Molasses

["Lysane Cree" <cree_l@LSA.Lan.McGill.CA>]

I don't think adding molasses would increase the nutritional value of 
what you are feeding your horse to any significant degree, but it 
seems that for some horses the added sugar is not good, i.e. the 
good old "sugar rush" - the sudden peak and then drop in blood 
glucose. I feed Omolene to my horses which is a balanced feed 
with a mixture of oats, corn, vitamins and minerals and the whole 
thing is coated with molasses. The horses love it, but their main 
food is hay and they are not getting large quantities of Omolene. If I 
need to increase their feed, I will increase first with more hay and 
then with something separate, which could be additional oats or 
beet pulp, rather than increase in Omolene which would give them 
even more sugar.
I know that molasses is often said to be high in iron and so eating 
molasses should be a good thing for us humans (if we leave out the 
high sugar content), but I don't know if the iron content would have 
any significant effect on our horses since molasses is usually only 
provided in small quantities. Maybe other people will have more 
insight into this.
Lysane and Buck