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Re: [RC] For those who feed......Susan E. Garlinghouse, D.V.M.Anotherquestion :-) - Laney HumphreyHi Chrystal,I'm not Susan Garlinghouse but, since you asked on a public forum, I'm taking that as an invitation to anyone to answer. Both your questions and Barbara's response indicate that the two of your truly love your horses and want to do the best for them, but, to me, you are both over concerned. I am not nutrition expert but I do have a life-time's experience with horses, 3000+ AERC miles most of which are with my best buddy who has 2000+ miles. In these years, I've observed that a lot of us, as the ride season begins and we have high hopes for the coming year, tend to get a little excited. Dennis Farnham and Bruce Weary are currently talking about the few riders at any race who are really competitive. IMHO, those and maybe a few others are the only ones who need to worry about fine tuning their horses' diets. The rest of us aren't really doing anything more than what cowboys do on an average day: long trot out to where the cattle are, gather them & do whatever else needs to be done, then long trot maybe 20 or more miles home. In other words, a horse doing what for it is really only moderate work, needs nothing more than an adequate amount of good forage. I've know quite a few successful (i.e., finish the rides they're entered in) endurance horses who never got anything but hay and they kept their weight just fine and got great scores on their vet cards. For those of us who want to show our love to our best buddies via food (it's the mother thing I do think), a good vit/min supplement can't hurt. At the AERC convention a few years ago, Susan Garlinghouse's talk on supplements was titled, "Keep it Simple" - good advice, I think. As for flax seed, oil, rice bran, wheat bran, even beet pulp and all the other things we can think up to add to our horse's food, my philosophy has always been to identify a need & then find what "supplement" will meet that need. As I condition my horse, I watch his shape closely. I can tell when he is either dropping or adding weight. If I see either I adjust the quantity of what he gets. I'm wondering if your idea of increasing the amount of feed just before a ride is based on the "carbo loading" theory for human marathon runners. I'm not a runner so I'm not up on whether it works in people. In horses, that falls into the category of something only riders hoping to top ten should worry about. On the other hand, after I bring my buddy home from a ride, I do feed him generously for a few days because I know he needs to replenish his stores, but again, I watch him closely, and even after a 5 day multi-day don't feed extra for more than maybe a week. I hope this helps! Laney Chrystal@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
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