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RE: [RC] Rice bran vs ground flax seed - Susan E. Garlinghouse, D.V.M.

It depends on how much rice bran you needed to feed to maintain weight.  Flax seed is a nifty source of calories and fatty acids, but the oil can also be a pretty powerful cathartic.  Depending on their individuality, some horses will start getting a little loose behind with no more than a half cup or so, other horses tolerate several pounds of it a day.  My suggestion would be to start out with a few tablespoons once or twice a day and gradually increase to maybe a cup or so in the morning and another at night.  More if you like, there’s no down side to it in reasonable amounts as long as the horses don’t develop diarrhea.

 

If you want to substitute the flax for rice bran, very roughly, about one generous cup of ground flax will replace the fat in two scant cups of rice bran.  My recommendation would be to replace *part* of the rice bran with the flax seed, and mix both of them into a nice, sloppy mash of beet pulp.

 

My advice is to keep rice bran (even those balanced with calcium) to two pounds of less per day per horse.

 

Susan Garlinghouse, DVM, MS

 


From: ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Sherman
Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005 9:03 PM
To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [RC] Rice bran vs ground flax seed

 

Since rice bran has the potential to cause a problem with the calcium/phosphorous ratio, would it be reasonable to replace it with ground flax seed. I feed the rice bran to help keep weight on one of my horses and have recently added the flax seed due to some skin itchiness on a couple of other horses, so I decided to give it to all of them. It made me start wondering about the possibility of just using flax seed. Any ideas on this?

Kathy


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[RC] Rice bran vs ground flax seed, Sherman