RE: [RC] alternative to Platinum Performance - Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVM
>I don't feed any sweet feeds, except for the sugar
that is in bp. Could it possibly be that between the bp and the Platinum he is
getting too many carbs >for him?....
One thing I learned a long time ago was, never say ‘never’ in
regards to horses or God forbid, horse nutrition, because as soon as you do,
it’s guaranteed that the very next day, a horse will win the world championship
endurance square dance and pie-eating contest on nothing other than beer and
taco chips. The best we can hope for is to read the literature in
the peer-reviewed journals, make some guesses, cast the bones of a black rooster
at midnight during a full moon and hope the horse in question doesn’t realize
you’re talking about him (lest he do the opposite just to make you look silly).
Having said all that, some horses seem to do just fine with beet
pulp---others turn into whack jobs. Apparently the same is true for
Platinum Performance, at least in your case. If you’ve kept everything
the same, and the horse only gets his brains back if you remove the PP---then I
guess it was something in the PP that did the trick. Go figure.
There is a pretty wide variety in the residual simple carbs in
beet pulp, added molasses or not. The average tends to stay reasonably
low, but I’ve seen samples that are sky-high as well. One of my horses
doesn’t do well with soluble carbs in her ration, so for her, I remove as much
as possible. For the gelding that stays steady as a steam engine no
matter what you feed him, I don’t bother or even pay much attention. And
I have yet another that gets dumb if he gets a lot of flax seed. Flax
seed usually doesn’t make horses stupid, but it does for him, so I guess he
didn’t read the same studies I did, or is just trying to be difficult.
Platinum Performance has a lot of flax seed in it, so maybe that’s what your
boy is also reacting to. High alfalfa can also make some horses goofy
IME.
So my suggestion is to do what it sounds like you’re already
doing---don’t change anything in your routine except for the supplement.
If he loses/regains his brains based on that, then there’s your answer.
If he’s still a knucklehead, then try omitting one of the other commodities in
the ration and see what that does. If you’re thinking carbs in the beet
pulp is a potential problem, then soak it in huge amounts of water, drain it
off, rinse it again and see if he does better with that after most of the
soluble carbs have been removed.
