The previous article was about the 3 things you need to build muscle in your horse; work, to stimulate the muscle to want to grow; leucine, the branch chain amino acid that switches on muscle protein synthesis; and a ready supply of the other amino acids needed to build new muscle. Which left us with […]
If you want to help your horse build more muscle, you might need to pay more attention to your horse’s branch chain amino acid intake. Muscle is a beautiful thing, be it on your horse or yourself. It provides strength, power, speed and it looks great. It is also very functional, providing stability and balance […]
Have you ever wondered about the impact of cold weather conditions on a horse’s calorie requirements? Although poorly documented, observations suggest that environmental factors play a significant role in how much energy horses need. This means that if you’ve ever asked yourself how many calories does my horse need in winter, the answer could depend […]
In a word, yes, phytoestrogens affect mare fertility! Both industry observation and published science support this. BUT, we need to be very careful not to just throw all phytoestrogens (which are simply estrogen like compounds found in plants) into the one bucket. There are many different phytoestrogens, but they don’t all affect fertility. Some, like […]
This little vitamin, B6, is not talked about much in equine nutrition, mainly because we still don’t know exactly what a horse’s dietary requirement is. We also assume a large part of their requirement is fulfilled by the Vitamin B6 produced by the bacteria in their hindgut. We do know B6 is important for building […]
We all hear the term ‘organic mineral’ being used in horse nutrition. But what does it actually mean? Its definition is pretty basic… an organic mineral is simply a mineral that is attached to something that contains carbon. For anyone who can stretch their mind back far enough to the sometimes-dreaded chemistry classroom, you might […]
It has been known for a very long time that oats and horses just seem to get along well. Of all of the cereal grains we can feed to horses, oats are the only grain that can be fed safely without being cooked. Why? Horses are able to digest a large portion of the starch […]
Over the last few years questions about teff (Eragrostis tef) hay and its suitability for laminitic horses have started to come up and it appears production of teff hay and therefore availability is on the rise. Here is a very mini review of the published research on teff hay in horses that we can find: […]
What is the ideal meal size for a horse? We have all been told ‘little and often’ when it comes to feeding horses. But why? Well, when you consider horses are ‘grazers’ and their gut has been designed to work best with small amounts being consumed constantly over long periods of the day and night […]
4 things to consider when feeding chickpeas to horses Chickpeas do contain anti-nutritional factors including trypsin inhibitor, which is the same as the main anti-nutritional factor found in soybeans. Trypsin inhibitor does exactly as its name suggests, it inhibits/stops trypsin, an enzyme in the small intestine which chops up protein into smaller pieces so it […]
