Feed Companies - why the lack of information on ingredients and nutritional info?

A quote from my book on Equine Nutrition - Chapter of Common Feeding Myths.


"..as a general rule a horse or pony grazing on spring grass can take in large quantities of sugar without a problem. For example a 16hh, 500kg horse is abe to eat 12.5kg of grass a day .....this means an intake of 2.5kg of sugar."

Also "The horse evolved to live on grass and other pasture plants that are all high in sugars, and it is efficient at utlizing sugar which is broken down to glucose..."

Which book is this?
 
Any feed is about fiber, fat, protein and sugar / starch. No matter what color the bag has.

If we know this we don`t need to somebody doing us canned feed.

Just stick with real horsefeed, plenty of hay, if there is a need for beetpulp, oats and oil.
With a real good balancer on top the horse will do much better and stay healthy than with any feed frm the fast food industrie.

I agree with this however manufacturers don't always supply all the analysis data even for balancers and can be a minefield all by itself! :rolleyes:
 
Can't quote on phone but always believed that horses (& their digestive system) were designed for stalky fibre that broke down in the gut not rye grass ( assuming rye grass in line with sugar figures used) and that a lot of the problems came from the grazing we have because it differs from what horses are designed to eat?

I also wish labeling was clearer and info more readily available.
 
@ rollin

A horse will eat easy about 10% of the bodyweight from grass.

With the values you did post you must have mixed up someting. Also the sugar value can not be right with grass.

The way I understand your posting with 2.500 gram of sugar the grass has to have 20% of sugar next to every thing else.

But with about 10 - 12% of dry matter this is not possible because about 90% is water.

@ TPO

yes.

The reason is very easy. We dont have any nature grass. What we have nowerdays is a milk and fattening performance grass.

It is an industrial grass to serve the output orientatet farming industry. The grass is much more powerfull then 30 years ago.

This type of grass or grasing does not fit for special types of horses specially when uncotrolled access.

The grass and hay we have is in many cases more like a concentrate. The good thing with this, we don`t need many extra concentrates.

The labeling is on purpose. And then again, if they put on what is in this will also not tell the costumer about the quality.

The generic term does say nothing about quality and purity.

How to explain this?

Somewhere here there is the speach about a balancer that does contain a joint supplement (glucosamin).

This sounds great. The full job done in one shot.

But there is annother thing. As a producer or producing company you can buy glucosamin for a price between 5 Euro a KG and about 50 Euro a KG.

The difference is the bioactivity or the result / quality.

As a producer your not necessary on save, but when you want to attract a wide range of costumers, you will go for the cheap stuff.

Instead of head wracking arguments about quality, they go the easy route.

Less money more beer. The cheap pint.
 
I am no expert, which is why I keep good reference books on many aspects of stable mgt.

I quoted verbatum from The Horse Nutrition Bible, Ruth Bishop, 2003. If her stats are incorrect then she is the one who should be challenged.

She also includes interesting facts from other parts of the world, e.g. some countries feed S/B without soaking it.

The French feed crushed but uncooked barley and whole oats - soaked. I would not feed uncooked Barley. One local competition yard feeds 3 x a day like this but owner expected my 17hh stallion who was staying with her, could survive from 5.00pm to 7.00am on two slices of hay!!

On holiday in Hawaii I was surprised to see horses fed whole grains unsoaked including maize and a lot of it.
 
I wish English was my third language, or I even had a third language. :)

I don't believe horses evolved to eat modern grasses such as Rye, which by it's nature can build very large levels of sugars.
 
@ Amandap

well my second language is only a native language based slang :)

@ Lucy Priory

Well these measures are also dependent on the climate and the time of harvesting. So it is not a "general law".

My lab results from the last years hay did show anything from 18% of sugar in Rye to 10% in some Timothy.

The average was about 15% in Ireland and about 13% in Germany.

@ Amandaco

by European feed law they have to. But they are not keen to. And UK has a special status here, there is a lot of illegal stuff in regard to the European law on the market.

It is a bit of a wilderness.

On the other hand side, I believe that many nations are not really interestet in a unique process.

3 years ago there was a big hyperactive thing from the FEI in regard of doping and ADMR conform feeding, now it is upside down again because some industrial sponsors did react with pressure.

For an example Gastro Guard was Doping class 1 and banned, but Princess Haya is a wife of Sheik Mohammed and he is involved in the Gastro Guard.

Now you have to take the horse off of it 3 days before competing.

But for this you have to take care about what you are feeding in regard to herbs because some of them are now under the doping rules. And I do not mean special phytotherapeutic drugs, I mean ordinary herbs that can grow on your pasture.

English Plantain for an example is doping it is working on the respiratory system and it can grow in your field.
 
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