
day, the nice thing about beet pulp is that it's a good way to "dilute" out 
all that grain at once.  When I have a lactating broodmare that I want eating 
24/7, I plunk a big fat soaked beet pulp mash with added grain and fats---the 
soaked beet pulp slows down her intake of grain enough that the starch is just 
getting dribbled continually into the small intestine.  Slow enough that the 
feed efficiency stays as high as possible, but she's still getting a lot of 
grain over a 24 hour period.  That, plus some added fats, and you can get *A 
LOT* of calories into a horse SAFELY without having to feed twenty times a day.

Anyway, if I had a boarded horse in training, my strategy would be to fill the 
feed bunk with one of the beet pulp based processed feeds and let them munch 
on it all day long.  Same or better caloric intake, better nutrition in a 
whole slew of ways and no worries about too much grain overwhelming the 
system. :-)

Susan G


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