Please humour me - feeding bran...

[martlin]

crikey! No need to argue, really

 

[LizzieJ]

Useful to get a fussy eater to eat meds, that's the only reason I use it

 

[Ali2]

I'm feeding it because of it's phosphorous content, in addition to phosphate, and it's palatability, as part of my forage mineral balancing strategy

 

[applecart14]

All I know about bran is what you could write on the back of a postage stamp.
That is that its good for horses as a 'pick me up' and if you feed large quantities you will have a calcium/phosperous imbalance, the ratio is 2:1, so you have to be careful. From recollection (night school horse care course many years ago) you can feed limestone flour to counteract this.

I know a lot of people feed it. I think its a cheap 'filler' but not much else.

 

[BlueCakes]

... I feed it because my horse has loose droppings, and after spending loads every few days on Probiotic yoghurt, Bran works just aswell for a fraction of the price and can be stored dry in the feed room with everything else. I am aware of the nutritional values and he is not a young horse and seems fine on it so I will continue to feed it. And I Hate when Previous yard owners have insisted I shouldn't and have often noticed them point blank not feeding it at all!! I've thought about it and with just a little bit of bran everyday my horse is just fine thank you very much. (We are now in a lovely home whhere this does not happen btw! ) x x x

 

[Miss L Toe]

the horse's condition is POOR and it needs a high calorie feed that can be given in small quantities as it is a poor eater and gets rather overfaced with too big a portion, so gives up.
Financial implications are unimportant as feed is included in the livery fee.

Readymash?
A few buckets of different feeds, like short chop grass and Dengie Hi Fi Chaff [with herbs included]
100gm charnwood milling micronised linseed meal
Charnwood milling micronised beet with carrot and parsnip flakes [20 mins soaking]
Bran of the the old sort [broad bran flakes] is not available in the UK any more, and the modern stuff is meally, that , and the fact that it is unbalanced makes it more of a problem to feed than otherwise.
I feed a pet scoop per day of Mare and Youngstock, it is palatable, has loads of minerals, also some milk powder, and is concentrated goodness, all horses love it and it has a mis of straights.

 

[Miss L Toe]

deleted

 

[JenHunt]

personally, Never.

modern bran contains next to nothing of any particular value to the horse. The little fibre it provides is digested in the stomach and not in the hind gut, Where on earth do you get that idea from?

see the below.

I really don't think any salesman would tout those facts. My information comes from scientific sources.

The National Research Council (US) book Nutrient Requirements of Horses (5th Ed.)

 

[sbloom]

I knew that limestone flour is pretty bio-unavailable, didn't know that the phos in bran also was the same, quite funny that we used to feed two such bio-unavailable sources of minerals to balance each other out. And a demo of the way that we do learn and improve feeding over time.

It appears that "modern" feeding can be rather beneficial, the feeding of fats means that glycogen is better available for fast twitch muscles in anaerobic work. Apparently moving at less than 650m/minute (about 40kph?) needs very little glycogen and is best served by fat utilisation. How many of us get our horses up to that speed for more than a minute or two?!

Again and again we read that horses are not well suited to digest starch to convert to glycogen - it takes a horse up to twice as long as a human to restore muscle glycogen levels despite being fed grain ie starch. Most horses do not need starch.

Mike - I only agree that filling a horse with fibre may mean there is no room for other feeds, but most horses enjoy the taste of hard feed more than hapy, so that is only a problem with a fewe "fussy" horses. Any hard feed is effectively a subsititute for forage that would otherwise be fed, and with hay having a DE of about 7, how can you say that loads of feeds have a lower energy level? If that was the case we'd be seeing people finding it a breeze to reduce the weight of their lammi type horses.

I also agree that for many good doer leisure horses a balancer is all that is needed. But not all horses are such good doers. And most are UNDERFED protein - I'd love to see research that says horses are getting too much good quality protein.

Horses used to be worked. Hard. They also did not have access to the sugar rich cattle type pasture that most horses now graze. They were either on old meadows with varied herbage, or in stables with hay. It's just like a modern pro athlete who can sink carbs to their heart's content, but the average office worker, even if they're inthe gym for a couple of hours a week, cannot. A horse being ridden maybe 6 hours a week does not mean it needs an old fashioined diet, just because it worked back then, even if that work is fairly intense.

 

[Mike007]

You need to be carefull when refering to foreign textbooks ,that they are talking about the same thing. The Bran we have in the UK has had prettywell all of the flour removed leaving almost nothing that can be broken down except by bacterial action ,and this does not take place in the stomach.You wont find much conclusive data in textbooks either regarding the levels of available Phosphorous because what research that has been done is a bit too recent.A lot of the "information " in this sort of publication is no more than an educated guess. Feeding trials are extremely complicated and expensive so there are often no true figures for a lot of things.Start mixing more than one ingredient into the feed and the task becomes just about impossible.

 

[Mike007]

I knew that limestone flour is pretty bio-unavailable, didn't know that the phos in bran also was the same, quite funny that we used to feed two such bio-unavailable sources of minerals to balance each other out. And a demo of the way that we do learn and improve feeding over time.

It appears that "modern" feeding can be rather beneficial, the feeding of fats means that glycogen is better available for fast twitch muscles in anaerobic work. Apparently moving at less than 650m/minute (about 40kph?) needs very little glycogen and is best served by fat utilisation. How many of us get our horses up to that speed for more than a minute or two?!

Again and again we read that horses are not well suited to digest starch to convert to glycogen - it takes a horse up to twice as long as a human to restore muscle glycogen levels despite being fed grain ie starch. Most horses do not need starch.

Mike - I only agree that filling a horse with fibre may mean there is no room for other feeds, but most horses enjoy the taste of hard feed more than hapy, so that is only a problem with a fewe "fussy" horses. Any hard feed is effectively a subsititute for forage that would otherwise be fed, and with hay having a DE of about 7, how can you say that loads of feeds have a lower energy level? If that was the case we'd be seeing people finding it a breeze to reduce the weight of their lammi type horses.

I also agree that for many good doer leisure horses a balancer is all that is needed. But not all horses are such good doers. And most are UNDERFED protein - I'd love to see research that says horses are getting too much good quality protein.

Horses used to be worked. Hard. They also did not have access to the sugar rich cattle type pasture that most horses now graze. They were either on old meadows with varied herbage, or in stables with hay. It's just like a modern pro athlete who can sink carbs to their heart's content, but the average office worker, even if they're inthe gym for a couple of hours a week, cannot. A horse being ridden maybe 6 hours a week does not mean it needs an old fashioined diet, just because it worked back then, even if that work is fairly intense.

The work on Glycogen utilisation you refer to was done on thoroughbred sprinters I believe. The speed itself is irrelevant ,its just the sort of speed you need to get that breed to .
Hay with a DE of 7 would be pretty poor stuff indeed.8/9 is more usual for good hay.