A sight for sore eyes greeted me as I rounded the corner of the barn this morning: a bright, alert, engaged, sleek, lean, happy Pookey Bear, peering out of his stall, waiting for breakfast.
Thanks to a near complete absence of pain, Pookey is once again feeling grand. Combine that with his carefully managed diet, and it seems that the metabolic problems that led to his laminitis last June are finally under control.
Huzzah! Huzzah!
However, because of my innate cautious nature and attention to detail (okay, and my OCD as well) and thanks to the good folks at Land O'Lakes-Purina, who treated me to a lovely weekend of nutrition CE in St. Louis, I am once again reviewing Pookey's diet. And believe it or not I suspect that I might have hit upon one small flaw in my thinking, which hopefully can be rectified with one small tweak to Mr. Wonderful's diet.
(READER ALERT: If you have zero interest in equine nutrition, please stop here! Pookey is looking healthier and happier than I have seen him in ages (thanks, Dr. Wilcox, Joe and gang!) and we anticipate excellent continued post-surgical healing. However, if you just love dissecting your horse's diet, keep on reading...)
For the past few years I have been a firm believer that a 'forage first' diet is superior for horses. In their natural state horses are wide-ranging, selective spot grazers, and while researchers differ on whether to classify them as constant or intermittent grazers (or even foragers), most agree that a feral horse will graze for 16-18 hours daily, spending the rest of the time sleeping, migrating, or engaging in various social interactions. So it seems reasonable that the horse's digestive tract is designed to manage small amounts of high-fiber vegetation nearly continuously throughout the day.
Of course what most stalled horses get is large amounts of low-fiber concentrate, fed in discrete meals, often with a hay 'chaser.' It is no wonder that we deal with a lot of digestive issues in stalled horses!
Various medical conditions further complicate the picture: ulcers, PSSM, HYPP, chronic colics and diarrhea, Cushings and insulin resistance all create specific dietary needs and problems that must be addressed, often on an individual basis, given the wide variation in horses' living conditions.
I thought I had arrived at the perfect diet for Pookey.
Even a quick glance at his 'glamour shot' above and you would conclude that he is in the very pink of health.
But one of the speakers this weekend exposed the flaw in my logic, which I will now confess...
Back in August I had Pookey's hay tested, and found that it contained about 12% crude protein, which seemed perfectly adequate according to the National Research Council's nutrient requirements for horses. However, I had forgotten one small factoid, which Dr. Kelly Vineyard reminded us of: the horse does not have a protein requirement. Rather, he has an amino acid requirement, specifically for lysine and threonine. Feed those amino acids in adequate levels and the horse will thrive. Reduce them below acceptable levels, and the horse may experience muscle wasting, poor coat and hoof quality, and impaired tissue healing and repair.
Now, I would have no reason to believe that Pookey's hay was deficient in those essential amino acids, except for one small thing: for months I have been soaking his hay to reduce the sugar content. Soaking has been proven to reduce sugars by up to 30%. Unfortunately, the soaking also has an unwanted side effect: it washes away protein and possibly certain minerals as well.
So in 'fixing' one problem, I may have inadvertently created another!
I am sure that most idle, mature adult horses can survive very well on minimal quality protein. However, in Pookey's case, we need to optimize nutrition to maintain lean body condition but to maximize post-surgical healing, and by all means, we need to focus on hoof quality!
So guess who is no longer getting his hay soaked, and is going to be treated to a little supplemental protein?
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