SARAH: "Feeding oats-- the do's and don'ts.
What are the benefits/downsides of feeding them?
My grandparents fed them when I was growing up
and all of their horses were top performers
and never had any issues.
I still currently feed them and like the benefits
of being more natural.
My horses are also on free choice
loose minerals along with free choice hay and pasture--
weather permitting."
DR LYDIA GRAY: OK.
Well, when I was making a list of pros and cons--
do's and don'ts, whatever she called them,
it was kind of the same things on both lists.
Like, oats are a great source of calories.
So if you have a horse that needs-- like you hear
of "racehorse oats," you know?
If you've a horse that's a hard worker or a hard keeper,
then they're an excellent source of calories because they
have sugars and starches--
they're comprised of sugars and starches, they're in there.
But if you're going to feed sugars and starches,
they're some of the most digestible and safe ones.
In that the horse has enzymes in the foregut--
so the stomach and the small intestine--
that digest these simple carbohydrates
so they don't make it back to the hindgut where
they will get incorrectly fermented by the bacteria.
That's what happens with corn, so we
don't like corn as a grain.
But oats are a very--
they're a safer grain.
So the converse of that is, oats are a great source of calories.
If you have an easy keeper or a horse who's not working,
SARAH: We won't mention any names.
DR LYDIA GRAY: They don't need oats, because they're actually
not a good source of nutrition.
SARAH: Mm-hmm
DR LYDIA GRAY: They have around 10% protein-- and the protein
or the amino acid profile is not very complete,
so it's not a good source of protein.
Their calcium-phosphorus ratio is inverted.
So they have more--
they're higher in phosphorus and lower
in calcium, which can be a problem if you feed a lot
and it can offset the balance of the diet.
They don't have a lot of other vitamins and minerals,
so they're not really completing the diet.
They have a little bit of fat in them.
So as a source of--
a broad source of nutrition, they're
actually not a great choice.
So their role in a horse diet is as a source
of calories or energy.
And so you feed the forage, and then you
feed the oats as calories only if your horse needs them.
And then you're required to provide
some sort of ration balancer pellet
or a multi-vitamin supplement so that they
get the actual nutrition.
Now something I think she talked about, loose or free choice
minerals?
SARAH: Yes.
DR LYDIA GRAY: OK, I should take this platform
and say, there's only one mineral
that horses have a natural desire to seek out and consume,
and that's salt or sodium.
They don't have the ability to say, I'm low on copper today,
I'm going to take some copper, or I need more potassium
today-- they don't-- nobody has that ability,
that has been proven not a thing.
So rather than the free choice minerals,
I would go with the ration balancer
or a multivitamin mineral supplement,
and then only the oats as you need them is what I would do.
So hay, oats if needed, but some sort of balancer pellet.
SARAH: How do you choose between a ration
balancer and a multi-vitamin?
Because they're very similar in the vitamins and minerals
side of things, but they're different.
DR LYDIA GRAY: The difference is the ration balancer
is going to be fed in larger quantities.
It's usually a pellet because it also
contains protein or amino acid.
So if you know the your hay is not a great source of protein,
like maybe it's less than 10%, it
doesn't have a good quality--
a profile of amino acids either, then a ration balancer
might be the better choice.
It's also good if you're mixing in a lot of stuff,
there's more stuff to put in because you're
feeding like a pound of maybe the ration balancer where
you're only feeding an ounce, two
ounces of the multi-vitamin mineral supplement.
SARAH: So if you have other supplements for your horse,
the ration balancer's a better place to hide that stuff.
DR LYDIA GRAY: Mix it in.
SARAH: Yeah, that's exactly right.