Re: Beetpulp

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

Hi Cathy,

Your feed store person needs to do a little more reading---she got sort
of half the picture, but not all of it, and I think she misunderstood
quite a bit (no flames intended).  Some of the moisture in the beet pulp
will be absorbed in the stomach, but not all of it by any means, it's
still very sloppy when it leaves the stomach and enters the small
intestine.  This is a natural part of digestion---if the water wasn't
already in the beet pulp, it would have been added by the horse in the
form of saliva and gastric juices.

I'll skip the digestion that goes on in the small intestine and cecum
and just get to the large intestine part.  There are two phases of fluid
movement that occur in the large intestine, the secretory and the
absorptive phases.  In the secretory phase, fluid is secreted from the
extracellular fluid (the water portion of blood, essentially) and into
the inside of the intestine.  This IS a significant amount of fluid, and
will occur with any feed, not just beet pulp.  It's just a pretty much
natural part of digestion.  This secretory phase goes on for several
hours---I just wrote a paper on this a month or two ago, so I have the
research articles and exact numbers piled around here somewhere, but you
get the idea.  After the secretory phase comes the absorptive phase,
when most of the water is absorbed back through the intestine wall and
back into the system.  If for some reason the gut is moving slowly, more
water gets absorbed and you're more prone to an impaction.  If the gut
is moving really fast, less water is absorbed and you get diarrhea.

What the feed store lady didn't tell you was that this
secretion/absorption phase occurs with any feed, not just beet pulp. 
Granted, for an endurance horse, it would be better to try and avoid
large fluid shifts like this.  Will not feeding beet pulp avoid this? 
Nope.  Feeding small, frequent meals will---and there is a TON of
research to back this up.  This is the exact reason why I personally
prefer to feed endurance horses a small handful or two of grain, beet
pulp or whatever every half hour to hour during a race rather than
feeding a couple pounds of grain just at vet checks.  This is also why I
highly recommend feeding free-choice hay rather than big, concentrated
meals twice a day.  It's not the type of feed that causes these fluid
shifts, it's the relative amount and frequency of feeding.

So, I still like beet pulp, for all the reasons I've gone over before ad
nauseum.  By all means you should come to your own conclusions, but
unless te feed store lady can cite some peer-reviewed research that
totally refutes everything that's been done before, well, I strongly
disagree with her. (And again, no flames, I just don't agree).

Let me know if this doesn't clear up your concerns, or if anybody cares
about the exact research citations that covered this subject.  I also
posted something maybe a month ago under the title fluid shifts or
something like that that explains all this fluid shift stuff in more
detail.

Hope this helps.

Susan Garlinghouse, MS

Catherine Foster wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I just went to my local feed store and had an interesting conversation with
> a feed store employee there.  Anyway she said that beet pulp is not a good
> source of feed.  She said that even though it goes down wet;  the stomach
> dries it out and then when it reaches the intestines, the beet pulp draws
> liquid from the intestine walls to digest.  There in fact drawing more body
> fluids rather than adding to, maybe all feed does this I don't know.  I have
> always used beet pulp in my feed to add moisture to the gut to aid in
> digestion.  And during the longer holds at the vet check I would feed my
> horse sloppy beet pulp and hay with electrolytes, but it sounds as though
> this is a no no.  Has anyone ever heard of this beet pulp revelation?  She
> said that she has been doing research into this fact and has now stopped
> feeding beet pulp.
> 
> What do you think?  I am not sure if I am prepared to stop feeding it but I
> am hoping that someone can shed some light on this?  Or has heard of this or
> can just say she has misinterpreted the information that she has been
> reading.
> 
> Thanks for any enlightening you can pass on.
> Cathy and Mo (Oh Mom, please don't stop the sloppy beet pulp!)