SARAH: "During the winter, it is hard to find hay
for sale in my area."
Hay for sale that you can afford, probably.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Right, yeah.
SARAH: It gets tough everywhere.
"So I feed my 12-year-old mare beet pulp.
I have read that beet pulp lacks in nutrition and vitamins.
Is there a better alternative for beet pulp
or some sort of supplement I could be feeding her
in addition to beet pulp?"
DR LYDIA GRAY: OK, so we get to see these.
We get to watch them get voted up and down and that.
So I gathered some beet pulp, just in case.
All right, so this is the dry stuff.
And if you could grab one of the pans,
I think it'll be easier to see.
Mine at home that I get is more--
it's bigger.
This is smaller but it's the shredded version.
It also comes in pelleted version.
And so it's dry.
And so what most people do is--
SARAH: It's getting a little dusty.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Is they add water to it.
So let's show them the other one.
What I did was, I went online and I found some recipes
for cooking beet pulp.
SARAH: I'm glad that vets also use Google sometimes.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Oh, yeah.
And most of them said one part of beet pulp
and two parts of water, or submerge it.
So that's what I did.
And I used my kitchen polder, my scale,
which goes to four pounds, to weigh out.
This amount in here was one pound of dry beet pulp.
So it's very, very light.
So the scoop method of weighing or feeding
is really not appropriate for beet pulp.
You have to weigh it.
All right, here we go, you ready?
So, all right--
So this is what it looks like wet.
And--
SARAH: Oh, it smells good.
DR LYDIA GRAY: It does, it smells wonderful.
We decided that this is not very wet, this is just, just wet--
moistened, almost.
And different horses like it different--
like some like it just moistened and if it gets any wetter
than this, it's sloppy.
They turn their nose up and they don't like it,
so you've got to kind of figure out what your horse likes.
OK, so that's what it looks like.
SARAH: Is there any like, risk to feeding it completely dry?
Like there's the old wives' tale that if you throw rice
at a wedding a pigeon will eat it
and the stomach will expand-- and exploding pigeons.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
SARAH: Is there any risk like that with beet pulp, or is it
like oatmeal where if you can stomach eating it dry,
go for it.
But add as much water as you want to make it palatable.
Is it kind of--
DR LYDIA GRAY: The short answer is no.
The long answer is, there's certainly out there the myth
that if you feed dry beet pulp it will expand in the stomach
and explode.
And that's just a myth, that is not true.
There's another belief that horses will choke--
they're more likely to choke if they're fed dry beet pulp.
That also has not ever been proven, but if it concerns you,
and you can't sleep at night, by all means feed it wet.
I mean, there's nothing wrong-- the only thing
wrong with feeding it wet is, say, in the summer,
if it gets really warm where you are.
You don't have very long from soaking it--
and this was about a half hour of soaking which is what most
recipes recommend--
if you leave it wet somewhere warm,
it will mold and sour and do all those things.
And that's-- you don't want to feed your horse that.
That is the only reason that you wouldn't wet it.
In the winter, then of course, you
have to worry about freezing.
But-- If, you know, by all means, if dry concerns you,
feed it wet.
So her question also dealt with the nutrition of it.
SARAH: Yes.
DR LYDIA GRAY: And as you know, I feed a lot of it.
I mean, I walk through with this.
And we're going to give this to somebody at the end,
we're not just going throw it away.
So nutritionally it is somewhere between hay and grain.
It's high-calorie because it's a form
of highly digestible fiber.
Some fiber is mostly bulk and it goes in, and it goes out,
and it's not digested.
This is digested into volatile fatty
acids, which the horses uses as it's main source of energy.
So we like it for the hard keepers.
It puts weight on those skinny thoroughbreds,
and nothing puts weight on for the old horses.
It's great for old horses that can't
chew because their teeth have grown out.
It's good for heave-y horses.
Here's my Newman fact.
I can't put hay, even wet or soaked in the trailer any more
with him.
So I make up a batch, a pan, of beet pulp.
Well, now he knows the beet pulp is
waiting for him in the trailer.
So I can barely get the doors open before he's in there
and he's like, close it, close, let's go!
And he's got his head buried in there,
so there's lots of reasons to feed beet pulp.
Easy keepers feed it.
SARAH: You mentioned it breaks down
into volatile fatty acids--
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yep.
SARAH: Which people tend to think of fat as a cooler
source of energy for horses.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
SARAH: So like those hard keepers thoroughbreds,
instead of upping the grain, which can make horses excited,
would you think that beet pulp would be a good option?
DR LYDIA GRAY: Yeah, because this is low-sugar starch.
So it's great for those horses who get a little-- you know,
like kids on candy.
But because it's low-sugar starch,
the easy keepers do well with it, too.
Because that's a trigger for them.
They're maybe-- they're insulin resistant,
they have Equine Metabolic Syndrome or PPID, Cushings
or something.
So lots of horses can benefit from this.
The rule of thumb is, no more than 25%
of your hay, your forage, can be substituted.
SARAH: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: So you cannot feed just beet pulp.
25%, I did all the math before I came,
so if you've got a thousand pound horse
and you're feeding 2% of the body weight.
So 20 pounds of hay a day, about five pounds of beet pulp
is your maximum, because of the nutrition.
So it's high in calories, it's high in digestible fiber.
It's kind of low-ish on protein, and it has very little vitamins
and minerals.
That's the problem, it creates a nutritional imbalance.
It's not complete and balanced if you feed it by itself.
SARAH: But isn't it true that hay
doesn't have a whole lot of those vitamins and minerals.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Hay has--
depending on where it's grown and what kind of hay it is,
it can have minerals.
Like, this is a little bit unbalanced
when it comes to calcium-phosphorus.
So the ratio in beet pulp is 10 to one.
And hays can be one to one, two to one.
You know, alfalfa can be higher.
But-- so that's a problem, as far
as the amount of other nutrients.
So she should look, this person, for some hay replacement
beyond beet pulp.
Use the beet pulp, which you can, and then look
for the hay stretcher pellets, chopped hay is good, hay cubes.
The horses need that scratch factor
in their diet to be healthy in the hindgut.
So no more than 25% of the beet pulp.
It does have calories, but it's not quite
balanced in the calcium-phosphorus,
and doesn't quite have enough vitamins and minerals.
SARAH: OK.
DR LYDIA GRAY: So, I think we covered it all.
SARAH: And we got to cook.
DR LYDIA GRAY: I know.
SARAH: "Cooking."