My average Thoroughbred

Alfalfa hay

Cool calories is made with partially hydrogenated vegetable oil. You know, the stuff that is being taken out of everything made for humans because of the havoc it wrecks on the arteries. Personally, I would never feed that product to my horse. I think you're on the right track already, I would add beet pulp and rice bran powder to what you're feeding already, and switch about 20% of your daily forage to alfalfa. The nice thing about beet pulp is that you can feed quite a bit of it without causing digestive upset. If you didn't see results before, feed more. Mix it with your 12%, and add in 2 pounds of rice bran powder on top of that every day. The advice about being scoped for ulcers and adding a pro-biotic supplement is really good, and should probably be where you start.

Decrying Patially Hydrogenated vegetable oil in an equine diet sounds very hip and chic, but ANY feed additive has it's drawbacks. These drawbacks are not reported in the human health news and often go overlooked.


Rice Bran and the Performance Horse - Susan Evans Garlinghouse

However, before feeding more than a pound or two of rice bran, horse owners should understand the primary drawback, (as well as the one most commonly overlooked) which is its inherent mineral imbalance. Rice bran contains 0.02% calcium and 1.50 - 1.70% phosphorus, the highest organic source available. Calcium and phosphorus are only two of the many minerals which share an interrelationship in nutrition. While excess calcium in the diet has relatively little affect on the absorption of phosphorus, excess phosphorus in the diet will bind and prevent absorption of calcium. Thus, even though the diet may contain sufficient calcium, if adequate amounts are not absorbed, the results are as if the diet were deficient in calcium to begin with. A ration which contains more phosphorus than calcium is referred to as being "inverted" and may have serious effects on health.
For example, a horse eating 18 pounds of bermuda hay is being provided with approximately 25 grams of calcium and 16 grams of phosphorus, or a ratio of 1.56 (1.56 grams of dietary calcium for every 1 gram of phosphorus) which is a very good balance. Equine nutritionists recommend an ideal calcium-phosphorus ratio of between 1.2 - 2. Any ratio less than 1 is considered inverted and a serious imbalance in the equine ration.
Now add to this above ration five pounds of corn and the ratio drops to 1.1 and 0.5 percent 8---just a touch below the recommended level, but still acceptable. But what if we add just two pounds of rice bran? Now the ratio drops to .74---inverted and absolutely unacceptable. This means that for every day that this ration is fed, a significant calcium deficiency exists, despite apparently adequate amounts being supplied in the diet. In order to make up for the deficiency, the body will compensate by mobilizing calcium from storage depots in the bone. Over the lifetime and career of the horse, this may contribute to a decrease in bone density, as well as decreased calcium availability for muscular contraction during exercise. In a young, growing horse, an inverted ratio may also contribute to developmental orthopedic diseases.



www.equisearch.com/horses

However, beet pulp is not high calorie–it has only slightly more calories than good quality hay and less than an equivalent weight of oats. Beet pulp does contain about 10 percent protein, 0.8 percent calcium and 0.5 percent


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Beet pulp does help with digestion, hence the weight gain in some horses, but the increase in protein can make a horse "hot". This should be a consideration to the owner and what they expect from this food additive.


For me personally, worrying that my horse is eating something known to be detrimental to HUMANS is not more important than trying to balance my horse's rice bran ration to prevent blood chemical issues that can have KNOWN and serious health consequences to HORSES.

The article you sited is from 1999, rice bran has changed a lot since then. More Glow, Natural Glow, Purina Rice bran, etc. all have been balanced so that the calcium to phosphorus ratio is correct, only the cheap generic brands of rice bran do not do this. Even if you don't buy the high quality stabilized rice bran, beet pulp has a 6 to 1 Calcium to phosphorus ratio, which is above the desired amount for a performance horse. Adding rice bran in the correct ratio would actually balance out the beet pulp, which is why many people choose to feed this combination.

Partially hydrogenated oils prevent the human body from naturally metabolizing essential fatty acids, raise LDL cholesterol levels, and is directly linked with coronary heart disease and plaque accumulation on the arterial walls. It is a synthetic fat that makes people obese, and since it makes horses fat as well, I can make a logical deduction that it probably isn't that great for them either. It also makes sense that they sell it for horses, since partially hydrogenated oil has a longer shelf life, less odor and I'm sure less taste than regular vegetable oil. It's almost half the price to make, which means more profits for the business, and since equine nutrition is slow developing, it will probably be 15 years from now before we hear about the poor effects of trans fats on the equine heart, if we ever do.

I may not be the smartest person around, but I think it's pretty obvious that commercial pet products are funded by corporations that have stock holders and a primary interest in making a profit. Everyone should keep that in mind before choosing any product to feed, being hip or cutting edge has nothing to do with it.

Trans fat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ok I have done heaps of ex racehorses, that have come to me skinny as skinny can be. My recipie for success is limited grain, if you can more forage foods, good quality lucerne chaff with a little bit of oats or a multi vitamen feeed and OIL!!- I used 1/2cup sunflower a day per horse, split between 2 feeds. Cheap and works wonders. Imporves there feet and coat to.

Also if you can find a Copra feed, that's fantastic weight gain to!!

I find what im feeding now workd exellently on my OTTB and his crazy hard to put wieght on, the only down fall is I feed high energy so its heating. even if there names state otherwise

FED 3 TIMES A DAY-

2 dippers Lucerne & Oaten with Mollases chaff mix.
I find I like the mix of Lucerne/Oaten better and with the mollases its less dusty.

1 bowl dipper Jenco "Cool Control" grain
It has corn, lupens, maize, barley and a pellet full of magic weight gain stuff. Its working its magic, but the grains have the side effects on a thoroughbred does make him quite "hot"

1 bowl dipper Riverina "Cool Action Pellets"
Made out of barley, sorghum, wheat, bran, pollard, soybean meal, canola meal, cottonseed meal, molasses, vegetable oil, limestone, dicalcium phosphate, salt, choline chloride, Its basicly a pony pellet but complements the grain really well. It seems to be helping his weight extremely well.

1 bowl dipper of soked Copra *morning and night feeds only
Its basicly Coconut Meal and has to be soked. It doubles in size. It works well enough, It takes a bit to notice a difference but there is deffinatley a difference to be seen.


1 tea spoon of Epson Salt
2 tea spoons of Garlic granuels { * all aditives night feed only
1 cap full of Corn Oil

1 biscuit of Lucerne Rye mix hay at night.
(just what I am able to get at the moment, He seems to eat it)