RE: [RC] Rice bran vs ground flax seed - Susan E. Garlinghouse, D.V.M.
It depends on how much rice bran you
needed to feed to maintain weight. Flax seed is a nifty source of
calories and fatty acids, but the oil can also be a pretty powerful
cathartic. Depending on their individuality, some horses will start
getting a little loose behind with no more than a half cup or so, other horses
tolerate several pounds of it a day. My suggestion would be to start out
with a few tablespoons once or twice a day and gradually increase to maybe a
cup or so in the morning and another at night. More if you like, there’s
no down side to it in reasonable amounts as long as the horses don’t
develop diarrhea.
If you want to substitute the flax for
rice bran, very roughly, about one generous cup of ground flax will replace the
fat in two scant cups of rice bran. My recommendation would be to replace
*part* of the rice bran with the
flax seed, and mix both of them into a nice, sloppy mash of beet pulp.
My advice is to keep rice bran (even those
balanced with calcium) to two pounds of less per day per horse.
Susan Garlinghouse, DVM, MS
From: ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ridecamp-owner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Sherman Sent: Saturday, March 26, 2005
9:03 PM To: ridecamp@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [RC] Rice bran vs ground
flax seed
Since rice bran has the potential to
cause a problem with the calcium/phosphorous ratio, would it be reasonable
to replace it with ground flax seed. I feed the rice bran to help keep weight
on one of my horses and have recently added the flax seed due to some skin
itchiness on a couple of other horses, so I decided to give it to all of them.
It made me start wondering about the possibility of just using flax seed. Any
ideas on this?
