Proteins - well worth a read

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JillA

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I know I am always banging on about proteins, but for the first time in over 50 years of horse ownership I have come across one who really does need supplementing with them. This article really explains why - all the oils and fibre and carbs are well known as being required in the equine diet but proteins seem to be ignored by a lot of owners/feed manufacturers.

https://theequinepractice.com/protein/
 
I think one of the mistakes that people make with very fat horses on diets is that they still need enough high quality protein .
On restricted diets they don't get enough and this makes them lazy and sluggish and means that their work generally does not help the weight loss as much as it could .
 
This is the one that really blew my mind because I grew up with a bunch of backyard cowboys who thought protein was the devil. And now when you see people with horses who are a bit ribby/bony on top with a giant belly asking how to put weight on.... well no, the horse is not underweight, he's under-muscled and probably not getting as much out of his exercise as he could if he had proteins to build those muscles.
 
JillA said:
I know I am always banging on about proteins, but for the first time in over 50 years of horse ownership I have come across one who really does need supplementing with them. This article really explains why - all the oils and fibre and carbs are well known as being required in the equine diet but proteins seem to be ignored by a lot of owners/feed manufacturers.

https://theequinepractice.com/protein/
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I've not read it yet but my horses mane hadn't grown back after rug rubs and his tail was falling out in my hand to the point I stopped touching it. I changed his feed (he's cushings) so by chance changed him onto topspec fibre plus cubes and senior lite balancer, after about 6 weeks his tail stopped falling out and his man started to grow back, so I mentioned to my vet and he said it was probably the protein in the balancer that was helping, I feel terrible that my horse wasn't getting enough prior to this as I didn't realise.
 
Very interesting article! I probably need to add protein. In fact I definitely need to add protein. He has been on a restricted diet since two bouts of lami 3 years ago (negative for Cushings) and although his weight is spot on and his overall condition is good, his top line has suffered.
 
HandBR said:
Very interesting article! I probably need to add protein. In fact I definitely need to add protein. He has been on a restricted diet since two bouts of lami 3 years ago (negative for Cushings) and although his weight is spot on and his overall condition is good, his top line has suffered.
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I wonder if anyone has ever looked into the effects of restricted protein as the real underlying cause for muscle waste in cushings horses....
 
ohmissbrittany said:
I wonder if anyone has ever looked into the effects of restricted protein as the real underlying cause for muscle waste in cushings horses....
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Mine also has cushings and have seen a massive improvement in his weight and topline since him being on the Topspec balancer/feed
 
Goldenstar said:
I think one of the mistakes that people make with very fat horses on diets is that they still need enough high quality protein .
On restricted diets they don't get enough and this makes them lazy and sluggish and means that their work generally does not help the weight loss as much as it could .
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I made exactly this mistake with mine.
 
I have wondered for a long time why we have such an explosion of Cushings, laminitis, and skin diseases. This might be the answer. FrankieCob's fellow has been on a starvation diet for a long time. Can someone point her to this, she has me on user ignore.
 
ycbm said:
I have wondered for a long time why we have such an explosion of Cushings, laminitis, and skin diseases. This might be the answer. FrankieCob's fellow has been on a starvation diet for a long time. Can someone point her to this, she has me on user ignore.
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You think Cushings disease, laminitis and skin diseases are caused by protein deficiency?
 
Can't say I am going to rush to fill my horses with soya or whey protein as recommended in the article. I think mine do pretty well on what they are designed to eat tbh. If you read the back of virtually any compound horse feed there is a good % of protein in it, and even though it's not reasonable to analyse every bale of hay or haylage, if it's good quality the chances are it's probably adequate for the average horse's needs if fed in normal quantities.

It was in the news only this week that the current fad for humans eating loads of protein is totally OTT and people are consuming much more than they need... could well be walking into a new problem if we do the same to our horses.
 
They explained the packaged feeds. Apparently some of them add urea, which is not a good source. The trouble with hay these days, and haylage, is that most of it is made of fast growing, sugar filled Italian ryegrass, so there is no breadth of species. Ten years ago Pete Ramey was advising that the way to feed for good feet was a mix of species in the forage.

I'm getting questions popping into my head reading the article.

Why do cases of leukoclastic vasculitis seem to hit the horses which are the types to be on restricted diets?

Why are there more atypical laminitis cases in horses which aren't overweight than I've ever heard of?

Why is there an absolute explosion in 'too young' horses with Cushings?

Something is going on, it would be good to see some research into whether protein is involved.
 
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Cortez said:
You think Cushings disease, laminitis and skin diseases are caused by protein deficiency?
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I have no evidence that they can't be, and something has changed from when we were young, hasn't it Cortez?

FC's horse has been on a successful weight reduction diet and exercise plan for months, there is no reason for him to go laminitic now.

Some research would be good into whether grazing on tiny paddocks, single species forage and packaged feeds are contributing, either by lack of protein quality or on some other way.
 
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Regarding this bit of the article:

"The LAA’s are the EAA’s that are found in limited supplies in nature. They are lysine, methionine and threonine. Looking at the 3 limiting EAA’s and what they do in the horse will help you understand why it is important to give enough of a high quality protein to your horses every day.

• Lysine – promotes bone growth in foals and maintenance of the connective tissue (bones, joints, tendons, ligaments, etc) in mature horses. A deficiency may cause a variety of developmental orthopedic diseases in the legs of young horses and in adults may cause the breakdown of suspensory ligaments, tendons, joints and other structural components.
• Methionine – growth and maintenance of hair coat and hoof structures. A deficiency often causes a poor hair coat and poor hoof quality (cracks, crumbles). See more below.
• Threonine – overall growth, muscle mass maintenance, production of adrenaline and other important hormones. A deficiency often causes poor body condition, a poor TLS and lack of energy.

You might recognize methionine because it is often added to hoof supplement such as biotin. It is one of 2 EAA’s that have sulfur in it. Sulfur has the ability to attach to the sulfur of another amino acid with a sulfur molecule and this is called a disulfide bond. This bond causes the amino acid to fold upon itself and become structurally stronger."

(Source: https://theequinepractice.com/protein/ )

Apologies if I'm being especially thick here, but is "sulphur" the same as sulphur - as in, the stuff sometimes added to pig oil, and which causes very bad skin reactions in some horses? Only if that were the case, then perhaps feeding biotin as a supplement is also risky? I don't have enough science to know whether that's correct.

Anyhow, it's certainly an interesting read. As an aside, my hay supplier always says that haylage is higher in protein than hay. I am far more inclined to feed haylage than soya, whey, or flipping coconut!
 
Yes it's the same sulphur but there is a huge difference between sticking it on skin and feeding a few molecules of it bind into other chemicals in food.

Haylage made from the same grass field is lower orn calories and lower in protein than hay made from the same field, weight for weight. This is because it contains much more water.
 
ycbm said:
They explained the packaged feeds. Apparently some of them add urea, which is not a good source. The trouble with hay these days, and haylage, is that most of it is made of fast growing, sugar filled Italian ryegrass, so there is no breadth of species. Ten years ago Pete Ramey was advising that the way to feed for good feet was a mix of species in the forage.

I'm getting questions popping into my head reading the article.

Why do cases of leukoclastic vasculitis seem to hit the horses which are the types to be on restricted diets?

Why are there more atypical laminitis cases in horses which aren't overweight than I've ever heard of?

Why is there an absolute explosion in 'too young' horses with Cushings?

Something is going on, it would be good to see some research into whether protein is involved.
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Urea is not a Protein!!!1
What half wit would ever put Urea in a horse feed its the quickest way of killing them! It can be used in some cheap cattle feeds as they can use urea to produce protein in the gut however you never let them any where near any horse.

Maybe some of the listed issues arent helped by the absolute obsession many owners have for heaping in the supplements when possibly 95% or more? have no use whatsoever
 
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ycbm said:
Yes it's the same sulphur but there is a huge difference between sticking it on skin and feeding a few molecules of it bind into other chemicals in food.

Haylage made from the same grass field is lower orn calories and lower in protein than hay made from the same field, weight for weight. This is because it contains much more water.
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Dont start on that misleading theory. Haylage on a dry matter basis has higher nutrients than hay . Dry matter is what you feed by as it is the basis of all ration calculations.
 
popsdosh said:
Dont start on that misleading theory. Haylage on a dry matter basis has higher nutrients than hay . Dry matter is what you feed by as it is the basis of all ration calculations.
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It's not a theory, it's a fact. I did a lot of research the last time you argued with me about it.

Nobody I know feeds by dry matter. Who dries out their haylage before weighing and feeding it :D ? Who even knows what the water content of their haylage is, to work out the dry matter values?
 
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popsdosh said:
Dont start on that misleading theory. Haylage on a dry matter basis has higher nutrients than hay . Dry matter is what you feed by as it is the basis of all ration calculations.
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That's what my hay and haylage supplier says too. I've certainly found that my young cob builds muscle far more readily on haylage than on hay, so that's proof enough for me :)

I don't feed supplements, unless you count salt or linseed.
 
ycbm said:
It's not a theory, it's a fact. I did a lot of research the last time you argued with me about it.

Nobody I know feeds by dry matter. Who dries out their haylage before weighing and feeding it :D ? Who even knows what the water content of their haylage is, to work out the dry matter values?
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My large bale haylage averages at 65% moisture, which is a reduction from the initial 75 to 80% of newly cut forage.
My large bale hay averages at 18% moisture, again down from the initial 75 to 80% mentioned above.

Calculating down from that isn't really very difficult. But you're welcome to imagine that it involves a giant hairdryer rather than mathematics :)
 
ycbm said:
It's not a theory, it's a fact. I did a lot of research the last time you argued with me about it.

Nobody I know feeds by dry matter. Who dries out their haylage before weighing and feeding it :D ? Who even knows what the water content of their haylage is, to work out the dry matter values?
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Bloody hell wasted three years at uni then. How do you compare one food to another if not on an equal reference point.
The only VALID method of comparing feed value of hay to Haylage is on a dry matter basis wont have got that far with horses yet but all our grassland yields are expressed as kgs/DM/ha as its the only meaningful datum point to compare. Same used for any forage crop. Funnily enough the same crop of grass cut on the same day will produce more DM/ha as haylage than as hay due to the loses incurred the longer it lays on the ground
 
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popsdosh said:
Bloody hell wasted three years at uni then. How do you compare one food to another if not on an equal reference point.
The only VALID method of comparing feed value of hay to Haylage is on a dry matter basis wont have got that far with horses yet but all our grassland yields are expressed as kgs/DM/ha as its the only meaningful datum point to compare. Same used for any forage crop. Funnily enough the same crop of grass cut on the same day will produce more DM/ha as haylage than as hay due to the loses incurred the longer it lays on the ground
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Horse owners don't feed by dry matter in general. They feed by weight or volume. They don't compare one batch of forage with another as they have no means to do so. You're a farmer. Maybe you know the dry matter value of the food you feed your cows. I don't know and have never known a single horse owner who has the luxury of being able to do the same.

Most haylage contains so much more water than most hay, that it will contain a higher lower feed value AS FED by weight our volume than hay made from the same field at the same time.


Urea, ref your earlier post, is added to feed as a non protein nitrogen, which works for increasing protein for ruminants but not for horses. But it can fool protein tests into recording that there is more protein in food than there is.
 
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KittenInTheXmasTree said:
My large bale haylage averages at 65% moisture, which is a reduction from the initial 75 to 80% of newly cut forage.
My large bale hay averages at 18% moisture, again down from the initial 75 to 80% mentioned above.

Calculating down from that isn't really very difficult. But you're welcome to imagine that it involves a giant hairdryer rather than mathematics :)
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Somebody had to get the hairdryer out to give you those moisture percentage figures to use in your calculations :)

You're the first horse owner I've 'met' who works out the dry matter volumes of what to feed their horses. I'm impressed. I can't be bothered, myself. I feed low sugar Timothy ad lib instead.
 
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Cortez said:
You think Cushings disease, laminitis and skin diseases are caused by protein deficiency?
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Exercise is why we see more of these conditions far more horses than there used to be go through life with inadequate exercise all the time from birth to death they never move as much as they need to be healthy .
 
ycbm said:
Somebody had to get the hairdryer out to give you those moisture percentage figures to use in your calculations :)

You're the first horse owner I've 'met' who works out the dry matter volumes of what to feed their horses. I'm impressed. I can't be bothered, myself. I feed low sugar Timothy ad lib instead.
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How do you know its low sugar ? If its tested what is the sugar expressed as ? I guess percentage in the DM!
 
ycbm said:
Horse owners don't feed by dry matter in general. They feed by weight or volume. They don't compare one batch of forage with another as they have no means to do so. You're a farmer. Maybe you know the dry matter value of the food you feed your cows. I don't know and have never known a single horse owner who has the luxury of being able to do the same.
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One of my hay suppliers & producers gets the forage analysed and can supply a data sheet each season.

The stuff I'm getting now is what I would call old fashioned meadow hay, wrapped, it's like pretty dry haylage.I don't have the figures for that up front but I kind of do, indirectly - my horses diets are based around high quality forage, and if they put on or lose condition then that gives me feedback about the feed value of my supply.
 
popsdosh said:
How do you know its low sugar ? If its tested what is the sugar expressed as ? I guess percentage in the DM!
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I'm sorry I didn't make it clear. I was referring to the breed of grass, Popsdosh. Timothy as a breed is much lower sugar than ryegrass, but I'm sure you know that already.
 
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