LYDIA GRAY: Hey, SmartPak fans.
Welcome to a special edition of Ask the Vet.
You may notice I am sitting on this side, not that side.
I'm Dr. Lydia Gray, the Staff Veterinarian and Medical
Director at SmartPak.
This is Nerida Richards, PhD.
I'm going to let you introduce yourself.
NERIDA RICHARDS: Sure, thanks, Lydia.
So I'm Nerida.
I'm an equine nutritionist from Australia, which is probably
quite obvious, given my accent.
LYDIA GRAY: I was going to say "far."
Obvious, too.
NERIDA RICHARDS: I work as a consulting nutritionist
in Australia.
I formulate feeds and supplements
for companies all over the world.
And I also run the FeedXL.com website,
which is a nutrition calculator that horse owners use to put
their horse's diets together.
LYDIA GRAY: We love it.
Yeah, great.
We asked you to submit your horse nutrition questions
specifically.
And in this segment, we'll answer one of those questions--
you'll answer one of those questions--
I'm helping-- and then to see the other questions, just
click on the playlist at the end of the video,
and you get to see them all.
So ready?
NERIDA RICHARDS: Mm-hm.
LYDIA GRAY: OK.
Kathleen Valetta from Facebook asks,
"I brought a new horse home that has been
on grain with previous owner.
I do not feed grain.
Instead, I give free-choice, alfalfa/orchard and grass.
Should I continue his old grain, or is it
OK to keep him on my regime?
His body score is low 4, with just a few ribs barely showing.
He is an 11-year-old appendix with no health issues."
NERIDA RICHARDS: So there's a lot
of questions I would love to ask Kathleen
to establish exactly what was going on for this horse.
So, I mean, in my head, I'm thinking he's being fed grain
and yet he has a body condition of 4.
LYDIA GRAY: "I do not feed grain."
"I do not feed grain."
NERIDA RICHARDS: But he's only new.
So I'm assuming he's come from--
his previous owner, old grain--
LYDIA GRAY: "Should I continue his old grain?"
NERIDA RICHARDS: Yeah, so he's, I'm guessing,
come to her in that body condition.
LYDIA GRAY: Yeah.
NERIDA RICHARDS: So why is he in that body condition when
he was being fed grain?
Was it because he's a really hard keeper?
Is it because he was doing a lot of work?
Was he not being fed enough forage?
So I mean, a lot of horses, depending, again-- you
know, the answer depends on how hard you're going to work him,
Kathleen.
If he's going to be in a lot of really hard work--
if he's going to be an endurance horse, for example,
which I'm guessing from his breed he won't be, but--
LYDIA GRAY: Appendix, quarter horse, maybe not, yeah.
NERIDA RICHARDS: Yeah, so, I mean, even--
LYDIA GRAY: But he could be an eventer.
NERIDA RICHARDS: Could be doing eventing.
And if they're working them really hard,
the chances of being able to maintain body condition, just
on hay gets lower.
I mean, a lot of horses can, but if you're working them hard,
you'll probably have to bring something else in.
But if he's a relaxed horse, and he's in light to moderate work
and the quality of your hay is really good,
the really nice thing about having
a horse on a forage-based diet like this
is they're gut health just blooms.
LYDIA GRAY: Right.
NERIDA RICHARDS: So the gut bacteria--
and also, now, they're finding all these anaerobic fungi
in the gut that have a massive role in fiber digestion.
So you're really supporting all those beneficial microbes
in the gut.
And it means that they extract pretty much all the energy
they can out of your forages.
So what you might find--
and, again, I'd love to know what the grain this horse
was on, but if he was on some sort of raw grain, so
an uncooked corn-based product, or something
with uncooked barley in it, those grains,
the starch isn't very digestible in the small intestine.
And so it travels down and ends up in the hindgut.
And it feeds the bacteria you do not want in the hindgut.
So the myolytic starts digesting bacteria.
And those bacteria are really lazy when
it comes to fermenting fiber.
LYDIA GRAY: Lazy bacteria, you heard it here first.
NERIDA RICHARDS: I mean, they don't like hard work.
So fermenting fiber is hard work compared
to fermenting your starch.
So what they'll do is they'll selectively ferment the starch.
They don't like to ferment the fiber, so they don't--
too lazy to do it.
And they also create this environment
where they basically shut your fiber
from eating bacteria down.
So you're in this situation where
you're not using the grain efficiently,
and then you're not using the fiber efficiently, either.
So you can be feeding pounds--
like, many, many pounds of feed in a day and still
have a horse that has body condition 4, just
because gut health is being destroyed
with what you're feeding.
LYDIA GRAY: Makes a lot of sense.
NERIDA RICHARDS: So If you get him,
and you put him on this hay-based diet,
and his gut health improves if it wasn't great
when you bought him, you might find
that you've got a beautiful, healthy horse in really
lovely condition.
The only thing I would add to this is that hay--
and it doesn't matter how good quality it is--
is nearly always low in trace minerals.
So copper and zinc, I would say, 95% of the time, if not more,
they do not contain enough copper and zinc
to meet a horse's requirements for optimum health.
And we frequently see--
so horse's minimum requirement for copper
is 10 milligrams per kilogram, and speaking in metric terms.
And a lot of hays will have some 5 or 6 milligrams
per kilograms.
I think that's half of what they need
for their minimum requirement.
And they just, over time--
it'll show in degenerating joint health,
and in degenerating hoof health.
So it's really, really important.
I would add either vitamin and mineral
supplement or a balancer pellet into that diet.
LYDIA GRAY: So a hey diet might make
a horse have the right weight, might bring this horse move
forward to a 5.
It might even put a good bloom on them.
But you're saying, internally, they're
not having all their dietary nutritional needs met.
NERIDA RICHARDS: Exactly.
LYDIA GRAY: And so the other thing I
would add is, when I have a horse that
is being fed appropriately and is not at a good weight,
I wouldn't hesitate to ask my vet to come out and look at him
and say, is there an underlying medical condition that's
responsible for this?
Maybe it's parasites, or teeth, or something.
NERIDA RICHARDS: Yeah, that's a really good point.
LYDIA GRAY: OK.