Bran mash

the bigger danger of feeding too much bran to horses lies in what it can do to the dietary calcium-phosphorus ratio. The two most abundant bodily minerals, calcium and phosphorus work together to build sound bones and assist muscle function. To do so, however, they must be absorbed in appropriate proportions by the body, which means that when a horse ingests phosphorus, he must also ingest an equal or, preferably, slightly greater amount of calcium.

If there's not enough calcium to match the phosphorus in a bran-fed horse's daily feed, his body will pull extra calcium from his bones in order to balance the excess phosphorus in his gut. If a horse gets too much phosphorus over too long a period, his body will take so much calcium from the bones that it weakens the skeleton and leads to bone disorders such as "big head." Grass hays such as timothy and orchardgrass contain the exact ratio of calcium to phosphorus that horses need; wheat bran and rice bran contain about 10 times too much phosphorus, on a per pound basis.
but this is if fed on a regular basis many years ago it was always part of the feed before you had all the mixes ect
 
At the yard I'm at now, it's pretty much the done thing to feed bran once or twice a week, I think to maintain healthy gut function.. I don't feed it however, as my horse doesn't get hard feed, and I don't see any reason to feed it to him. However, they balance out the bran with sugar beet as the phosphorus:calcium ratio has to be kept correct otherwise calcium deficiencies arise. I think the ratio should be 1:2 or something like that, am happy to be corrected if this isn't the case :D xx
 
i don't feed it unless a horse is very poorly (post op or something) and needs something very easily digestible, then i'll feed it for a while.
i don't feed it routinesly for the reason described above, calc-phosph ratio.
having said which... an equine vet said to me years ago that more horses die of colic than will ever be adversely affected by the ratio...
i feed very high fibre feeds, with little/no grain, and in winter i add lots of hot water, so they all get a warm fibrous feed anyway, without having to worry about mineral imbalances.
 
This was a big thing when I was young, my first Shetland lived in my friends granddads stables the day the horses went hunting bran a few oats salt and chopped carrots where mixed with hot water and put in special hay filled wooden boxes in the corridor when the horses got back they where still warm they had a great smell.
 
kerilli said:
i feed very high fibre feeds, with little/no grain, and in winter i add lots of hot water, so they all get a warm fibrous feed anyway, without having to worry about mineral imbalances.
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Kerilli, out of interest what do you feed with the hot water? Ive been thinking of giving him a 'warm' feed in the mornings and just wondering what is best - he currently gets A&P 'Ride & Relax' which you need to soak so may just use hot water rather than cold, however a friend did say they would be worried about giving a horse a warm feed if there not used to it?!
 
There is little point in feeding warm feeds to a healthy horse, they eat fibre and it produces heat within the gut when it is digested.
Broad bran [big flakes] was fed to hunters after a days hunting not a little canter in an field, they were really tired out and we wanted to replenish and rehydrate with an easily digested and palatable feed.
Nowadays a competition horse gets electrolytes and a balanced feed, in the olden days we had oats, hay, and bran, salt and Equivite if they were lucky. The groom knew how to feed, and how to assess the quality of hay, oats and bran, not many people would be able to do this nowadays.
I made a "haybox" out of a large wooden box lined with hay, put a pressure cooker in with linseed, boiling hot when I left for the day, and warm and fully cooked when I got back.
 
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We always gave a warm bran mash to a horse after very heavy work or if we suspected mild indications of colic. I have always been led to believe that a warm bran mash keeps everything in the gut moving as it were. And feeding un soaked in hot water bran has the opposite affect? Not sure if that is true though - so much has changed since my days I am embarrassed to say!:o
 
grumpyoldmare said:
We always gave a warm bran mash to a horse after very heavy work or if we suspected mild indications of colic. I have always been led to believe that a warm bran mash keeps everything in the gut moving as it were. And feeding un soaked in hot water bran has the opposite affect? Not sure if that is true though - so much has changed since my days I am embarrassed to say!:o
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The biggest change is in the milling of wheat, nowadays the "yield of flour" is paramount, so the bran is a limited value compared to broad bran, there is no comparison really.
In the 1970s I bought 1cwt sacks of bran from Spillers in Carlisle, it was the last rolling mill which produced real bran.
Dry bran could cause choke, so don't feed it like this.
If I had to make up a post hunt mash, I would probably go for boiled barley, salt and a bit of clean oat chaff with 80gm of micronised linseed meal.
 
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Miss L Toe said:
The biggest change is in the milling of wheat, nowadays the "yield of flour" is paramount, so the bran is a limited value compared to broad bran, there is no comparison really.
In the 1970s I bought 1cwt sacks of bran from Spillers in Carlisle, it was the last rolling mill which produced real bran.
Dry bran could cause choke, so don't feed it like this.
If I had to make up a post hunt mash, I would probably go for boiled barley, salt and a bit of clean oat chaff with 80gm of micronised linseed meal.
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Thankyou - very informative and your list of ingredients whisked me back to the sixtys with a warm glow of nostalgia!:D
 
cassie summers said:
the bigger danger of feeding too much bran to horses lies in what it can do to the dietary calcium-phosphorus ratio. The two most abundant bodily minerals, calcium and phosphorus work together to build sound bones and assist muscle function. To do so, however, they must be absorbed in appropriate proportions by the body, which means that when a horse ingests phosphorus, he must also ingest an equal or, preferably, slightly greater amount of calcium.

If there's not enough calcium to match the phosphorus in a bran-fed horse's daily feed, his body will pull extra calcium from his bones in order to balance the excess phosphorus in his gut. If a horse gets too much phosphorus over too long a period, his body will take so much calcium from the bones that it weakens the skeleton and leads to bone disorders such as "big head." Grass hays such as timothy and orchardgrass contain the exact ratio of calcium to phosphorus that horses need; wheat bran and rice bran contain about 10 times too much phosphorus, on a per pound basis.
but this is if fed on a regular basis many years ago it was always part of the feed before you had all the mixes ect
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Research has shown pretty conclusively that roughly75% of the Phosphorous in Bran is unavailable to the horse. If anything most horses get too much Calcium,the odd bran mash is going to have absolutely no effect. Conversely ,too much Calcium all the time leads to all sorts of problems. "Orchard grass",i think you have been relying on too much American literature.
 
Miss L Toe said:
The biggest change is in the milling of wheat, nowadays the "yield of flour" is paramount, so the bran is a limited value compared to broad bran, there is no comparison really.
In the 1970s I bought 1cwt sacks of bran from Spillers in Carlisle, it was the last rolling mill which produced real bran.
Dry bran could cause choke, so don't feed it like this.
If I had to make up a post hunt mash, I would probably go for boiled barley, salt and a bit of clean oat chaff with 80gm of micronised linseed meal.
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You can still get stone milled bran - I do from Thunderbrook :D

My boys get a cupful of bran in each feed which is balanced out by the calcium in their base mix and we live in a hard water area too which helps... I stopped feeding my EMS boy his bran for a week in the summer as I thought he didn't need the extra calories and he started to show EMS signs again so now he gets it all year round :D
 
ellie_e said:
Kerilli, out of interest what do you feed with the hot water? Ive been thinking of giving him a 'warm' feed in the mornings and just wondering what is best - he currently gets A&P 'Ride & Relax' which you need to soak so may just use hot water rather than cold, however a friend did say they would be worried about giving a horse a warm feed if there not used to it?!
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my basic feed is either Readigrass, Happy Hoof, Hi Fi, or Pure Balance (depends on which horse) plus balancer, so it's mostly roughage, and i wet it with cold water and then pour boiling water on.

Miss L Toe wrote: "There is little point in feeding warm feeds to a healthy horse, they eat fibre and it produces heat within the gut when it is digested."

Yes... but on icy days I don't like feeding ice-cold wet feeds, and I won't feed dry feeds due to the risk of choke (one of mine managed to need a vet 3 weeks running for choke once... never again if I can help it!)
One of the wisest, most experienced nagsmen I have ever had the privilege of working around fed warm/hot feeds in winter. I follow his lead and it works for me and my horses.
Btw I have never had a horse be put off by a warm/hot feed, even the foal tucked straight in to her first hot feed.
Also, they get hay steaming hot out of my Haygain steamer (hot enough that I need gloves on, it's 100 degrees in the middle!) and they trough straight into it, they never recoil from the steam or the temperature of the hay...
 
Why do we take so much time and effort to change the feed of any horse very slowly so as to avoid colic, then feed them something which, i fit works as a laxative is doing so because it is scouring the gut, just occasionally? Whatever the whys and wherefores of the mineral imbalance, starch content, etc bran was seen as a high firbre feed compared to the cereal feeds fed to horses in hard work and was probably a lesser evil....we now feed much higher fibre feeds, we have other mash type feeds, and I see no need to feed it in this way. It can be palatable for fussy eaters if fed regularly in small quantities and could be used IF you really needed to balance high calcium levels.
 
Ours have a bit of bran each day to help get some phosphorus into them (our grazing is v high in calcium) and also feed fast fibre. Only 300g so not masses at all, a sack lasts us ages!

Fast fibre has hot water on it in winter - for a couple of reasons really. I can get more water into the feed quicker without winding up with gravy (I like to make sure they have plenty of water going into them in cold weather) and I don't like to feed a wet cold feed when it is v cold out, so something that is still a bit warm makes me worry less! Both fussy mares hoover it up so it certainly doesn't put them off!
 
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