Podcast #75
Ever looked at the feeding recommendations on a bag of horse feed or a bucket of supplements and wondered who decides how much you should feed? And do you really need to follow them?
In this episode of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, Dr Nerida takes you behind the scenes of horse feed and supplement formulation, drawing on more than 25 years of experience developing products and writing the feeding recommendations that appear on their labels.
You will learn why some feeds recommend feeding large amounts while others recommend very little, how those feeding rates are calculated, and why feeding less than the recommended amount could leave your horse short of essential vitamins and minerals.
We also explore what happens when you combine fortified feeds with vitamin and mineral supplements, why a 30 g supplement isn't necessarily better or worse than a 150 g supplement, and why feeding half the recommended dose of a gut health or hoof supplement might mean you're wasting your money.
Plus, what should you do if your horse gets fat on the recommended feeding rate, or needs more feed than the manufacturer suggests?
And Nerida mentions several times that the best way to know exactly what your horse is getting from its diet, is to run an diet analysis thorugh MyHappy.Horse, the equine nutrition app designed to help you feed with confidence and accuracy!
You can check out MyHappy.Horse here 🩵
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/myhappy-horse/id6633422324
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[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:14:56
G'day, g'day, and welcome to the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast. I'm Dr Nerida, born horse lover, PhD equine nutritionist, and someone who has straddled the worlds of working for feed and supplement companies as well as horse owners.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:15:12
throughout my entire career. So I have this really cool perspective on horse nutrition, because I see it from very much behind the scenes with the feed and supplement companies, where all our feed and supplement products are coming from, and I also see it from a horse owner's perspective, because I work very much.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:15:31
on that side of the industry as well. So today, what I want to talk about is feeding rates.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:15:38
We all see them every time we go to buy a feed product or a supplement product. It is the tables on the back of a feed bag or the tables on the side of a feed supplement bucket that tell you how much of that product you should feed each day to your horse according to the horse's body weight and its activity. So whether it's a horse that.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:16:00
is not in work at the moment, or a horse that is in all varying levels of work, or different stages of pregnancy and lactation. So, the directions that a feed or supplement company give you, telling you how they want you to use.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:16:15
their product. Now, my…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:16:19
view of… this is a very honest look at how I used to see these things. So, before I understood where these feeding rate tables came from, and before I ever created a feeding rate table for one of my clients, I literally used to look at those feeding rate tables and go, oh yeah, well, they tell us to feed that much feed because they want us to buy.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:16:39
more feed. That… that was kind of how I felt about feeding rate tables. As a nutritionist now, I have a very different view, because I have created… I can't tell you how many feeding rate tables in my career. It would be a lot.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:16:54
And it's probably my least favourite job during the product development and formulation process, is…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:17:03
You know, we put… we put products together, but then we have to give…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:17:09
Recommendations on how that product should be fed to all different sorts of horses.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:17:13
And when you start to develop a feeding table for a specific product, it can get very complicated, because we have to take into account the horse, and we have to take into account its forage, and as we all know, depending on where we are in the world, and what season it is, and what the horse's housing situation is.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:17:33
Forage is so variable, it can vary from, you know, rocket fuel type lush green pastures to reasonably poor to average quality hay and the ground covered in snow and the hay may have been stored for more than 12 months, which changes its nutrient content reasonably dramatically from the perspective of.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:17:57
what a feed needs to actually supply to that horse. So, I don't… I don't like developing feeding rate tables. They sometimes feel really hard, and in fact, a few weeks ago, I was doing a big formulation job.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:18:11
creating a range of feeds. And then I was, you know, having to make sure that I had the feeding rate tables right. So I'm using my happy horse because that's my nutrition tool that I use to be able to check lots of diets and lots of different situations.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:18:29
And my process is that I'll put my new product in there as one of my custom feeds, and then I'll dream up all these scenarios. Or I might even use real horses, depending on on what I've got going on at the time. But I'll dream up all these different scenarios so that I can test different horses.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:18:45
at different stages of reproduction, or different work levels on different types of forages. And what I'm trying to see is, is this product that I've created, with the nutrient levels that I've put into it, actually meeting.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:19:01
horses' requirements when fed at the recommended feeding rate that I am supplying, um, across all of these different scenarios. So, it… it can get, um, very complicated, and it's… it's part of the challenge, I guess. I'd look at formulating.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:19:18
feeds and supplements is like this, um, giant Rubik's Cube. I can't… I've never done a Rubik's Cube. I don't know why I call it Rubik's Cube, because I can't actually do those, but I can usually work out nutrition, um, puzzles pretty well, but it is like a puzzle. It's like, how do.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:19:34
Get the nutrients into this feed to cover a vast majority of situations that it might be fed in, so that when it's fed at the recommended feeding rate, it will meet a vast majority of a horse's requirements.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:19:48
So, it does become a bit of a… you know, you have to increase this nutrient here, and maybe decrease that nutrient there, but not too much, because otherwise it becomes deficient over here. So, there's a lot that goes into developing these feeding rate tables.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:20:03
And, um, I don't, needless to say, look at them now as companies just trying to sell you more feeds, because I write them all the time, and have done over all of my career. And in fact, my very, very first consulting job with Pride's Easy Feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:20:20
back in 2003, I'm gonna say, so 23 years ago, I'd just finished my PhD, and was at that stage of my career where I'm realising that I knew an awful lot about starch digestion and hindgut fermentation and, you know, the areas of research.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:20:41
that my PhD focused on, and I knew very little about many other areas, well, every other area of nutrition, and I had a lot to learn. And so, Peter Pride had asked me to develop a product that is now Easy Fibre, so a lot of you in Australia will know that. It's now Lupin Holes and Loosen Leaf Meal. It wasn't back then.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:21:01
It was soybean holes, but that was a long time ago, and Peter had asked me to develop this product and then create feeding rates for it, and it's a little bit different because it's an energy-based product, and so I wasn't needing to, thank goodness, wasn't needing to balance the vitamins and minerals in it, but I had to figure out, well, how much do we tell people?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:21:25
to feed of this stuff, and it took me days to do that. And now, for a product like that, it would take me maybe an hour to figure out what a feeding rate table should look like. If that so it was, it was something that I learned over time, and, in fact, the very 1st time I really interacted with a feeding rate table.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:21:48
from a horse owner's perspective, and Sue, if you were listening to this, you will remember this really, um, clearly, is that my friend Sue was an endurance rider, and she had a little Arabian, his name was Chris, from memory.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:22:03
I hope I've had that right. I'm pretty sure it was, but with an X. And, um, anyway, Chris was one of those classic good doers. He was a chunky, solid little thing. He was a crabbit Arabian. This is really dredging, um, my memory here, but…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:22:18
he was in endurance training, and I remember he was feeding a feed, and it was an extruded feed, so I was really happy with the fact that it was an extruded feed, because I knew that the grain in it would be very digestible, and so, you know, we weren't going to be.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:22:33
impacting his hindgut, but I was just starting to get this awareness as a baby nutritionist of feeding rate tables, and when I looked at Sue's diet, and I think it was the very first time, maybe, that I'd used nutrition software.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:22:50
Uh, and it wasn't… I hadn't built nutrition software by this stage, so it wasn't… it wasn't one of my software platforms, but I remember putting Chris's diet into this, um, nutrition software and going, oh, we're not meeting his vitamin and mineral requirements because we're not feeding to the recommended feeding rate.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:23:07
And so my recommendation to Sue was, you need to feed him more because you're not meeting his vitamin mineral requirements. Well, she followed my advice, bless her, and he got so fat, um, because he didn't need the amount of feed that that.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:23:24
um, product needed to be fed at to meet vitamin and mineral requirements, and I remember at that point in my career going, ah, there's a lot more to this than just following recommended feeding rates, because for a lot of you, I know your experience is.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:23:41
when I look at the recommended feeding rate, recommended feeding rate for the product that I'm using, I know that if I fed my horse that much, it would be almost instantly the size of a small house, and be on its way to being obese. So, there's a… there's a lot in…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:23:59
interpreting feeding rates, and also in choosing products according to feeding rates when it comes to feeds. So, I want to talk you through all of that today, and hopefully, where I want to get you to by the end of this podcast is that you will look at a feeding rate and have an understanding of why that feeding rate is the way.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:24:20
That it is and also how to choose products based on their feeding rate or how to balance up diets properly according to the amount you are feeding and how that compares to what that horse is.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:24:35
Um, to what that product's actual feeding rate is.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:24:39
So it'll be a little bit of a journey.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:24:42
I hope that I can lead you through succinctly because this is, you know, 26 years of formulating feeds in my head and many, many, many, many different, feeding rate tables, and, and ways of arriving at them, too, that I'll try and condense into approximately 40 minutes for you. So, yeah, maybe strap yourselves in and hope, hope that we end up where we intend to end up by the end of the podcast.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:25:06
So I guess the… Hang on, David. I'm just gonna take my jacket off.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:25:11
Making myself hot.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:25:16
I guess the logical place to start is to just talk about feeding rates and why different products have different feeding rates. So, we've got feed and balance…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:25:28
balance of pellet products in one category. Um, I sort of put them together, and then we've got supplements. So, for the purposes of this conversation, I'm going to say a supplement is something that you would feed at 100 grams or 4 ounces per day, or less, somewhere around there, a couple of hundred grams a day, or less, and we'll put the balance of pellets in with the feeds.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:25:48
Because, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:25:50
they're more… they behave… for me, in my mind, with feeding rate tables, they behave much more like feeds than supplements, um, for the purposes of this conversation, anyway. So, when I'm asked to formulate a feed product.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:26:06
So, a feed company might say to me, Nerida, we want a feed that will be primarily fed to pregnant and lactating broodmares. So, you know, a class of horse that has got pretty high.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:26:20
nutrient requirements in late pregnancy and early lactation. And they might also come to me and say, we also want a feed for racing thoroughbreds, and we also want a feed for warm blood dressage horses, and we want a feed for.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:26:36
ponies that are prone to laminitis. So you can see across those, across those four different.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:26:45
um, types of horses, you already know that they have very different requirements for amount of feed per day. So, a laminitic pony, who is a very good doer, and probably already in very good condition, they're usually in too good condition.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:27:02
is a very different prospect to feeding a breed mare with a folate foot who's producing, you know, 3% of her body weight in milk per day, and has got massively high energy and protein requirements, all compared to, you know, a racing thoroughbred, also high energy requirements. And then your warm blood dressage horses are going to sit usually somewhere in the middle.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:27:24
Um, so they need some feed, more feed than a lemonitic pony who's maybe overweight a little bit, but a lot less feed than a lactating breed mare. So already I know, when I think about those four products that might need to be developed, that the feeding rate is going to be very different. So a lactating breed mare.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:27:43
In full lactation, on good quality pasture, might need, say, 3kg of feed per day, and if she's on, sort of, um, you know, drought conditions and poor quality hay, she might need upwards of 5kg of feed per day, which sounds like a huge amount, and it is a huge amount.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:27:58
Um, but, you know, to maintain milk production when your forage quality is very, very low, they do need a lot of feed. Um, and so I need to formulate.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:28:12
for that. And…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:28:13
On the other end of the spectrum with our laminitic pony, they might only need, let's say, half a kilogram or a pound of feed per day, essentially just as a carrier to get their vitamins and minerals into them. So we're looking at a balancer pellet.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:28:28
So, you can see at that, the, um, the laminitic, very low-dose feed is going to have a much higher concentration of vitamins and minerals in it, because it's designed to be fed in a very small amount, and so that small amount needs to deliver.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:28:45
a horse's entire vitamin and mineral requirement for the day, plus a little tiny bit of energy, plus a little bit of good quality protein. On the other end of the spectrum for our lactating brood mare.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:28:56
If I put too much vitamin and mineral per kilogram into that feed, if we were feeding that feed at 3 kilograms per day, her vitamin and mineral intake would be off the charts. It's way too high, the feed would be way too expensive, and we're actually creating a lot of work for her in trying to.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:29:12
dump and get rid of all of the nutrients that she doesn't actually need. So when you're formulating those feeds at the higher feeding rate, the vitamin and mineral concentration becomes much more dilute because you've got a greater quantity of feed that you're feeding per day to meet the vitamin and mineral requirements. So instead of having to jam all of the vitamins and minerals into half a kilogram.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:29:37
I've got the luxury of putting them across 3 to 5 kilograms of feed per day. So your feeding rate is actually a reflection of how concentrated a feed is, so how high.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:29:52
are the levels of vitamins and minerals, um, per kilogram in a feed. And if you ever get the opportunity to do it, go to a feed store, or you can do it, it's probably easy, just do it online. Um, and in fact, you could ask something like ChatGPT, say, hey, Chat, can you…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:30:09
um, line up the feeding rate tables for, um, you know, 4 different feeds from the same company that have got vastly different feeding rates for a 500kg horse in moderate work. Um, and it would be able to do that for you, but what you'll see.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:30:23
Is that the feeds that have got the higher feeding rates have got a lower concentration of nutrient.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:30:30
And the feeds that have got the lower feeding rates have got a much higher concentration of nutrient. So if you looked at copper, for example, a feed that is designed to be fed at, say, four kilograms per day might have a copper concentration somewhere between 30 and 50 parts per million versus a feed that is designed to be fed at, say, half a kilogram or one pound per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:30:54
might have a copper concentration that's up closer to 200 parts per million, or if you're in Australia, parts per million and milligrams per kilogram are exactly the same thing, so… but just as long as the units are the same, you can compare them, and you'll start to see.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:31:10
that there's this trend where the lower the feeding rate, the higher the nutrient level, the higher the feeding rate, typically, the lower the nutrient level. So, when we formulate products, that's… that's all of the, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:31:25
factors that we're taking into account from a feeding rate perspective. And we're also looking at what is the likely forage quality, which I mentioned a little bit already, so looking at, you know, lactating broodmare, and depending on whether she's on very lush.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:31:40
high-quality pasture or much lower-quality stored hay, that changes the forage base of her diet a lot, and then that… that means that she might need more or less of a certain feed. And this, typically, is where the ranges come in. So, if you look at a feeding rate table.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:31:59
It doesn't… usually, it doesn't just say feed 2kg per day. It'll usually have something for, let's say, a 500kg horse in moderate work. Um, it'll usually say something like 1 to 2kg per day, or 2.5 to 3.5kg per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:32:18
There's rarely just one feed amount.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:32:21
And that range is typically allowing someone like me as the formulating nutritionist to cover different forage scenarios. So the lower end of that feeding rate you would normally be looking at using when your forage quality is higher.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:32:38
And the higher end of the feeding rate, you would normally be looking at using when your forage quality is low. So if you've got, you know, drought affected pasture or reasonably low quality stored hay, then you would be feeding at the higher end of the spectrum. Or if you're in, you know, the dead of winter and it's freezing cold and snowing and your horse's energy requirements are higher because they're using a lot of energy to maintain body weight, then you might be feeding at the upper end of the.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:33:05
of that feed range, um, for your particular kind of horse. So, you've got a little bit of room to move, um, within the feeding rate for your horse, and there's also lots of room to move depending on.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:33:21
what your horse is doing. So, if your horse is not working, then you'll notice that there's a feeding rate for that activity or inactivity, and if your horse is in different levels of work, just using working horses as an example.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:33:37
you'll find that the feeding rate increases as workload increases. So you can move around on that feeding rate table, just depending on what your horse is doing. And I do actually teach people that if you've got a horse that is quite, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:33:52
reactive and can be very high in energy. You can move around on your feeding rate table day to day, so if your horse is not done any work on a particular day, then you can feed that, you know, the resting feeding rate amount, and then if your horse does a really intense workout, then you might increase the feed up to that feed amount.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:34:08
So you can you can use feeding rate tables quite.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:34:12
Dynamically, but when it comes back to what we're talking about with different feeds having different feeding rates, um, you use those feeding rates to help you select appropriate feeds, because if you can find a feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:34:28
that allows you to feed it at the actual recommended feeding rate, it means that you are going to be meeting your horse's vitamin and mineral requirements in most situations. And I say most situations because lots of things vary, so…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:34:41
say, for example, you are on dry brown pasture, or your hay has been stored for more than 6 to 12 months, so the vitamin A and vitamin E content drops down quite dramatically over that storage period, you might find that even when you feed a feed at a recommended feeding rate, something like vitamin E might still be low.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:35:00
So it is still really important to, um, check your horse's diet. And this is… this is the biggest reason behind why I built, initially, FeedXL and now My Happy Horse as nutrition, um, tools, because it's so… it's so…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:35:18
hard to know if you are actually meeting a horse's nutrient… daily nutrient requirements. And… and the… the other piece to it is, it's so nice to see when you're actually meeting a horse's nutrient requirements. I just find that… that… that seeing, going, okay, I am meeting my horse's.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:35:35
requirements for copper, zinc, selenium, iodine, all of the nutrients that are so important, and that we're relying on these feed products to bring into our horses' diets in many situations. It's so nice to actually know that you're meeting daily requirements using the products that you're using.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:35:55
But FeedingMate tables really can be your friend in selecting an appropriate feed. So, if you have a favourite feed company.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:36:04
You can go into a feed store and look at the ones that the feed store has available, or you can go onto that feed company's website.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:36:12
And have a look at all of their products, and what you can actually do is you can select a feed based on the feeds.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:36:21
feeding rate recommendations, the feeding rate tables, according to what you know your horse needs. So, I find that, as horse owners, we're pretty good at knowing roughly how much feed our horse needs. So, you know, if you've got the warm blood.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:36:37
dressage horse, and you know that your horse gets around two scoops, so, um, two dippers. When I say dipper, I'm usually talking about a two-liter standard dipper that we use in many parts of the world.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:36:52
If you know that your horse needs about 2 dippers of feed per day, um, when it's in work to maintain body weight on the forage that you have.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:37:04
um, then you want to be looking for a feed that is fed around 2 kilograms per day. So, you know, a feed that has got a recommended feeding rate of, say, one and a half.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:37:15
to two and a half kilograms per day is for the body weight and the workload that your horse is. That's probably pretty close to what your horse needs, versus a feed that might be.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:37:29
a quarter of a dipper per day as a balance of pellet, or one that might be four or five dippers per day. You know, you'd look at that four or five kilograms per day and go, oh, that is not the feed for my horse, because my horse would be morbidly obese within.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:37:46
3 weeks, um, if you fed that much. So, so you do have, and you can trust yourselves on this one, because I've seen it over and over and over again, um, with horse owners, that you do have a pretty good sense for how much feed your horse needs on top of their forage to maintain their weight.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:38:02
So use that to select appropriate feeds. Go through the feed company websites or the feed products that your local feed store has got, and find the feeds that have a recommended feeding rate around the amount of feed that your horse needs, because it means.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:38:19
When you feed that feed product to a horse, you're going to be really close to meeting your horse's daily nutrient requirements because you're feeding a feed product at the recommended amount. And hopefully there's been someone like me has done an awful lot of work around figuring out exactly what the nutrient level should be.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:38:39
for that type of horse in many varied forage situations.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:38:45
So that when you do feed it at the recommended feeding rate, it will do a really good job of meeting most, if not all, of your horse's daily nutrient requirements.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:38:55
So if you start looking at feeding rate tables from that perspective, from the perspective that they can help you select suitable feeds, so you also, of course, need to go and read the ingredient list to make sure that the ingredients that a feed contains are.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:39:13
what you want to be feeding your horse. Um, and you may not feed a complete feed, and we'll get on to talking about supplements, um, soon, but for anyone who does feed a… we call them complete feeds, so fortified feeds. I know in the US, complete feeds over there are completely.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:39:30
completely something different, um, complete on the… on the brain, but they're… in the US, um, they're usually feeds who are fed as the sole ration, uh, for a horse, and are fed at much, much higher feeding rates, but when I say complete feed, I mean fortified feed, so a feed that is fed alongside forage in the diet.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:39:51
So hopefully that covers…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:39:54
Complete feeds, fortified feeds, and helps you to understand why feeds have got such dramatically different feeding rates, and why some feeds have got very high feeding rates, and why some have got very low feeding rates, and helps you to understand.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:40:10
How to use that to your advantage to pick suitable feeds for your horses, because feed companies understand that there are all different types of horses and that some need a very, very small amount of feed and some need a much larger amount of feed to maintain their.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:40:25
their body condition. And so, typically, within a feed range, you'll find products that sort of span that very low to much higher feeding rates, and it's a matter of you finding the one that works best for your horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:40:40
So, for people who don't feed fortified feeds, and I know that there is a lot of us, and, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:40:49
People who have got a favourite fortified feed but you don't feed it at the recommended feeding rate, if you just feed a fraction of the recommended feeding rate, this is where vitamin and mineral supplements come in. And vitamin and mineral supplements, if you look on their label, will also have recommended feeding rates. So again, it'll say something like if you are 500 kilograms and in light work you should get.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:41:15
30 grams a day if you're 500 kilograms, and intense work, you should get 60 grams per day, or it might say, you know, for a lactating breed mare, it's this, but for a pregnant breed mare, it's that. There's different amounts that are recommended for different types of horses, and.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:41:31
All of the products will actually be…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:41:34
quite different. So, just depending on what the carrier is in a vitamin and mineral supplement, or if there is carrier in a vitamin and mineral supplement, or if they're, you know, bringing in some protein and amino acids as well.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:41:49
vitamin and mineral supplement feeding rates will all vary. So some are really concentrated and don't have any carrier in them, and you might find that they are fed at very, very low.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:42:05
feeding rates, uh, and so the, um, product that I'm using at the moment, which is a, um, Conkey's Cell Vital, it is a pelleted.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:42:16
Suplet and it doesn't have any carrier so most of my horses are on when it's combined with their other feed ingredients most of my horses are on 10 to 25 grams per day it's such a tiny amount of ingredient and I had someone say to me the other day it's hard to believe that such a small amount of something can bring in so much nutrient to a diet but it's because there is no other.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:42:40
carrier in there. It's just the minerals and the vitamins, and they're packaged up separately so that they don't interact with one another, but it's just those nutrients. There is no carrier, and so the feeding rate is very low.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:42:53
There's a lot of other products that I, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:42:57
have worked with and used over the years that have got, um, carries in them for various reasons. So sometimes we'll, uh, use something like loose and leaf meal to package the vitamin and mineral supplement up in, because it makes it palatable, and it looks nice, and the horses, um, like the smell of it, and it…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:43:15
It sticks together well if we're trying to make them into a pellet, or we might put it in a soybean meal base, or there might be some limestone and some sort of calcium phosphate in there because we're trying to bring some calcium and phosphorus in.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:43:31
to the supplement. So it just depends on…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:43:34
how we formulate the vitamin and mineral supplement.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:43:40
And what we use as a carrier, if we need a carrier for the product, and that then determines to a large degree what the feeding rate of different vitamin and mineral supplements are. So if you're looking at vitamin and mineral supplements and thinking, well, why is this one 15 grams a day and that one's 150 grams a day, like you have to feed ten times the amount.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:44:00
It will be the same as feeds. The concentration of the nutrients per kilogram in those products is going to be quite different. So, well, ten times different, you would hope, because one is fed at 15 grams, the other one at 150 grams a day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:44:16
Um, just using these as examples. But it's important, again, that we understand the feeding recommendations for supplements, and also that we follow the feeding recommendations if that's the only.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:44:31
ingredient we are using to bring vitamins and minerals into our horse's diet. Because, like with feeds, if you have a product that, let's say, the recommended feeding rate for your specific kind of horse, so let's take warm blood dressage horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:44:47
that is…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:44:49
getting some, let's say, lucerne chaff, and some lupins, because I love lupins so much, I have to put them into everything, and a little bit of beet, and a little bit of copper meal, and a little bit of soybean, and we need to bring in a vitamin and mineral component.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:45:07
The feeding rate for our type of horse at the work level that we have it in at the moment might be 100 grams per day. So if we feed that product at 100 grams per day, we've got a really good chance of that product actually meeting our horse's daily vitamin and mineral requirements, because that's.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:45:24
That's what it's designed to do.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:45:26
If we fed it at 50 grams a day, we're only going to be putting in half of the intended nutrients into that diet. And there's a good chance that you are not going to be meeting some and possibly many of your horse's daily nutrient requirements by under feeding.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:45:47
that supplement. So it's super important to be guided and to follow the recommended feeding rates. Um, it's even better to come put your diet into My Happy Horse, because then you will be able to see, well, does my horse actually need 100 grams a day?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:46:03
It may not need 100 grams a day, depending on what else you have got in the diet. Um, but at least if you… if you run that analysis on your diet, you can know that you can feed, say, at 80 grams a day instead of 100 grams a day, and you know that you're still meeting.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:46:19
nutrient requirements. So, if you…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:46:22
are not using some sort of diet analysis, please do follow the manufacturer's recommended feeding rates. If you are doing diet analysis and you know that you can reduce the amount from the recommended feeding amount, then do that.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:46:37
Because then you're not overfeeding any nutrients and you're saving a bit of money in not feeding more than you need to each day. But you can really only have the confidence to do that when you're analysing your horse's diet and you're taking into account your specific horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:46:55
and their forage, and their, you know, workload, and all of the things that we need to take into account when we're running a diet analysis, and then you can see, am I meeting nutrient requirements? And if you are at a lower amount than the recommended feeding rate, then happy days, because you.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:47:14
Um, can feed a little bit less, uh, and your bucket will last a little bit longer.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:47:27
So that's vitamin and mineral supplements. There's a whole lot of other supplements that are on the market. You may have noticed every time you go into your feed store or saddlery, and a lot of those are what we would classify more as nutraceutical supplements. So there's there's supplements that have a purpose outside of meeting basic vitamin and mineral requirements.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:47:48
So I'll use gut health supplements here because they are very common and lots of us have used them. So gut health supplements are designed to be fed at a recommended feeding rate, and you will see that recommended feeding rate on the back of the bucket or the bag that the product comes in.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:48:08
And the feeding rates for these types of products are different to a vitamin and mineral supplement feeding rate and they're different to a fortified feed feeding rate because the feeding rates for these types of products and I actually much prefer to create feeding rates for these types of products and for vitamin and mineral supplements because you don't have to quite take so much into account but.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:48:31
The feeding rates for these nutraceutical type products, like gut health supplements, are based on the amount you need to feed to get the desired effect that the supplement is supposed to create. So, when I formulated gut supplements.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:48:46
They're essentially a combination of ingredients that we hope will have a positive impact on a horse's gut health, and it's usually based on research that has been done on those products.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:49:01
And I will always be guided by, well, what amount did the research show you needed to have the positive effect? And then we put that amount, that daily amount into the supplement, but we might have.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:49:16
you know, 5, 6, 7 ingredients combined into the same product, so that when you feed it each day, you're getting the benefit of those multiple ingredients for your horse. But let's say for a gut health supplement that there's 2 amino acids, and and one needs to be fed at 5 grams per day, and one needs to be fed at 7 grams per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:49:40
Uh, to get any kind of…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:49:44
effect for the horse. So there's 12 grams of amino acid that needs to go into the horse's diet, so we add that up, 12 grams, that's our current feeding rate, and then there might be lots of gut health supplements. We've got calcified marine algae, and we might add that in at, say, 60 grams a day, so now we've got.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:50:02
60 grams of calcified marine algae, plus the 12 grams of amino acids, so we've got 72 grams. I'm doing all these maths in my head, not that it's hard, but it is… I don't even know what day it is today. Thursday, my computer says. Um, it is Thursday, and…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:50:19
I don't… I don't math well, um, live, so forgive me if I get this wrong, but let's make it easy for me and say there might be a mycotoxin binder, and that needs to go in at 8 grams per day, so we had 72 grams, and we'll add 8 grams on top, so now…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:50:34
that product is going to be fed at 80 grams per day. Completely made-up product. Um, but the feeding rates come from.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:50:45
What is the total amount of ingredient we need to give this horse per day when they're all included in the supplement at the amount that is likely to give or has the best chance of giving the horse a positive result?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:51:00
So, they're just kind of… it's just ingredients all added up, and that's how we get the feeding rate for those products. So, you need to feed those products at the recommended feeding rate, because if you don't, you're reducing the amount of all of those ingredients that your horse is getting, and if you reduce the amount below.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:51:20
the amount that was shown in research to have a positive effect.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:51:25
then you're not going to get the positive effect. And it's interesting, so a lot of ingredients that we use, there is a dose response, so if you use it below that dose, and sometimes even if you use it above that dose, you don't.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:51:41
get the desired effect. Um, so it is really, really important to feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:51:48
Supplements that are designed to have some sort of positive impact on your horse at the recommended feeding rate.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:51:55
Hoof supplements are a really good example, so the research, by and large, says that to get a positive effect in hoof health.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:52:02
Pardon me. To get a positive effect in hoof health, you feed, and this is for a 500 kilogram horse, you feed 20 milligrams of biotin per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:52:13
So, if a hoof supplement contains 20mg of biotin in every 50g dose, but then you feed that supplement at 25g for whatever reason, then you're only adding an additional 10mg of biotin, and you're much less likely to get that positive effect on.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:52:31
on hoof growth. So, it is really important to follow.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:52:37
Recommended feeding rates for supplements that are designed to have some kind of benefit outside just providing vitamin and mineral supplements.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:52:49
So, sorry, outside of just providing vitamins and minerals to your horse. So there's, there's another, so just, just to recap what I think we've talked about so far is that, um, feeds, the recommended feeding rates for fortified feeds are based very much on how much a horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:53:10
needs per day to meet vitamin and mineral requirements, and the amounts can vary a lot from a very small amount, like half a kilogram per day, to a much larger amount, like 5 kilograms per day, for a 500 kilogram horse. And you need to try and choose.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:53:25
products that fit around about the amount of feed your horse needs, so that when you feed it at the recommended feeding rate, you're meeting vitamin and mineral requirements.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:53:36
There is then vitamin and mineral supplements if you're not using fortified feeds.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:53:41
And the vitamin and mineral supplements also need to be fed at their recommended feeding rate, because that is the amount you need to feed to meet vitamin and mineral requirements. And then we've got the nutraceutical supplements that we just talked about, so your gut health supplements or your HIF supplements that really need to be fed at their recommended feeding rate, because.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:54:01
that is the amount that has been calculated that will give your horse the benefit that you are trying to achieve. And if you feed below that, you're much less likely to achieve what you want to achieve by using that supplement.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:54:16
But there's another scenario that I need to bring in here, and that is, well, what if you're feeding half the recommended feeding rate of a feed, and then adding a vitamin mineral supplement to it? And this is a strategy that I love, because sometimes we find feeds that we.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:54:33
really like. And the ingredients suit our horses well, and it's easy for us to purchase because it's available in our local area, and the, you know, the quality is good because the feed company does a really good job of producing it, and you're always sure that.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:54:48
You are going to get what you should be getting in each bag, but if your horse needs, let's say.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:54:55
2 kilos of feed per day, and the recommended feeding rate for your particular horse is 4 kilograms of that feed, and… but you can't feed that much, because you know that, you know, they'd be… they'd have too much energy for you when you're riding them, and they'd get overweight, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:55:12
What we can do is bring in a vitamin and mineral supplement to to fill up the gaps that feeding that feed at half the recommended feeding rate is going to leave in your horse's diet. So you can use products together in the diet.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:55:28
And… and they'll… you can… you can adjust the amount of feed you feed to control body condition and energy, ridden energy.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:55:37
And then you can use a vitamin and mineral supplement to fill up the gaps that you've left in your horse's diet. And again, this is where My Happy Horse comes into play, because it allows you to go, okay, well, if I feed this much of this feed, how much of this vitamin and mineral supplement do I then need to add? Because you won't need to feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:55:57
The full feeding amount of the vitamin and mineral supplement.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:56:02
to meet requirements, because you've already partially, at least partially, met requirements with the feed that you're feeding, even though you're not feeding it at the full feeding rate. So, as a really, um, simple rule, if you're feeding half.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:56:16
a feeds feeding rate, then you can probably get away with feeding half of a vitamin and mineral supplements feeding rate. Or if you're feeding a quarter of a feeds feeding rate, then you if you fed three quarters of the vitamin and mineral supplement, then you're going to go very close to meeting a horse's.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:56:32
vitamin mineral requirements. My preference is always that you do the analysis on these so that you don't miss something, because sometimes there is holes left in diets that, um, if you don't know that they're there, you can't actually do anything about… about fixing them. Um, but you can definitely combine products like that. And you can also combine feed products.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:56:53
So it was… I have used, and still do use, a strategy a lot where we might use, say, an extruded nut as part of a horse's feed, and then we might use a sweet feed as the other part of the horse's feed, and when we put those two together.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:57:12
We make sure that we feed each one at a feeding rate that means that when we put them together, they will meet.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:57:21
vitamin and mineral requirements without exceeding requirements. So you wouldn't want to take a feed that is designed to be fed, or two feeds that are designed to be fed to your particular horse at 2kg per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:57:33
and feed them both at 2kg per day, because your horse needs 4kg per day, that would be oversupplying a lot of nutrients. But if you took two feeds that were designed to be fed at 4kg per day, let's say this is a, I don't know, a polo pony that is actually doing quite a lot of work, or a polo cross horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:57:51
And you fed…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:57:54
Those two feeds that were designed to be fed at 4 kilograms per day at 2 kilograms each, then you've got a really good chance of meeting vitamin and mineral requirements, especially if they're from the same company, because you… the companies… when companies make feeds, they're typically using.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:11
the same, or if not a very similar, vitamin and mineral premix, so when we make feeds, the feed companies are not adding, you know, little bits of copper and little bits of zinc and little bits of vitamin E. What they'll do is they'll have other companies who specialise in making what we call vitamin and mineral premixes.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:31
Uh, and the… the trace minerals, so things like copper, zinc, selenium, iodine, and all your vitamins, like your E and K and all the B vitamins, um, they all come in a…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:58:44
product called a premix, and then that premix gets added into the feeds, and that's what adds all the vitamins and minerals. So if you're using two products from the same company, chances are you've got the same, or if not a very, very similar premix in both of those feeds. So when you combine the two feeds together.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:01
They will do a really good job of combining to meet your horses.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:05
daily nutrient requirements. Again, so much better if you… if you analyse your horse's diet.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:11
You can put both of those feed ingredients into your horse's diet, and then you will see, um, and it really is such beautiful peace of mind to see your horse's diet, but you will see that you are meeting requirements, or you will see if you're not meeting requirements, and then that gives you.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:26
the opportunity to fix the diet, and either switch products to find something that will better meet requirements, or it might be a case of, you know, vitamin E is low, which it often is, because if your hay is a little bit old, or if your pasture is not.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 11:59:44
bright green, vitamin E can be low in diet, so it gives you the opportunity to bring in some additional vitamin E. And just a little bit of insight on that, vitamin E is usually the nutrient that will drop.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:02
low in diets first. Um, and the reason, from a formulation perspective, the reason that is, is vitamin E is hideously expensive. And so, if, when I was, when I'm formulating feeds, if I put enough vitamin E.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:17
Into every feed product.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:20
to meet requirements of horses that are on low-quality forage, or hay that's been stored for a long time, so that those deficiencies don't show up. For everyone else who has got, you know, much fresher hay, or much higher quality pasture, you'll be overfeeding vitamin E, but you'll be paying a noticeable amount extra for it on those feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:39
So we have to play when formulating products, we have to play a little bit of a game with vitamin E to go, okay, how much can I get away with from a cost perspective to put in? And I'll always put in as much as I can. But there's a point where you go, if I go over that, it doesn't make sense.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:00:56
financial sense to have more vitamin E than that, and it's better if people who need extra vitamin E can bring it in and add it in their diet. And one of the cheapest ways to do that is to buy human vitamin E capsules. You can usually get them in 500 international unit or 1,000 international unit size capsules.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:01:15
And drop them into your horse's feed. They will get used to them and eat them after a while, or you can just snip the top off and squeeze the oily insides in, and then drop the shell in as well, and hopefully they get used to eating that. But it is a very economical way to add extra vitamin E into.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:01:34
Um, a horse's feet.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:01:45
I'll go on to some common questions that are asked around feeding rates and feeding rate tables in a sec, but one thing I do want to mention that is really, really important, it is so important to weigh your feeds, because depending on, and also your supplements, but.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:02:03
But feeds particularly, because depending on the form of feed, so, you know, is it a pellet, is it an extruded nut, is it a sweet feed, or an open feed, or a muesli feed, there's lots of different names for all the different types of feeds, but, um, depending on the.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:02:18
The physical form of the feed, the weight of a feed can vary dramatically. So with my standard two liter dipper, if I weigh a balance of pellet that has got a very high mineral content, which makes it quite heavy, some of those can be 1. 6 kilograms.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:02:37
per dipper, versus if I weigh an extruded nut.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:02:43
Some of those can be as little as 800 grams per dipper, and sometimes a little bit less than that, even. So, if you're assuming that your standard dipper is a kilo, you may be underfeeding, or you may be overfeeding. So, it is really, really important. Grab a set of kitchen scales, they're super cheap to buy these days.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:01
Um, grab some kitchen scales. A lot of you will already have them. I know some of you have got them in your feed room, which makes me very happy. Uh, and just weigh your dippers. You don't have to weigh every time you make up feed, although I know some people do, and that is a beautiful way to do it. And then you take it out to your horse, and they tip their feet on the ground, and you think, why do I bother?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:20
But, um, anyway, uh, it is just so important to understand, at least, um.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:28
weighing feeds initially, just understand how much a dipper weighs, and figure out, or how many dippers do you need to feed per day, um, to get the actual amount that you need to feed. And if it's substantially less than.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:03:44
one dipper per day. My strong recommendation, because I had to do this for myself to make myself feed much more accurately when I was feeding a very low-dose balancer pellet, buy smaller dippers, because it's so much easier to get a quarter of a dipper right.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:04:01
If that's the amount you need to feed, when you've got a one-liter dipper versus a two-liter dipper. So it's, you know, if you need to feed two cups a day, it's much easier to feed two cups a day when you're measuring it in a four-cup.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:04:14
Dipper versus an eight cup dipper. So and even having conversations about dippers is confusing because they're all different sizes and we talk about them in different ways. So, so just take whatever dipper or implement you use to measure out your horse's feed, weigh it, make sure you understand how much all of the different ingredients you feed weigh.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:04:35
Um, and then feed according to weight and not according to volume.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:04:39
So, with that covered, let's just have a look. So, some… some pretty common questions, um, and… and a lot of these we've already covered, so I'll… I'll just… I'll just go over them.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:04:51
Um, reasonably quickly. So, the first would be, my horse would get fat if I fed the recommended amount, so can I just feed less? And, um, the little crab at Arabian that I told you about at the beginning of the podcast showed me this so beautifully at… right at the start of my nutrition career, that.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:05:11
if you feed a horse according to recommended feeding rates, and that recommended feeding rate is too high for that horse, they will get fat. Um, and it's… hopefully you will have listened to the two-part series with Dr. Catherine in the last two episodes of the podcast.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:05:30
Uh, talking about change, but she said something so beautiful in there, that if you feed the wrong hay, you can't feed it 24-7. And what she was saying is, if, you know, if you've got a horse that is a really good doer, for example, and then you feed high…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:05:47
quality alfalfa hay to it ad lib, or, you know, on demand 24-7, that horse is going to get very, very fat.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:05:56
it's the same in this situation, and it was definitely the same, um, with Chris the Endurance Horse, is that I… I recommended to Sue, his owner, that she fed at the recommended feeding rate, and he got so fat so quickly, too. It happened really, really fast, and…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:12
And it sort of it was such a good lesson for me going, okay, we can't just increase feeding rate to meet vitamin mineral requirement because then we cause problems with with weight gain. It seems so obvious when I say it now, but it wasn't something that I thought through back in my early 20s when I started working as a nutritionist. So.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:31
Um, if your horse gets fat.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:33
or if you know your horse would get fat if you feed the recommended amount, can you just feed less? So, yes, you can just feed less, but…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:42
On the condition that you then bring in a vitamin and mineral supplement to top up the nutrient gaps that you will leave by feeding less than the recommended amount of that product. So, um, if you…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:06:57
we said before, if you're feeding half the feeding rate of a feed, then find a vitamin or mineral supplement that you like, and feed it at half the feeding rate, and you'll be very close to meeting requirements, and you would make me so much happier if I knew that you were actually doing an analysis.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:07:13
On that, so that you could also see whether there was any nutrients that were still low, um, by doing that, or even any nutrients that are, that are too high by doing that. But yes, you, you need to, it's not just, can I just feed less? It is, you need to feed less, because.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:07:30
you have to manage energy intake. You can't feed and make horses fat, because.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:07:39
being overweight is so unhealthy, you, um, need to top up the vitamin minerals that are missing in feeding less. Um, so the next one, on feeding half the recommended amount of a complete feed, do I need half a dose of vitamin mineral supplement? We've covered that really nicely, so yes, that works really, really well if you are feeding.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:08:00
Um, half the recommended amount of a feed, and then feed half the recommended amount, or whatever the… whatever the ratio is. So, if it might be that you're feeding 3 quarters of the recommended amount of a, um, fortified feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:08:14
And then you can just bring in a quarter of the dose of a vitamin and mineral supplement. And in fact, that's exactly what I'm doing at the moment. So I've got a it's actually a product in development. It's a hay cube that has got a full vitamin and mineral premix and some other funky.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:08:32
ingredients in with it. So, I'm using that with my horses, and it's providing a vast majority of their vitamin and mineral requirements, but there's just… I'm just not feeding them quite enough to fully meet their vitamin and mineral requirements, and so I'm bringing in just a tiny amount of my vitamin and mineral supplement.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:08:50
to then top up the nutrients that are not quite high enough in their diet. So, it can be any… any ratio, um, and again.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:09:02
doing an analysis shows you exactly how much you may need so that you're not overfeeding, um, any… any particular nutrients, and you're also not wasting your money by overfeeding a supplement. Even if it was, you know, 10 grams a day, that adds up.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:09:17
over time. And it just means that you feed enough, but not too much, and that's the most economical way to feed, because let's face it, they're pretty expensive creatures to feed, so if we don't need to feed as much as we are feeding, then you get to save a little bit of money in feeding them each day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:09:38
So, uh, question 3, why does one vitamin and mineral supplement recommend 30 grams a day, while another recommends 150 grams a day? So, it is a really good question, and it comes back to, as we talked about, it comes back to the concentration of nutrients in.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:09:56
that vitamin and mineral supplement. So the 30 grams a day, if you looked at its label and compared it against the 150 gram a day product, what I hope you would see is that the 30 gram a day one would have, um, a proportionally higher level of nutrient per kilogram.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:14
than the one at 150 grams a day. And so, feeding 30 grams, you're getting a lot more bang for your buck, you might say, in that amount compared to the one at 150 grams. Now, does that mean that the one at 30 grams a day is better than the one at 150 grams?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:32
And the answer is no.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:34
again, it depends on the horses you're feeding and what the underlying base of their diet is. So, for a…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:43
uh, let's say… a young horse in early work that might still be growing, and they're just starting out, like, let's say it's a, I don't know.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:10:52
5 year old warm blood and they're still growing because they're warm blood and they're only 5 and so their calcium and phosphorus requirements and magnesium are going to be a little bit higher than what a mature horse is going to be so in 30 grams a day there will be very very little calcium phosphorus and magnesium because those ingredients are bulky like horses need them in grams per day amounts and they're really bulky to get into a vitamin.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:11:21
mineral supplement, and particularly into one that is fed at such a low dose rate, whereas the 150 grams, it would give us room as formulating nutritionists to be able to fit some of those bulkier nutrients in there. So you might find that the higher dose vitamin mineral supplement is better for your particular horse because it's able to provide nutrients at the very low dose one.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:11:46
might not be providing.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:11:50
My horses on a very low dose supplement, uh, they're, because they're, they're getting a, a partial amount, uh, and, you know, most of two thirds to three quarters of the recommended feeding rate of the hay cube feed that I'm feeding, they're getting quite a bit of calcium and phosphorus from that product, because I actually, when I formulated that product, I've.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:12:10
put in, you know, calcium and calcium phosphates in there for the specific reason of adding calcium and phosphorus. So, my horses are getting those bulky ingredients already in what I'm feeding in the underlying diet, and really all I'm looking for is some copper, zinc, selenium, iodine, which are inherently low in our forages here.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:12:29
Uh, and a little bit of vitamin content. Um, so that… that very low-dose vitamin mineral supplement that I was talking about before is… is perfect for me, because it… it means that I can buy 3.5 kilos, it lasts me… feels like forever, uh, because I'm feeding such a small amount per day, uh, and it… and I'm not…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:12:48
adding in nutrients that I'm not… I don't actually need. So… so one is not better than the other, it just depends on the situation that you're in, and what else your horse is being fed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:01
Uh, so… next question, if I'm feeding two fortified feeds, do I need to feed the full recommended amount of both?
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:07
We've covered this as well, so the answer to this one's definitely no. If you're feeding two fortified feeds, you definitely don't want to be feeding both at the recommended feeding rate, because then you would be feeding twice the amount of vitamins and minerals that your horse needs, because.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:24
If you… the recommended feeding rate, remember that that is the… it's typically calculated as the amount of feed a horse needs to meet vitamin and mineral requirements when using that feed. And the…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:39
The lower dose feeds will provide a little bit of energy and protein. The ones that have much higher feeding rates will be providing a lot of energy and protein alongside those vitamins and minerals. But the feeding rates are more about the vitamins.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:13:55
and minerals. So if you fed two fortified feeds, both at the full rate, you're essentially providing twice the amount of vitamins and minerals that a horse needs. So you… if you want to use two feeds, then combine them.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:14:12
to be fed together at one recommended feeding rate, if that makes sense. So if you were… if the example I used before, if you had to feed it… two feeds with the recommended feeding rate of 4 kilograms, and you fed one at.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:14:27
both of them at 2 kilograms, then you get a combined amount of 4 kilograms, and you would meet the feeding rate. But if you had.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:14:35
Let's say, let's say we had a balancer pellet that's recommended feeding rate was a kilo or 2 pounds per day. And we had a feed that's recommended feeding rate was two kilograms per day. But you felt like your horse only needed, around a kilogram of that fortified feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:14:52
you're feeding it at half its recommended feeding rate. So if you then also fed half of the balance pellet, so a kilogram, sorry, a pound or half a kilogram, you would have a total then of one and a half kilograms of feed, as opposed to.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:07
Um, if you're feeding both of them at the full recommended feeding rate, you'd have 2 kilograms of the fortified feed, and a kilogram of the balanced pellet, and you would have a total of 3 kilograms. So, as you… if you're combining.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:21
products.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:23
Pay attention to what their recommended feeding rate is, what percentage of that feeding rate you are actually feeding, and then is the combined percentages close to 100%. You can choose to do all of this maths in your head, but honestly, it's so much easier if you use an app or a nutrition calculator.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:44
to do these calculations, because it works it all out in a flash for you. You don't have to do any of the mathing. Even for me, to sit down and actually fully.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:15:56
balance a diet by hand. It would take me probably more than a day if I was working with about 30 different nutrients. So, it's not… it's not an easy thing to do by hand, but it is really easy to do when you've got a piece of software that's running all the calculations constantly for you, and you can go, oh, what if I did this, or what if I did that? And it's… it's, um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:15
Updating real time for you what that changes in your horse's diet.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:23
And then the last question, and it's an important one, this one. So can I feed half the recommended dose of a gut health supplement to make it last longer? And oh, how tempting is it to do this? And actually, this is probably not a good question for me because.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:40
I… when I first…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:16:43
adopted, let's say, Domino and Dellingham, my two gorgeous little paint horses. Uh, they were in really bad shape, so they were full of worms to the point where, you know, when you worm a horse and you actually see the worms, uh, really prominently in their manure the next day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:00
So that was what they were like. They'd not been handled by, they'd never been touched by a human as, 12 month old yearlings. So, you know, we went and picked them up, and we had to chase them onto the back of a cattle truck because we we couldn't catch them, and we certainly weren't going to stay at the property where they were and do any handling. So we got them out there, out of there as quickly as we could.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:23
And…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:24
So I really wanted to, you know, try and get them their gut back to being healthy and also get as much nutrition into them as I can because they were about the size of what they should have been as weanlings. That's the size they were.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:17:40
as yearlings. And I guess doing what I do and having formulated as many products as I've formulated, I usually know exactly which feed products and exactly which supplement products I want to use for my horses. And so I did actually use a gut health supplement at half the dose because all I wanted in that supplement was the enzymes it contains to digest.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:04
grain starch. They were like, I need to give these horses enzymes. It was part of my PhD project, and I know how important enzymes are to help digestion, and in fact, it's a podcast episode I need to create where we talk about enzymes in detail, but.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:20
I did feed a product at half the rate, because that was all I was chasing. I just wanted the enzymes, and I knew, because I'd formulated the product, I knew that if I fed it at half the amount, I had enough enzymes to digest the amount of grain I was feeding, because they weren't actually getting very much. They were only getting small amounts, and so I didn't need a full dose.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:41
But…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:42
If I was using that gut health supplement purely from a gut health perspective, and if I was wanting to take advantage of all of the ingredients that were in that particular product, feeding it at half the amount.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:18:57
would have shortchanged my horse. So… so, normally, the answer to this question would be, no, you can't feed half the dose… half the recommended dose of a gut health supplement, or of a hoof supplement, or of a… you know, um… I don't know, there's lots of different supplements, and they've all just flown out of my head, but um…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:19:17
With the supplements that are designed to actually do something other than provide a specific nutrient.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:19:28
Usually, if you feed them at half the amount, you will not get the desired effect
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:19:33
So you need to trust the manufacturer. And there's a lot that goes into that because there are products on the market that even if you did feed them at the recommended feeding rate, they're not going to do anything. But if you trust the product and you trust the manufacturer and you know that the product contains nutrients or ingredients that will be a benefit to your horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:19:58
My strong recommendation is to beat it at the recommended dose, because that is going to give you the best chance of your horse receiving the benefit from that product.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:20:17
And the final thing that I think we haven't really covered yet is what if you have to feed above a recommended feeding rate? So, we've talked mainly about, well, if I fed the recommended feeding rate, my horse would get too fat, and so I need to reduce it. But what about the opposite situation where.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:20:35
If you fed the recommended feeding rate, but you feel like it wasn't enough feed for your horse, should you just increase.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:20:43
The amount you're feeding and it depends. People say that's a nutritionist's favorite answer to every question is it depends, and it does in so many situations. So if you had a, let's say, an off-the-track thoroughbred and you had a feed that had a recommended feeding rate of 2 kilograms per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:02
And you were going, you know what, I think this horse just needs like an extra half a kilogram of feed a day. And if it was most convenient for you to add another half kilogram of that feed per day, that would be okay. Again, do the calculations.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:19
see what it looks like in your horse's diet, but if it's just… if it's a small increase, what's that, a 25% increase? It's reasonably small. If it was a small increase, then it would be okay. If you had that same horse, and you had a feed that had a recommended feeding rate of 2kg per day, and you felt like the horse needed 4kg per day.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:39
that wouldn't be okay, because that would be double the feeding rate of that feed, and it would mean that you're going to be providing twice the amount of vitamins and minerals that that horse actually needs, which then creates work for your horse. The horse then needs to process all of those additional vitamins and minerals to get them out of its body, because it doesn't… it doesn't…
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:21:58
need that amount of nutrition. So, a better scenario would be either find a feed that has got a higher feeding rate, and use it. So, if you feel like your horse needs 4kg of feed per day, then find a feed that has that recommended.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:14
Fading right and fade that.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:17
Um, or if you really like the feed that they're on, and they find it very palatable, and you're happy with the quality, and you trust the manufacturer, and all of those things, I get that there are feeds that we all just really like, and we don't necessarily want to move away from them.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:33
If your horse does need additional energy or protein, then you can bring in unfortified ingredients. So you could bring in some… I mean, my… we're talking about off the tracks now, so my head's just gone immediately to, well, it's better to use fibres for them, because you want to help them.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:50
Get their gut back to being as efficient at digesting fibre as possible.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:22:55
you can bring in some high-energy fibres, so things like beet pulp, or copper meal, or lupin hulls, if you're in Australia and lucky enough to have access.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:04
Or, um, you could bring in a well-processed cereal grain, or you could bring in some vegetable oil, or you can bring in other ingredients to provide the additional calories and protein that that horse needs. Um, if you don't want to switch.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:20
feed products and move to a feed that has a higher recommended feeding rate. My… my brain is just shot off to, yeah, but that, you know, 4 kilograms is so much feed, and you shouldn't be needing to feed that much. Jordan, off the track, that's a whole other story, but there is… there is a lot in, you know.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:36
When figuring out how much feed a horse needs, you know, how efficiently is that horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:43
using the fibres, the forages, and the pasture, and the hay, and the chaffs, and all those other things that you might have in their diet, because that does have a big impact on how much supplementary feed a horse needs. If you haven't.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:23:58
Already, if you've only just discovered us, welcome. It's so good to have you here, but if you haven't already, go back and have a listen to episode 1 and also episode 2 of the Happy Horse Nutrition Podcast, which is 70-something episodes ago, talking about feeding your horse like a horse and understanding the gastrointestinal tract because there is, if.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:24:19
If you are feeling like you're feeding your horse a lot of fortified feeds or you're needing to bring in a lot of supplementary feeds, there might be something you can do to actually have your horse use the forages and the fibres in its diet more efficiently. And in fact, we received the most beautiful email during the week from.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:24:45
Alicia. And she's saying, I won't read it all to you, because it's really long, but it's essentially saying that they had a thoroughbred showjumper, they're in Western Australia, and they bought him from over east, so from over around where I'm from.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:25:01
Uh, and she says, what followed was a seemingly never-ending battle to get him healthy, happy, and maintaining condition, while keeping him sane enough to be a performance horse at the same time. And was feeding huge, hard feeds, um, that by all accounts should have made him fat, but were getting absolutely nowhere.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:25:19
And then she says, somewhere in the middle of my late night research rabbit holes, usually when I should have been sleeping instead of worrying about this horse, and can't we all relate to that? Um, she stumbled across the podcast, and it was in the really early days of the podcast, and she, um, binged a few episodes, and then says, and honestly, Nerida, what a game changer.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:25:38
So she started making changes and, you know, feeding, paying more attention to feeding a horse like a horse. And she says that is now our equine motto, which is so cool. But, you know, she says, when I say this horse has had a glow up, I mean, he has had a glow up. So it just, oh, it warms my heart so much to read stuff like this. And it just, it makes me so happy.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:26:02
to know that nutrition make… it really does make such a big difference in a horse's life. So, if you do have a horse where you feel like you're just pouring endless amounts of feed in.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:26:13
Take a step back, go back to the beginning, have a look at what's going on in this horse's gut from a fibre fermentation perspective, which I explain a lot in those first couple of podcast episodes. And you should be able to get to the point where you're feeding a lot less feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:26:33
and a lot more forage. And it's interesting for me, you know, when I first started formulating feeds, it was… I really thought nothing about putting a feeding rate of 5 to 7 kilograms of feed per day on a feed bag. I don't think I could put pen to paper with that amount of feed for any feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:26:49
Now, because it's such a huge amount of feed per day, and I, and I know so much better now that we, um, when we feed a horse like a horse, and we know that their gut is fermenting fibre properly.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:03
they don't need that much feed. And so, even during this conversation, I've been talking about feeds at 4kg per day. I'm thinking, oh, that's a lot of… that's a lot of feed. I mean, that, for me now, is a racing thoroughbred amount of… of feed.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:17
Per day, so, um, yes, a lot to be said for making sure that your horse's gut is functioning exactly as nature designed it, and fermenting forages and fibres really, really efficiently, and that will reduce your reliance on supplementary feeds, so all these fortified feeds we've been talking about.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:35
But getting their diet balanced is so, so important, so we really do need to pay a lot of attention to making sure that we are meeting vitamin and mineral requirements, because.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:46
That is essentially the foundation for health.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:27:50
if we are leaving deficiencies in our horses diet, it will eventually show up as a problem for that horse, so would absolutely love you to come and check out the my happy horse nutrition app. It is not on Android yet, and we are still working on releasing it to other parts of the world. So it is coming.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:28:10
I just need to to stop doing other things for long enough to, to spend a little bit more focused time on it. But, come November, I will be able to do that. So with that said, thank you so much for being here. It really is so much fun doing this podcast. And thank you to everyone who sends us beautiful emails, and lets us know how much of a difference it makes.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:28:33
If you have any requests for episodes, please email them to hello@myhappyhorse. Sorry, hello@myhappy.horse.
[Nerida McGilchrist] 12:28:45
And if you get the time to follow us or give us a rating on any of the podcast platforms, we would absolutely love for you and appreciate you doing that very, very much. Thanks for being here and I will catch you in the next episode.
