What's for dinner?

Back in 'the day,' I spent a lot of time at the all-you-can-eat restaurants, consuming massive quantities of carbohydrate- and sugar-laden goodies, and paying little heed to annoyances like cholesterol levels and blood glucose and insulin release.

Of course that all changed about twenty years ago when my metabolism shifted, and I started getting fat on air. Now, I read the labels on everything--even vitamins--to avoid taking in even the tiniest amount of glucose, sucrose, fructose, lactose, maltose, dextrose...you get the picture.

No sugar!

So it was a relatively simple task for me to begin micro-managing Pookey Bear's diet when we discovered that he was insulin resistant.

The first thing I did was pull him completely off pasture. This was very painful for him, as he had been our Chief Grass Inspector for quite some time, and took his job very seriously.

My second move: no alfalfa. This change, too, has proven difficult, as the alfalfa component of his diet has worked wonders with his sensitive gut (and suspected ulcers, which in many horses respond well to the buffering effects of alfalfa).

Our third change: no bagged feed. This may prove to be a temporary measure, should we check his insulin/glucose levels on one of the newer low starch feeds (such as Purina's Well Solve) and find that he tolerates it well. However the concentrate that he had been eating was very high in non-structural carbohydrates (NSCs, or the newer term, water-soluble carbohydrates) and definitely caused an insulin spike, even in small amounts.

So what's left?

Well, for starters, lots of coastal hay! For the past three months or so we have been feeding him about 18 pounds per day. The idea is to feed about 1.5 percent of his ideal body weight, which I am guestimating at about 1100 pounds. However, with an insulin resistant horse, it is critical that the hay be as low in sugars as possible. The simple way to reduce sugar is to soak the hay, for about 20 minutes in hot water or an hour or so in cold. Being summertime in Texas (still!) all of our water is hot right now, so we do about a 20-minute soak before each feeding. I then drain it, using my hay net set up as pictured above, then put the next batch in to soak in the green tub while he is eating the drained hay.

In place of concentrate, he is currently getting the following: beet pulp shreds (no molasses) as a carrier for his salt and minerals; and fresh-ground flax seed, to maintain a beneficial balance of Omega-3/Omega-6 fatty acids.

While waiting on the results of our hay analysis (Click here for testing from DairyOne/Equi-analytical Labs: http://www.equi-analytical.com/ ) we have been adding the following to his daily ration:

Table salt

Remission (contains chromium and magnesium, both beneficial for IR/foundered horses)

Vitamin E

ProBios (a probiotic)

He also is down to a single scoop of Thyro-L, which seems to be very effective at taking the weight off of fluffy horses. In just three months we have pulled close to 200 pounds off His Highness, with very little loss of muscle tone in the process.

I have been taking thyroid medication for nearly 20 years now, and have lost exactly zero pounds.

Maybe tonight, if no one is looking, I will sneak into the feed room and scarf down a horse dose of thyroid meds...