Re: High fat diet

["Susan Garlinghouse" <suendavid@worldnet.att.net>]

> What qualifies as a high fat diet?

By most definitions about 10%, which for a 900 lb horse would be roughly 3-4
cups of oil a day.

 I'm currently feeding 1.3 cups of oil.
> Is that high?

Nope, that's probably around 4-5% or so.

 I was reading
> Hollander's book and he said that a high fat diet washes out  Vit A-D.

No, that's not quite true.  More recent research indicates that a good
amount of fat in the diet actually improves the absorption of fat-soluble
vitamins.

> How often would they need
> the shots for this?

No shots.  My opinion is that i a horse needs a needle, something else is
way wrong elsewhere.  If you're feeding an otherwise good diet, and either a
good-quality vit-min supplement, or your grain source is a complete mix
(Omolene, Ener-G and the like), then you don't need to add anything
else---in fact, you have to be a bit careful about adding vitamin A, it's
the fat-soluble vitamin *most* likely to produce toxicity (though you'd have
to try a bit).


He also said that horses on a high fat diet need to
> be "exercised often", but didn't
> say what often is. Does anyone know if this is true, how often often is
> and why?

Only because he'll be putting on or better maintaining weight, and so has
more energy available for work---but fat doesn't make them silly like too
much grain or protein can.  If anything, fat is a good solution for horses
that just get to be a pain in the ass on high-carbo rations.

susan g