Re: Beetpulp based feed

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

Since that's what they're grown for, fresh sugar beets have a lot of sucrose
in them (which when processed, becomes white sugar), and I'd be a little
concerned about feeding a significant amount of sugar to them.  Horses
really aren't evolved to consume alot of soluble sugars (which includes the
starch in cereal grains of any sort) and its pretty easy to predispose them
to some tummy ache problems, laminitis, etc.

However, as long as you werent planning on making it the mainstay of the
daily ration, they make fine treats.  The collecting depot for most of the
northern Colorado sugar beet harvest is about 100 yards from my door and a
couple thousand tons of them get piled up there every fall.  Astonishingly,
a box of them seem to materialize over at my place <g> and get cut up for
treats for the horses (who make absolute imbeciles out of themselves trying
to get to them).

So, IMO, good for treats, probably not as a substantial part of the diet.
If you were actually going to go to the trouble of planting a crop for your
guys, I'd just as soon grow carrots for the carotene content.

Susan G
----- Original Message -----
From: <RhndLev@cs.com>
To: <ridecamp@endurance.net>
Sent: Saturday, March 17, 2001 4:38 PM
Subject: RC: Beetpulp based feed


> Has anyone tried just planting beets and feeding them to the horses?
Beets
> grow pretty well where we live and I was wondering about planting a bunch
of
> them for the horses.  Anything I need to watch out for if I feed fresh
beets
> to horses and not just the dried pulp?
>
> Rhonda
>
>
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