Re: RC: Re: Milk Pellets

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

> I know Bev Scott, who is a highly respected race trainer and
> Russian Arabian breeder supplemented her stallion Staccato with
> milk-based pellets; she swore it was the only thing that kept weight

Let me put it this way---supplementing with a cup of milk pellets a day for
a foundered horse won't do any *harm*.  It used to be thought that you
needed to keep foundered horses practically on starvation rations to keep
the body weight way down and thus minimize the weight having to be supported
by the laminitic tissue.  Now they know better, that while you don't want a
fat horse, you do absolutely have to provide a good plane of nutrition, to
supply the substrates necessary to allow the damaged tissue to regrow.  They
still don't know exactly what nutrition is required to get optimum growth,
there are alot of factors that can impede nutrient diffusion in inflamed
tissue like that.

Milk pellets *are* a good source of amino acids, and certain minerals (like
calcium) while at the same time being more or less non-existent in the
starches that can cause laminitis in the first place.  Are they the only
source, nope. I formulated a ration for a badly foundered horse a year or
two ago who absolutely could not tolerate grain and was a hard keeper to
boot (she foundered in the first place when a neighborhood kid wanted to "be
nice to the horsies", went onto the property and dumped an entire bag of
grain into the mare's feeder).  That ration consisted of free choice bermuda
grass hay, a pound or two of beet pulp, some vegetable oil, a cup or two of
soybean meal and a half dose of a vitamin-mineral mix that supplied 25 mg of
biotin.  She maintained weight well and eventually grew back a good foot
with the aid of an excellent farrier.

Would I used milk pellets to maintain weight in an otherwise healthy horse,
nah, I gotta a bunch of better tricks to try first.<g>  But for a foundered
horse, depending on the individual circumstances, it won't do any harm, but
there still might be better ways to go.

Susan G