SARAH: How do you break down and interpret the guaranteed
analysis on a feed label?
Are you MacKenzie?
DR LYDIA GRAY: No I'm not, but that's excellent question.
And I brought some of my favorite reading materials.
This lovely lavender book is called the AAFCO Manual.
SARAH: And it's a quick read.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And you can tell I'm
reading it because it's marked.
It stands for the Association of American Feed Control
Officials.
And it's one of the resources we use here,
along with the NRC, The Nutrient Requirements of Horses,
and that's how we just make sure we're correct with what
the requirements are to feed horses every day,
what labels say, what our labels say.
So I'm not sure exactly what she's asking.
I'm just going to take a stab at it.
The things you see on labels are,
of course, the product name, the species it's for, the class.
So like the species would be horse,
and the class would be foal, breeding, adult. OK,
the different life stages.
The quantity, so a bag of feed would be 50 pounds,
a smaller thing might be 5 pounds.
That has to be on there.
The manufacturer or distributor name and address so you
can find them if you have questions.
The purpose statement, like who and what it's for.
And then, of course, the GA, which
is the Guaranteed Analysis.
That tells you-- usually, some things are in percentages,
and some things are in parts per million,
and some things are in international units.
And there's reasons for that.
This group got together and said, let's standardize it
so we're all talking the same thing.
So we're all talking apples to apples.
For example, feed labels are in an as-fed basis.
So actually what's in the bag, versus a dry matter basis, when
you suck all the moisture out.
So you have to know which you're talking about.
And feed labels are as-fed.
Things you will always see on the label
are crude protein, crude fat, and crude fiber.
You'll also then see a few minerals
like calcium, phosphorus, and maybe a few vitamins
like vitamin A and vitamin E. Going back
to the crude protein, that's one that's always in percentage.
So a typical horse feed might say 10% crude protein.
And I know people talk in terms of oh, I'm feeding a 10%,
or 12%, or 14%.
That's a little bit important, but you kind of have to do
the math out and say, if I'm supposed to feed--
like the one I looked at here for this--
you're supposed to feed 3 1/2 pounds a day for a 1,000 pound
horse.
And it's 10% crude protein.
So if you do the math, 10% of 3.5 pounds
is 0.35 pounds, which is about 5 and 1/2 ounces.
And then, it works out to 160 grams
because I did the math first, so I have a good example.
SARAH: That was wise.
DR LYDIA GRAY: That's what you need to eventually get
to so you know that feeding 3 and 1/2 pounds
of this particular grain provides 160 grams of protein.
Now a horse doing nothing at this size
will need 500 to 600 grams of protein a day.
So the rest is coming from hay.
So the 160 grams is what the grain is providing.
That's just an example of how you
use the information and numbers on a label and break it down,
incorporate math, get to a usable number.
So I'm not sure if that's what she's asking,
but that's how I use it.
SARAH: Yeah.
And I think it's helpful.
You were talking about a horse in no work needs
a certain amount.
And you and horse owners out there
can learn those things from a book like Nutrient Requirements
of Horses, which can tell you what the requirements are.
Then you take a look at what you're feeding,
how much you're feeding, figure out what your horse is actually
getting.
And is he getting enough, or do you
need to add something to give him a little bit more?
DR LYDIA GRAY: The other thing I thought of
was a regular fortified grain might be at the 10%.
Then there's these things called ration balancers.
And they sound scary at 30% protein,
but you're feeding three pounds of the 10% grain,
and you're feeding one pound of the 30%.
So you come out to exactly the same amount
of grams of protein at the end.
So don't be scared off by the low or high percent.
You have to multiply it by how much you're
feeding to get the actual weight that your horse is getting
that day.
SARAH: OK.
A scoop is not just a scoop.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Oh my goodness.
SARAH: Across all brands, it makes a difference.