RE: [RC] Selenium Vit E and flax/BOSS - Susan E. Garlinghouse, D.V.M.
If your horse needs flax for its
anti-inflammatory benefits, then I tend to sort of throw ratios out the window
to some extent. And a lot of the time, I don’t feed BOSS at all,
just the flax. I’ll feed BOSS or some other source of fat if the
horse needs the extra calories, because flax alone as a fat source tends to
give some horses diarrhea (the oil has some fairly potent cathartic properties).
So if you just want a nice shiny coat and
some relief from fly allergies, feed a cup of flax seed alone twice a
day. If your horse also needs some calories, then add some BOSS. A
cup or two is fine, more if he needs more. Shoot for a 3:1 ratio if you
can, but honestly, I just don’t pay that much attention to it if I need
more of one or the other for some specific reason.
Grinding…I have a little electric
Braun coffee grinder from WalMart. It has a top that holds maybe a little
less than a cup of whole flax seed. Fill the cup ¾ full, put the
bottom of the unit on upside-down, because if you tip the top full of flax
seeds down onto it, you’ll have flax seeds everywhere. Push the
button and let it grind for 5-10 seconds. The seeds don’t have to
be ground to death, just disrupt the hard seed coat to some extent. Dump
it into a baggie and repeat ad infinitum.
No, horses don’t have the ability to
completely disrupt the seed coats to extract all of the oil, but they do an
okay job of it. I suspect soaking the seeds either prior to feeding, or “soaking”
in gastric juices in the stomach, suffices to soften the seed coat enough that
a reasonable amount of the oil is extracted and thus available for
digestion. Is it as maximally efficient as grinding the seeds, no.
Is it good enough if you just don’t have the time, patience or coffee
grinder, sure. It’s one of those ‘half a loaf is better than
none’ things.
Susan Garlinghouse, DVM, MS
From: Susan
Shook [mailto:ridesalot3@xxxxxxx] Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006
3:41 PM To: Ridecamp;
suendavid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: Selenium Vit E and
flax/BOSS
Susan,
I
have been told to feed up to 2 cups a day of flax. With your ratio, that
would mean feeding up to 6 cups a day of BOSS. Is that
excessive? I'm feeding the combo in hopes of improving their skin
condition so that gnats and other biting insects don't bother them so much this
summer. What would you consider to be the correct amount to feed for this
purpose? Also, would you clarify grinding? Do
horses have the ability to grind the seeds enough to get the maximum benefit
from the flax?
