Bran for the barefoot hoof

[Roasted Chestnuts]

Ok bear with me.

Fussy, cereal intolerant, barefoot horse. 25yrs old been barefoot for a while, grazed on high calcium content grazing (plenty of clover cannot change this) been trying to feed supps all summer, not interested, feet not bad but not as good as I would like.

I had a fussy eater thread which threw up something I was unaware of, the calcium blocking effects of bran, also the fact that it has about half the starch content of oats. I am interested in it for the calcium negating effects and also to tempt this fussy bummer of a veteran to eat his supps!!

So please happy to be informed of all pros and cons in order to make an informed decision starch content of feed has to stay below 10%.

 

[supsup]

I suspect you'll struggle to find bran with less than 10% starch. I've had a look at the Dairy One library (a collection of nutritional analyses from many, many samples) http://dairyone.com/analytical-serv...library/interactive-feed-composition-library/

Both rice and wheat bran show up with around 20% on average. Also, since bran is a by-product of cereals, not sure how it would sit with a cereal-intolerant horse? I guess you could try and feed it dilute somehow, to lower the starch % of the meal.
Do you have an analysis of your grazing? It might be interesting to see how much bran you'd have to feed to improve your Ca ratio.

 

[Roasted Chestnuts]

We don't unfortunately have an analysis of our grazing just a soul analysis done due to a house being built I think. We do have a lot of clover and are in a generally high calcium area apparently.

It interested me as I used to feed it, not to him but to past horses. We feeds salts/mg so combat but adding more and more to the feed of a fussy horse isn't getting me anywhere. This might have tempted him ( he gets no cereal really) to eat as well as help the Ca issue.

 

[ohmissbrittany]

I was actually just doing some reading on oats as I currently feed my barefoot horse alfalfa and rice bran (to balance amino acids, fat and the Ca ratio)... and whole oats are actually NOT a bad thing for barefoot and/or laminitic cases. The hull of the oats actually contain a lot of great amino acids and fats. https://www.thehorseshoof.com/oats1.html