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 Off the Wall Wacky
Posts: 2981
   
Location: Louisiana | All sources factored in, forage, supplements, any grain... What percentage of fat so you prefer for your horses daily?
You can feel free to throw out protein and carbs/fiber as well! For this post in mainly concerned with fat though. Thanks!! |
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Expert
Posts: 3147
| If I'm not mistaken a horse can't utilize more than 10% of his ration being from fat. |
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Off the Wall Wacky
Posts: 2981
Location: Louisiana | BMW - 2015-12-09 5:45 PM If I'm not mistaken a horse can't utilize more than 10% of his ration being from fat.
I've been figuring all day. Different popular diets I've seen on here, my own current program, a few possibilities. Mainly out of curiosity. Most come out to around 3%. |
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Off the Wall Wacky
Posts: 2981
Location: Louisiana | ^^^That's including hay and forage, but not minimal grazing during turnout. My horses just have a little to pick at, no real nutritious grass. |
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Expert
Posts: 1695
Location: Willows, CA | It would be very hard to get a horse to eat a diet that was more than 5% to 6% fat for the entire diet. Most hays run 1% to 1.5% fat. While fat supplements can be pretty high in fat, they should be fed at a very low rate compared to the forage portion of the diet. Most fat supplements only raise the total percentage of the entire diet to about 3% because of that low feed rate. If your horse eats 22 pounds of forage per day that is 1.5% fat, the total fat contribution from that would be 150 grams. Add to that, say, two pounds of stabilized rice bran that is 20% fat and you get another 180 grams of fat. The total for the two is 330 grams of fat if this is your whole diet. This would amount to 3% of the entire diet being fat. This might not seem like much, but fat provides 2.25 times the energy that your horse can get from carbohydrates or protein. If you feed a grain based concentrate that is in the 8% fat range, feed 6 pounds per day and drop your hay to 18 pounds for the same 24 pound diet total, you only change the total daily fat to 3.1%. This slight change has the disadvantage of raising total NSC and is likely to disrupt hind gut efficiency so the roughage portion of the diet is not as well used. If you feed a straight oil to raise fat levels you run into another issue. While a half cup or so of refined oil can be tolerated, more may be disruptive to other digestive functions and also effect use of water soluble vitamins. While looking at these numbers is interesting, more important than % numbers is ingredient make up and quality. whether you are comparing fats, protein or carbohydrates, the horses ability to utilize the feed changes the importance of the percentage numbers greatly. If there was a simple answer to how much fat in the diet is best, every quality feed would have that fixed amount. Processed byproduct ingredients, least cost formulations, synthetic additives, and fillers can all effect feed concentrate efficiency more than fat percentage. The better the total diet fits the digestive system without disrupting any part of it, the healthier the horse. Supplementing high quality fats can be an important part of this, but how much varies from horse to horse and diet to diet.
Edited by winwillows 2015-12-09 7:15 PM
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 Elite Veteran
Posts: 851
Location: West Texas | It's relatively easy to see where I stand. 3% fat is plenty. A range would be more in line. I say 2.5-3.5. Quality of ingredients being paramount. You are very smart to ask this question. Total diet analysis is the only thing that matters. |
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Off the Wall Wacky
Posts: 2981
Location: Louisiana | Thank you winwillows and Tdove!! I value both of your knowledge!!
I completely agree with feeding high quality products. I've become much more proactive with my horses' health lately. And I'm seeing happier, healthier horses as a result.
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 Expert
Posts: 1261
| Oh my word just thinking about how to try and figure out how much I feed makes my brain hurt! Mine get rice bran pellets,chia seeds and a ration balancer that's 5%. So they have quite a bit of added fat but total percent of their daily diet I have no idea lol. |
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| Natural grains and grasses peak at 5% fat .... to make it higher in fat the milling companies add used cooking oils from restaurants ...
Save yourself some money and just feed them a happy meal or super size an order of French fries ...
I find it interesting that your human diets wants you to stop eating as much fatty foods as possible .......
but when it comes to our horses we want to force feed them stinky stuff that comes from the deep fryers grease that has a lot of heat//lifetime extenders hidden in them to make the grease last longer ... ask someone that works at a fast food what the grease smells and looks like when they change it out ... lol
Here is what natural FAT GIRLS look like when eating only 3 lbs of whole oats and alfalfa/corn pellets look like ... neither mare is pregnant ..
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