By: Shelagh Niblock P.A.S.
As someone who worked professionally in the field of equine nutrition for many years I know how hard feed manufacturers work at finding safe, suitable feed ingredients for the products they manufacture for horses, especially the metabolic ones. Ingredients in manufactured horse feed like improved straw, oat feed and soy hulls are not "fillers" but ingredients included to facilitate the manufacture of product that are safe and effective for horses. They are widely used in many equine feeds and the purpose of them is multi – faceted. They are correctly called ingredient “carriers”.
Why use carriers for feed ingredients?
Typically ingredients like ground wheat, oats or barley are used in equine feeds to provide a carrier for other nutrients that must stay distributed throughout the entire product. Many of the ingredients that provide nutrients such as minerals and vitamins, need a carrier of some sort so they remain evenly mixed and distributed through the feed. Manufacturing feeds without an ingredient carrier means that a homogeneous product, where every mouthful is the same, cannot be guaranteed. Part of the quality assurance the manufacturer provides for the product is choosing carriers that work well for the horse the feed intended for.
Carriers can facilitate pelleting as well. Vitamin and mineral premixes generally do not make a good durable pellet. The inclusion of a carrier ingredient can help ensure the product is in a form that is palatable to horses and easy to feed for the owner.
Carriers reduce dust and increase palatability. Mineral mixes made without an ingredient carrier would be almost dangerous to feed due to the very dusty nature of the ingredients. Carrier ingredients like ground cereal grains settle the dust and help ensure the nutrients in the product go down the horse’s throat and not up their nose. Carriers can greatly improve the palatability of the product, again helping to ensure that the feed actually is consumed by the horse and is not left at the bottom of the bucket.
So what about ingredients like oats hull, wheat or oat feed, and improved straw?
These ingredients have seen much greater use in equine feeds recent years because of the concerns about feeding our horses too much readily available carbohydrate. Ground cereals are high in starch. Fibrous ingredients such as improved straw, ground forages, and wheat and oat feed are good carriers and low in starch. They are palatable but safe for even metabolic horses.
What is “nutritionally improved straw”?
Cereal straw by themselves are have very little nutritional value for horses. Processed straws render the complex carbohydrates in them more available to hind gut for fermentation and they also provide excellent physical fibre to promote good gut health. Straw does not break down and become more digestible in the presence of acids, but it does in the presence of reagents like hydrated lime. These reagents are used to make the straw more digestible in the hind gut for the horse. There is absolutely no caustic agent in the improved straw when it is used in the production of equine complete feeds and supplements but it does have more value as a safe energy source for the metabolic horse.
The process used to make the straw more hind gut friendly for horses is no different than what we would do with many of the food we eat to increase digestibility and palatability. For example, cabbage by itself is not tremendously digestible in the human GI tract. Preserving it by packing it in a crock with salt and allowing it to ferment preserves it and improves the digestibility. The acidity of the product makes it better and more digestible for humans. We would never think that because fermented cabbage or “sauerkraut” came out of an acidic environment that it was bad for us. Neither is nutritionally improved straw bad for horses.
What about Oat Feed and Wheat Feed?
Oat Feed and Wheat feed are both by-products of the milling industry and they are the high fibre, low protein part of the grain that humans don't eat. Yes, they are by-products of human food processing but that does not make them bad nor does it make them "fillers". In North America the by-products of the milling industry for food for humans are called by a variety of names depending on how much fibre they contain and what part of the milling process they were sourced from. Wheat mids, Wheat shorts, Millrun, Oat Bran, Oat Hulls, Wheat bran and Soy Hulls are all common feed ingredients found in equine feeds. They tend to be safer for the horse requiring a low NSC feed when used as ingredient carriers due to their high fibre and low starch content. An increasing amount of feeds are utilizing ingredients that although a little higher is starch, can be used in small amounts and, still work well as ingredient carriers. Ground peas is one such ingredient and in some parts of the world dried potato starch is being used successfully as an ingredient carrier in low NSC feeds.
Are ingredients used as carriers in equine feed formulation “fillers”?
The term “fillers” implies a useless ingredient and the selection of hind gut digestible fibres used now as safe carriers for equine feeds are far from useless. They serve the purpose of ensuring the feed is uniformly mixed and the important ingredients stay evenly distributed in the bag. They enhance the palatability and the safety of the product. They ensure the manufacturer can pellet the product, facilitating feeding for the horse owner and helping to ensure that the product is not wasted by the horse.
Looking for good factual information?
Please be cautious when "googling" information about "bad" feed ingredients or "fillers" because there is a whole industry out there thriving on spreading bad and/or false information about the products we use. "Dr. Google" can be used by anybody to spread an agenda. Try using Google Scholar which will direct you to published scientific papers about your questions, or consult groups with good web pages like Kentucky Equine Research or any of the university web pages if looking for information about the myths, misconception and actual scientific fact about feeding horses. When searching the internet be very discerning about what you accept as fact if the article does not provide citations to peer reviewed research (and that does not mean another article written by the same author) to support the claims provided.
Comments