yet mo' on molasses

[Susan Evans Garlinghouse <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

Just in case anyone was up half the night tossing and turning over the
sugar content in molasses, I dragged out my feed processing text book
and this is what it said:

Molasses is just a syrup by-product extracted from sugar cane, sugar
beets, citrus pulp, the starch derived from corns and other grains and
as a pentose-hexose syrup left over from processing wood to wood pulp in
the paper manufacturing process.

Although the water content can vary, for commercial uses, water content
is adjusted to right around 25%.  (It CAN also be dehydrated further for
special feed usages, but that's not the stuff usually used for horses).

The sugar contents of molasses are:

Cane molasses: ~ 46%
Sugar Beet molasses: ~ 48%
Citrus molasses  ~45%
starch molasses ~50%
wood molasses ~55%

So sugar beet molasses, therefore has a content that is approximately:

water 25%
sugars 48%
proteins 7%
ash (minerals) 9%
vitamins - trace
fats - .2%

This adds up to more or less 90%, but my numbers came from several
different sources, so differences in standard deviations probably
accounts for the other ten percent.

If molasses doesn't taste all that sweet, just remember that the human
taste is accustomed to much sweeter flavors than molasses, so it's going
to taste more bitter than it would to a horse.  Also, the relatively
high mineral content can give a bitter taste, AND not all sugars
necessarily taste sweet---for example, most people wouldn't call mashed
potatoes "sweet", but they are high in starch, which is just the plant's
storage form of glucose.  The body breaks those polysaccharides down in
digestions and shazam, simple sugars.  When people talk about a "complex
carbohydrate", all that is is a long string of sugars that the digestive
system has to break down before they can be absorbed as simple sugars. 
Ever chewed a mouthful of bread for a long time and noticed a slightly
sweet taste in your mouth developing?  That's because the enzymes in
human saliva start to break down the complex carbos in bread down to
simple sugars---as soon as the glucose molecule is freed from the carbo,
it tastes sweet in your mouth.

The same applies to corn (and other grains) being fed to horses---corn
is very high in starch, a soluble carbohydrate, which hits the
bloodstream as primarily glucose.  So, you do the math---if you feed a
kilogram of sweet feed that is 25% corn and 5% molasses, are any "mood
swings" going to be due to the 48% sugar content in the 50 grams of
molasses you're providing (call it 24 grams of sugar), or from the
approximately 50% sugar content of the 250 grams of corn you're feeding
(call it about 125 grames)?  Assuming I haven't messed up my numbers
(check me, Duncan), it sure seems to me that the body is getting ten
times as much glucose in the body directly from corn than it is from
molasses.  And that's aside from the additional sugars provided from any
other grain sources, including oats and barley (their carbo content is
lower, but still significant).  The body doesn't care where the simple
carbos come from, and there's no difference in how glucose from grain is
processed vs. glucose from molasses.  It's only the proportions in the
original feed that are different, and feeding a horse corn/oats/barley
is HARDLY removing sugars from his ration.  And a good thing, too.

Seeya,

Susan Garlinghouse