Barabra Madill write:
> What about competition horses? My young horse (7 - first season of
> real WORK) has shivered (weather marginally justified this reaction) after
> 15 to 40 mile works. As soon as he got some food in him, he quickly stopped
> shivering.
Well, remember also that if the horse is sweating, he's losing alot of
body heat that way as well. That is, after all, the point of sweating,
and if he stops exercising, but is still damp, he's still losing heat
and so might shiver. Otherwise, getting hay into him is going to help
warm him up just as it will a horse just standing around in a pasture.
>
> However, wouldn't the "effort" of digestion predispose for muscle
> cramps? Remember our mothers cautioning us not to swim for an hour after
> eating?
Maybe one of the human ex phy people can comment on swimming after
meals, but I thought that was a wive's tale. Dunno. In the horse's
case, all the effort the horse has to put into digesting a meal is the
peristalsis action, which is the slow smooth-muscle contractions of
moving the food from one end to the other. The effort involved is
pretty minor compared to the energy being derived out of the food.
Also, having food in the GI tract is the trigger that releases a whole
slew of hormones that result in more blood being circulated to and
around the gut---which in turn keeps the gut moving. If the gut STOPS
moving because there's no food in the system to stimulate peristalsis,
and because too much blood is being shunted off to the muscles during
exercise, then gas begins to build up in the hindgut and what you get is
a colicky horse. That's why ride vets will listen to gut sounds (and
you should, too) and tell you to go get some hay into your horse if
things are too quiet---it's not that they're so interested if your horse
has had lunch yet. It's because a too-quiet gut means peristalsis has
slowed or stopped and is a strong indication that too much blood is
being shunted away from the gut because of muscle and tissue demands
elsewhere. You can usually take this as a pretty strong hint most of
the time that the horse is being over-ridden a bit (there are other
factors that can cause a quiet gut, as well). Have you noticed that if
poor gut sounds continue, you'll be advised to slow down? What they're
really telling you is that you're working your horse at a level of
exercise that is requiring blood to be shunted away from the guts and
preferentially to the muscles and other organs, and doing so is placing
your horse at risk of colic or other problems related to overexertion.
As usual, I'm getting off the topic a bit, but the reason why you want
to keep hay in your horse's gut is because doing so helps shunt blood
back to the digestive system, which increases peristalsis and largely
avoids colic problems. So the "effort" of digestion is effort you
definitely want in a hard-working horse.
Btw, the other thing to keep in mind is that the actual heat produced
during digestion really has nothing to do with the horse himself.
Horses and most other species lack the enzymes necessary to break the
specific bonds found in plant structural fiber. We can digest the
starch found in the cell contents, but not the cell walls themselves.
To be able to break these bonds and derive nutrients from the fibrous
portion of feeds, horses evolved to maintain a symbiotic population of
microorganisms in the gut that CAN break these particular bonds. So
when a load of hay hits the cecum, its the bugs that break the bonds and
in breaking those bonds, a certain amount of waste heat is thrown off as
well. This waste heat is the "heat of digestion" that is going to help
warm the horse, and it requires no extra effort on the part of the
horse, other than actually keeping the conveyer belt moving. That's why
feeding a more fibrous food to a cold horse will warm him up more than
feeding grain or soluble carbohydrates---there are more fibrous bonds to
be broken, thus more waste heat.
>
> Such a pity the "results" of my personal "experimentation" with the
> Pro-Bios won't be empirical -- don't know how one would be able to set up
> an "Apples, Apples" experiment.
Don't worry about it---alot of empirical studies come about because of
what they call anecdotal information---if enough people say, "hey, I did
this and it helped, so what's going on", then some researcher interested
in that topic will come up with a controlled study to see what happens
when all the conditions are consistent and any results shown MUST be due
to having fed this or done that. Doesn't always happen that way, there
are always more ideas for research projects than there is funding, but
that's one of the ways.
I assume that further conditioning will
> help my youngster handle oxygen better, therefore requiring less to run his
> muscles or keep him warm.
Well, that's part of it, but alot of what conditioning does is to
increase the capability of the horse to actually deliver as much oxygen
as possible---so you'll be using more total oxygen, if you want to get
really clinical about it, but your "miles per gallon" at the cellular
level will also increase. So, yes, he'll be using his resources more
efficiently, allowing him more muscular contractions, which will also
throw off more waste heat to keep him warm. On the other hand, at lower
levels of exercise, he'll actually be producing less total heat than an
unfit horse, just because he IS more efficient. However, don't worry
about it, as this is getting pretty clinical, and even walking is going
to produce enough heat to keep him reasonably warm. Excessive heat is
almost always more of a problem than is not enough heat production.
Just remember that the heat evolved is only happening actually during
exercise itself---once the exercise stops, the heat production tails off
pretty quickly as well and so the warming effect is gone, and if the
horse is wet and/or it's breezy, he can get chilly pretty quickly.
Possibly even faster that an unfit horse, because most really fit horses
have less of an insulating fat layer than does the average pasture
potato.
>
> Where does one obtain the specifically Equine product?
Equine Bene-Bac is manufactured by PetAg, but any good probiotic will do
the trick. Personally, I prefer feeding a probiotic that supplies more
than one or two species of microorganism, as different "bugs" specialize
in different types of feed, and the optimum microbial population for a
horse eating Minnesota-grown canary grass is going to be different than
a California horse eating bermuda and alfalfa. The individual horse's
digestive system will automatically develop the optimal microflora
population if given a choice of substrates to pick and choose from, so
it just makes sense to me to provide a variety of bugs and let the horse
do what he's evolved to do.
>
> Thank you for your contributions to Ridecamp,
You're very welcome. Hope this helps.
Susan Garlinghouse