> Which brings me to something I've wondered a bit about, but not
> lost any sleep over: What would the horse get from barly that
> they don't get from oats and corn?
I don't feed a lot of grain, I live in a hot climate (southern Arizona)
and my horses are for the most part easy keepers (except for my nursing mare),
however I do feed some grain and I prefer rolled barley for several reasons.
First is that many horses get 'hot' meaning spooky or high-tempered on oats,
the reason for this is that oats contain a substance that in some horses acts
like a phyto-toxin and makes them high strung or nervous, for these horses
switching to barley makes a big difference in temperament because barley does
not contain the substance (can't remember what the substance is). My horses
seem to be a little susceptible so I avoid oats, kind of like someone with
a hyperactive kid avoiding refined sugar and bleached flour. Second I have
always associated oats with hot feed, meaning something to feed when it is
cold but not when it is hot as our temps are so much of the year. Third,
rolled barley keeps so much better in the heat than sweet feed or corn, both
of which tend to get moldy easily. We have a dry climate only half of the
summer, the second half of the summer we get what we call our monsoon rains
(if we're lucky) during the monsoon our humidities get very high along with
the heat and feed can spoil easily. For the same reason I don't feed oil in
the summer, with the heat it goes rancid too easily. Rolled barley is slightly
higher in Phosphorus than oats but if you feed any amount of alfalfa that's not
a problem (I feed roughly 25% alfalfa, the rest is bermuda).
Tracy and everybody