>
> I know people who do the "Sunday Night Smorgasboard" for their horses,
> beet pulp, bran, apples, carrots, crimped oats, molasses, corn oil and
> boiling water to make the "mash". Wouldn't this be considered a drastic
> leap in food type and amount for one night per week if the horse is used
> to just crimped oats during the week? Not that I would do this to my
> horses, but can anyone comment on this practice?
>
> Bambi
Yes, it would. It's perfectly OK to lay out a smorgasbord on Sat night,
but it would be a much better management practice to do so if you ALSO
fed a small amount of the same foods during the week. The reason for
this is because there are different bugs in the gut that do better at
digesting one type of fiber over another---one species may work best on
(this is just an example) bran, another on alfalfa. You get the idea.
So say a particular type of bug that likes bran best is sitting around
in the gut waiting for some bran to show up, but it doesn't because it's
not time for the Saturday Night Smorgy. The bug gets hungry and dies
out partially or totally because there's not enough bran in the
neighborhood on a regular basis to keep that particular bug population
at an optimum level.
Now Saturday Night comes along and a big mess of bran shows up in the
gut, but now there aren't enough bugs around that are really efficient
at digesting bran. So the bran sits and ferments and potentially causes
an upset tummy. If the owner had fed just a small amount of each feed
stuff (or at least the ones that are fed in any appreciable amounts--you
don't have to continually feed apples on a daily basis if he's only
getting one or two in the Smogasbord), then the bug population designed
to best digest that feedstuff would have been maintained and in place
for when Saturday Night rolls around. Not only do you avoid upset tummy
problems, but you've also increased the digestibility of the
Smorgasbord, so that your horse will get as much benefit as possible out
of the food, which is why you're feeding it in the first place.
I realize this is an over-simplified explanation, but this is just one
of those cases where you don't need to be able to reel off twenty
species of bacteria when just knowing the basic logic behind it will do
ya.
Good luck!
Susan Evans