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[RC] feeding flax seed - Susan GarlinghouseSue, know you adressed this once, but doesn't whole flax have to be ground? Reason I ask; friends just bought 25 lbs of Flax seed at feed store (about $8) to help with coat and shine... Karen The short answer: IMO, no. <g> The long answer as to why not: there are two arguments as to why flax seed needs to be ground or cooked before being fed, so lemme take them one at a time... Argument One, because flax seed contains a cyanogenic glycoside which is toxic and has to be driven off either through exposure to air or cooking. That's true that flax does contain a cyanogenic glycoside...however, the only reports of flax (actually, linseed meal) ever causing toxicity in livestock were in cattle fed unprocessed linseed meal exclusively in large amounts. Part of the equation in causing toxicity is that the glycosides have to be broken down to their toxic components by enzymes (glycosideases) in the gut. Due to their ruminant physiology, ruminants have alot of the enzyme in their GI system, but horses do not---not enough to cause the slightest toxicity problems unless fed almost exclusively, which is unlikely. A few cups a day of flax seed is quite safe for any equine, and the only "hazard" associated with it is because the seeds are small and fairly light and so fairly easily snorted up the wrong way and potentially into the lungs. So...just feed it mixed with something else, like tossed into the mash. BTW, since I'm no botanist, I had a nice discussion about this with Tony Knight at CSU about this and he was the one that told me all of the above. Dr. Knight is a boarded veterinary internist, but is also a botanist and co-authors the vast majority of texts you'll see on plant poisonings in livestock. So I figured he's a pretty decent source of information on the topic. :-) Another reason I disagree with cooking flax (I know you only asked about grinding, but thought I'd kill two birds here) has to do with why we even feed flax seed, primarily for the omega-3 fatty acid content. Those fatty acids are very volatile and rendered nonfunctional (in other words, just a fat source no different from any other heat processed source) once they've been cooked. So you've lost the benefit you were after in the first place. At that point, they're still an okay protein source and are a nice Warm N' Fuzzy thing to do for your horse, but as an EFA source---nope. The second argument in support of grinding is that horses can't digest the hard seed coating unless it's been disrupted by grinding it. The primary problem I have with that is similar to the above discussion---those fatty acids are pretty volatile and start to degrade/oxidize to one extent or another as soon as it's exposed to air. So fast that they're useless in a flash, nah, unlikely. But I do question how much of the original value is left in a product where the flax seed has been commercially ground, exposed to the normal heat of processing, and then packed into plastic bags an unknown amount of time later. If the ground flax is also shipped and stored in hot trucks or warehouses before it's finally purchased, then more value is lost. How much, I honestly don't know. I just know that the components for decomposition are present. So *can* horses disrupt the seed coat enough by themselves to extract the fatty acids in their orignial form? I can't quantify it, and to my knowledge clinical data doesn't exist. I just gave it a try on my own little herd of six, who are fed the same ration as another six equids (horses and mules) on the place. My guys snarfed the stuff up without grinding or cooking and even the 38 year old mule's coat really bloomed. They had thicker, softer, shinier coats all fall and winter, better hoof quality, they were the first to start shedding out this spring and all of them have really nice coats right now, noticeably better than the other guys who didn't get flax. Sure, it's a question whether they extracted all the nutrients from the flax and I don't know what the response would have been had I supplemented them with pre-processed flax. I just know that I got a good response from the whole flax, I know I'm a pretty good objective observer and that's good enough for me. :-) So, LOTS more than you really wanted to know, huh? Susan G =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net. Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp Ride Long and Ride Safe!! =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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