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Thanks!  Yes, that helps a lot.   This horse can drop weight pretty  
quickly .. not an easy keeper - so I was concerned about pulling his  
rice bran.

His normal diet is free-feed bermuda hay, plus "supplements", which  
are 3 lbs alfalfa pellets, split between AM and PM, same for the rice  
bran.  In the evening, he also gets 1 - 1.5 lbs dry wt beet pulp,  
soaked.  The alfalfa pellets and rice bran get mixed into his beet  
pulp in the evening, because otherwise he won't touch it.  He won't  
eat it with just the alfalfa pellets, either -- he wants the rice  
bran.  He doesn't get beet pulp in the morning, because he is boarded  
out and I don't want to get up at 4:30 AM every morning :)

The only reason I included the alfalfa pellets was (a) they are  
cheaper than the Natural Glo and (b) there is usually alfalfa at the  
vet checks at our local ride.  I've read your article on alfalfa, so  
he doesn't get much.

This helped a lot.  The only thing I was planning on doing special  
was adding beet pulp to his AM feeding, and making it sloppier.    
Sounds like I can just stick to plan.

Thanks!

On Sep 16, 2007, at 2:41 PM, Susan E. Garlinghouse, DVM wrote:

> > Got a question:  I was recently told that I should stop feeding rice
> > bran before a ride, but I didn't get any details as to why.
>
> > I feed Natural Glo, which is balanced for calcium, so it shouldn't
> > throw the Ca:P ratio off.  Is there some other reason to not feed
> > rice bran the week before a ride?
>
> > Thanks
>
> That may or may not have evolved from my recommendations to stop  
> feeding
> fats a few days before, and also during, a ride.  Fats have a high  
> satiety
> factor, (call it the "cheeseburger effect"), meaning that a high- 
> fat meal
> satisfies the appetite for longer than a low-fat meal does.  It  
> happens in
> horses as well as people, and in horses, lots of fat may suppress  
> forage
> intake immediately prior to and during a ride.  Forage has a much more
> critical role in maintaining gut motility, and also as a secondary  
> role in
> driving water intake---both a lot more important than anything fats  
> have to
> offer during a ride weekend.  Fats have their advantages as a  
> consistent
> part of the diet, but offer few advantages if fed immediately  
> before or
> during the ride itself.  So even if you're already offering hay (and
> presumably you are), you want to do everything you can to encourage  
> maximum
> intake and not suppress his appetite for forage in any way.  Does  
> that make
> sense?
>
> While I don't recommend actually adding fats to the ration before  
> or during
> the ride, I'm mostly referring to pure fats---adding vegetable oil,  
> Cool
> Calories, cocasoy, those sort of things.  I'm not as concerned  
> about feeds
> that are a normal part of the horses' ration, which coincidentally  
> provide a
> fair amount of fat---rice bran, Ultium and other high-fat formulated
> performance feeds, flax, sunflower seeds, those sort of things.  In  
> those
> cases, you're probably not actually feeding all that much pure  
> fat.  If you
> also balance it against the benefits of keeping the horse's ration
> consistent, and presumably feeding him something he likes and will  
> eat well
> at a ride, then I wouldn't get too excited about really restricting or
> removing every scrap of rice bran from his ration the week before a  
> ride.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Susan Garlinghouse, DVM
>
>
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Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp

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