Get to the Bottom of the Bag: Everything You Need to Know about Commercial Horse Feed

- So our speaker for today is Dr. Devan Catalano.

She is an Assistant Professor and Equine Extension Specialist at Colorado State University.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Catalano.

- Well, thank you. All right.

Okay, so, thank you for that welcome, thank you for having me.

It's fun to join Penn State, some of my favorite people there.

So I should go back.

So today, we're gonna talk about "Understanding Equine Commercial Feeds." Not just about what they are, but about kind of the regulations, the labeling, the guidelines behind them.

I think that sometimes, the feed industry has made it unnecessarily complicated to go into the store and feel confident and comfortable picking out the right feed for your horse, so hopefully this just can clear up a couple of misconceptions.

So, a little bit about me.

I grew up in Massachusetts.

I actually got my Bachelor's in Equine Science here from Colorado State University.

I did my Master's and PhD at the University of Minnesota, where I really focused on horse husbandry research, kind of very practical, does this work?

Versus how something works.

Most of my research was in grazing and forage management, so that's certainly my bread and butter.

From there, I was the staff nutritionist for a feed company in North Dakota called Woody's Feed & Grain.

I was primarily responsible for their equine formulas, but I dabbled a little bit in ruminant and poultry feed.

I am currently the assistant...

I'm currently the Equine Extension Specialist for Colorado State University, and Assistant Professor.

So my job is half research, half extension, so I hope to kind of continue this work out in Colorado.

Maybe the question...

The question maybe is not what grass grows best here, but can we actually grow grass in a nice pasture here?

So what to expect today, we'll go over some of the governing bodies and regulations behind the feed industry, the anatomy of a feed tag, how to look at it and understand what you're looking at.

Talk about some ingredients, right?

Some couple of polarizing topics, and finish with how to select the right feed.

So first, who makes the rules?

Sometimes I wish I did, sometimes it'd be easier, but alas, I do not.

So the key overarching governing body for feed production in the US is the US Department of Agriculture's FDA or Food and Drug Administration.

So a number of kind of some notable key acts that Congress has voted on and passed, the 1906 Federal Pure Food and Drug Act.

This was the first time that the federal government had authority to regulate feed sold across state lines.

This really was kind of almost like a truth in labeling piece of information, and what this did was protect farmers from being sold bad or questionable ingredients from other producers.

In 1938, they passed the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act.

What this did was separate the oversight for food for man or feed for animals.

You'll probably hear me mix up food and feed.

Generally, we consider food for people, humans, and food for companion animals, but it's feed for livestock animals.

I don't know why, it just is.

So you may hear me kind of go back and forth, but it all means the same thing.

This 1938 act also gave approval process for feed ingredients.

And so again, really separating out when we are making food for people, we have extremely rigorous processes to say what can or cannot be safely consumed by humans, and then it kind of trickles down to ingredients for livestock animals.

The most recent reform was the 2011 Food Safety and Modernization Act, or FSMA.

This really revolutionized how we regulate the feed industry.

I'll touch on this in a little more detail, but this added in preventive controls, performance standards, as well as giving the FDA recall authority.

So really, what this did is tighten up regulations and procedures across all feed mills across the entire US, to add some standardization of quality.

So really, really important act that got passed.

So the USFDA is responsible for a couple of things.

They're responsible for making sure that feed is pure and wholesome, that it is produced under clean conditions, that it is free of harmful substances, and that it is labeled appropriately and truthfully.

Now, these seem maybe like "Duh" type of statements, but usually, as we know from maybe having horses, that rules and regulations happen for a reason, and so it's a good thing that we have some oversight in making sure that the feed we buy for our horses is clean, it's safe, it was produced under sanitary conditions, and that the bag contains what it says it contains.

The USDA also governs medications and medicated feeds.

You may have heard of the veterinary feed directive, which really limits and cracks down on what medications can be given to livestock animals.

This is a bit outside of the scope of what I do and really outside of the scope of how we feed our horses, so I won't be spending any more time on it, but it's important to know that if you hear somebody talk about VFDs, that is regulated by the FDA.

So to go into a little more detail about FSMA, like I said, this was enacted in 2011.

There were seven or eight rules that were implemented in the years following.

Most recently, there was the Bio-Terrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2022.

What this means for you, is that if the feed company is either buying ingredients overseas or selling them, basically if they feed or the individual ingredients are crossing international borders, the government needs to know about that and there needs to be additional testing involved.

All facilities, all feed manufacturing facilities, must be registered and licensed with the FDA, and part of that includes having documented protocols for good manufacturing practices or GMPs, as well as a food safety plan and a hazard analysis.

So again, what this means is the mill has to have documented standard operating procedures that measure, that have control measures for prevention of food safety issues, preventive controls to mitigate known risks, i.e. for a pit or an input site at a mill for receiving something like beet pulp.

Most mills have magnets in place to catch any metal or debris that's going through.

These documents are all... It's not just...

You can't just like write it down and say, "Oh, yeah, I have this." This goes along with yearly inspections by state feed officials that look over your food safety plan and your hazard analysis, and make sure that you're not just blowing smoke.

One private company that's heavily involved with feed regulation is the American Feed Industry Association, or AFIA.

They do less on the regulating and labeling side.

Really what they do is represent feed manufacturers and influence policy.

They played a key role in what went into FSMA and just making sure that it was feasible and practical for feed mills to enact.

They also provide a considerable amount of training and certifications, including the Safe Feed/Safe Food program.

This is an extremely rigorous process that goes above and beyond a general food safety plan.

So if you see a supplement company or a feed company that's Safe Feed/Safe Food certified, that means they're going above and beyond FDA requirements to produce food.

So kind of like an extra gold star sticker.

The other private group that's heavily involved in all of this is the American Association of Feed Control Officials, or AAFCO.

So the tricky thing in all of this is that despite FDA having the overall regulatory body of this, states still set individual laws when it comes to labeling of livestock feed.

So AAFCO, again, was a private group, they formed in 1909, just to add additional layers of oversight and to help promote uniformity across states.

So AAFCO not only creates definitions for feed ingredients that we'll touch on later, they also have a document that has recommendations for how to label livestock feed, and I would say that most states at minimum, follow the AAFCO guidelines.

Again, they're guidelines, not laws, but states are going to follow these minimum requirements and potentially go beyond them.

So in terms of product testing oversight, you know, what does this all even mean?

So feed mills must have a food safety plan and a hazard analysis completed to be officially licensed with the FDA.

They also need to register in each state they sell product in.

And a number of states actually require submission of each product tag for approval before they will even allow that product on their shelves.

So if I am working for a feed company in Colorado, I want to sell feed in Texas, I need to send them PDF of all of the tags of the products that I wanna sell.

They will go through and make sure that those tags meet their requirements for labeling laws, and approve or deny each product.

What does that come down to?

Who's in charge of watching this? Who's the oversight?

So state inspectors visit mills and stores regularly and they will sample at random.

So they don't necessarily test every nutrient that's listed on the tag.

This is really up to each individual state, each individual feed inspector, as well as the labs that they send these samples to, and their capabilities.

When they do send a feed sample out and say...

So say a tag says it's 14% crude protein.

That product must test within a certain allowance for each of those nutrients.

And this will, again, vary state to state, which is aggravating, right?

Because there's not one clear set of rules.

But some states might say, "Okay, minimum allowance without giving a violation might be 85% of the stated minimum value." So I didn't do the math on this ahead of time, but, you know, if you say your feed is 14% crude protein, I think that would mean it has to be I think around 13% or higher in order to not receive a violation.

No matter what, you will be notified if your product is out of compliance, you may get an actual violation, you may just get, "Hey, we tested your product, it's a titch below what you said it is, but that's within our allowance so you're fine, but, you know, pay attention to this." Mills have to offer an explanation as to why those nutrients didn't test according to spec and make corrections before they can move forward.

Another kind of fun fact in all of this is that if you have a product that doesn't meet tag specs and is in violation, you can probably be assured that that product will get, you know, randomly selected a lot more than what is actually random.

So in short, the USFDA inspects and regulates the feed mills, the actual manufacturing facilities, while individual states set the laws and regulations for feed labeling.

Kind of a doozy, right?

Who cares about all that regulation stuff, besides for Devan?

Let's talk about feed tags.

So before we talk about tags, let's consider three kinda key components for producing feed and subsequently slapping a tag on it.

One, that commercial feed must be suitable for its intended use.

This means that, you know, if I am making horse feed, not only does it need to be suitable for horses, but it needs to be suitable for a specific type of horse.

I can't sell horse feed to a cattle producer and expect it to have the same result.

So if I'm trying to sell horse feed, I need to formulate it appropriately.

Two, the label needs to allow the purchaser to select a product to meet their needs.

What this means is that you need to have enough information on the tag for the consumer to make an informed decision.

And three, that information must include information on how to use the product safely and obtain the best benefits and results.

So I can't just slap a sticker on a plain bag that says, "This is for horses. Good luck." I have to go into a little more detail.

So with AAFCO labeling guidelines, they have guidelines specific to each livestock species as well as for certain livestock species, i.e. cattle, divided into different groups or classes of them.

For horses, their guidelines at minimum, you must include a product and brand name, a purpose statement, a guaranteed analysis, ingredient list, feed directions, any cautions or warnings, manufacturer information, and the net weight of the package.

So we kind of look quickly at this.

So we've got manufacturer name, and it's kind of small, I apologize.

And contact information.

We've got product name, which is the Senior, and the brand name ProForce Senior, we've got a purpose statement, which is "This feed is designed to be fed to senior maintenance horses and performance horses." So we'll explain that in a second, but right up front, this is who this product is for.

We have our guaranteed analysis, our ingredient list, feeding directions, cautions and warnings, kind of again, like a, why does that need to be included?

There's always a reason.

But these will typically say always provide fresh, clean water, always provide adequate forage with the exception of perhaps a senior product, as well as don't feed moldy feed or feed that contains insects.

'Cause it happens, these are fresh ingredients, stuff happens, but if you happen to open a bag of feed and it's moldy or if there's bugs, bring it back to the store.

So to talk about that product statement a little bit, this is where AAFCO guidelines maybe are a little dated compared to how we talk about horses today.

Product statements are based on NRC horse classes and they include growing, broodmare, maintenance, and performance.

Now, we generally are a lot more specific with our horses now, but that's why you'll see what you may think of as a vague product statement as "Pelleted feed for broodmare and growing horses," "For adult horses," "For the maintenance of mature horses." And what that's telling you, for adult horses or for the maintenance of mature, means that it's not formulated to meet the needs of a growing horse or a lactating broodmare or maybe even a stallion.

And so this is just kind of the base requirement.

More and more equine feed companies are adding additional detail that allows you to decipher if a product is appropriate for your specific horse.

Guaranteed analysis.

This is always kind of a controversial thing amongst Facebook groups and forums, right?

So at a minimum, a horse feed tag must contain protein, fat, fiber, ADF and NDF, which are more precise measures of fiber, a minimum and a maximum for calcium, phosphorus, copper, selenium, zinc, and vitamin A.

So, many of you might be looking at this going, "This tells me nothing." But what I would say about this is that this is the minimum, most equine feed companies understand that horse owners are looking for more and more information, and so they're starting to include more and more.

A lot of local mills are a little more, I don't know, traditional old school, and so just because they have a more simple tag, or even with a national company, just because a nutrient isn't listed on the tag does not mean that it's not in the feed.

For example, lysine, which is an amino acid, which is a building block of protein, right?

Just because lysine is not listed on the tag of a feed does not mean there's not lysine and other amino acids in there.

If there's protein in the feed, which there will be, there also will be amino acids.

So it is up to you to decide how detailed of a tag you feel you're comfortable with, but just, I guess, the take home message here is that just because it's not on the tag doesn't mean it's not in the feed.

A comment on units, and I might skip over this math to kind of keep us moving.

But nutrients are listed as units per weight, believe it or not, to make it easier for consumers.

I see this dilemma more so with supplements than feed, but if a supplement or if a product lists amount per serving, that's actually out of spec, not following regulation, and to me, that tells me that that company isn't following the rules, and what else are they not following the rules about?

So that's kind of one stump I always kind of get fired up about.

But nutrients are listed as units per weight so that we can easily calculate it based on whatever feeding rate it is.

So it's there for a reason.

Macronutrients, including certain minerals, are as a percent because those nutrients are required in grams, and so maybe I'll skip over most of this math.

But if it's in a percent, it's because the nutrient is required in grams.

If it's listed as PPM, that stands for parts per million or milligrams per kilogram, this is because these nutrients are required as milligrams and just in terms of units, and rounding, and big numbers versus little numbers, this is the cleanest way to do it.

Vitamins are kind of an oddball here, is that most vitamins are required in IUs or international units, so you'll typically see them as IUs per pound.

There's a couple of oddball ones, like vitamin C that might be listed in different units, but generally for vitamins A, D and E, it will be IU per pound.

So again, if you complain that a tag is listed in units and not per serving because you prefer it when it's listed per serving, per serving actually means that it's out of regulation and that's a red flag to me.

So kind of to recap this, all of these nutrients, any nutrients that's on a tag is subject to testing at any time by a state feed inspector.

And again, acceptable ranges vary per state, but most reputable feed companies will add a little buffer.

If they're saying 14% crude protein minimum, they're probably formulating it for maybe 14.2 or a little bit above, so that no matter what, they'll never be in violation of that minimum value.

Okay, what about other nutrients? Right?

I care about other things. I care about vitamin E, right?

Vitamin E is a hot topic.

Companies can add any nutrients that they want, they just need to be listed in the right units.

Again, any nutrient on the tag is subject to testing, whether that occurs is up to each state lab's abilities.

Another point on this, websites are not subject to formal inspection.

So theoretically, I suppose a feed company could say whatever they wanted online.

However, the cap like, I don't know, I guess the flip of that is that it only serves the company to be consistent.

Consumers are savvy, they are going to call a website out if it's blatantly different from the tag.

And so I see a lot of people kind of up in arms like, "Oh, you know, this is only on the website, they're must be lying because that's not subject to testing." It might just be that they're keeping the tag simple for registration processes, but they want to give you, the consumer, more information.

So I say the more the better, so if you see it on the website, it's, you know...

If it's a good company, it will be accurate.

Specifically, draft horse in the room, NSC.

So NSC stands for non-structural carbohydrates.

NSC is made up of WSC plus starch.

WSC meaning water soluble carbs.

Most horse owners understand sugars and starches as NSCs.

And when we refer to it, we refer to NSC, WSC, starch, maybe ESC, which is ethanol soluble carbs.

AAFCO only recognizes sugars and starches or dietary starches.

So we go back to this question of how do you comply with both regulation requirements and the wording of how something is presented, versus what consumers understand?

And so it makes it pretty tricky for equine companies to handle this, they know that the demand, the trend is for more and more information, specifically information about NSC, but NSC is not a recognized term by AAFCO, and so they have to list it as sugars and starches.

And this goes back to website information may be differing slightly from tag information.

So on the tag, they might call it sugars and starches to comply with the law, but on the website, they might refer to it more specifically as NSC or the different breakdowns with that, because those are the values that horse owners understand.

And so again, I guess maybe my take home point of this is that don't assume a feed company is trying to trick you because they're using different terminology.

More often than not, when it comes to the tag, they're just trying to follow the laws and the regulations.

So moving on to ingredients.

So I wanted to include a couple of examples of feed and why specifically, ingredient lists on a tag matter.

And I apologize for this blurry picture.

This is the best I could find.

Again, we understand why because it's not so modern.

But if we look at this picture, if this were an unlabeled bag of feed, we could open this and clearly see that it contains flaked corn, oats, rolled barley, and this is what we know as COB or cob, which is corn, oats, barley, which is one step below even a sweet feed, it's not going to have any molasses or oil or anything in there.

This is three different cereal grains combined.

So, you know, if Captain Obvious were to say, "Well, you don't need an ingredient list for that," sure, but what about if we look at a more premium textured feed?

So if we look at this textured feed, we can see oats, beet pulp, something wet, there's definitely some shine and some hef to that, but, you know, we don't really know maybe what, and we can see some pellets but it's not super obvious what's in them.

From the ingredient list and also because I formulated this feed, I happen to know this, this also contains...

The wet part is going to be oil and molasses.

And within the pellets, there's going to be soybean meal, minerals, vitamins, and probiotics.

Now of course, on a tag, you would name the specific minerals and vitamins, but bear with me, 'cause I wanted to have pretty slides.

So again, as we advance to more modern feeds, this is why detailed ingredient lists matter.

As pelleted feed kind of continues to grow in availability and popularity, the point is driven home even further, right?

By looking at this, you could not tell what's in there.

If you happen to work at a feed mill, you might take some guesses based on color or feel or smell, but it's not obvious, right?

They're pellets.

What we know from the ingredient list is that these contain soybean meal, alfalfa, beet pulp, oil, minerals, vitamins, and probiotics.

So this is why ingredients and being specific with ingredients matters, it's really for the end consumer to understand what's in their feed.

So again, this is another area that I often see people getting frustrated or confused about, accepted definitions and names from AAFCO may not match the conventional name.

One example I see of this is that if I include alfalfa in a formula, that's alfalfa out of the field, ground down into a small powder, incorporated into a pellet, it's alfalfa as we know it, I must list this as alfalfa meal in an ingredient list.

And to go even further, there's further clarification of whether it was 100% dried out in the sun, I could call that sun-cured alfalfa meal, or if there's any reason to dry it inside, pull out any additional moisture, then it's simply dehydrated alfalfa meal.

Dehydrated alfalfa meal sounds maybe scarier or a lot more complex or processed than alfalfa.

It's the same thing, just different terminology.

And so when you're reading through an ingredient list, if it sounds funny, it's probably just because the feed company is using the specific terminology as required by their state laws and AAFCO.

Ingredients must be listed by weight, and so the trick is that most of the bulk of the formula is going to be made up of probably the first few ingredients.

So I would say the first one to five ingredients are making up the bulk of a one ton or 200,000 pound batch of feed.

Minerals, again, these are micronutrients, so they're required in very, very small amounts, which also means they're included in very, very small amounts.

So if you are combing through an ingredient list and you see molasses as the 10th or 20th ingredient on a list, and it is behind several minerals, that means it is included in such a minor, minor amount that I would not even think twice about it.

I don't really think twice about molasses in general, but even if I am trying to feed a horse that needs as low of sugars and starches as possible, if molasses is at the end of the list, I'm not worried about it at all.

Some other considerations for producing horse feed, maybe even more so than other livestock feed, is palatability, and it's not a real word, but I've said it enough that I think it should be one, and pellet-ability.

So palatability matters, right?

Because it doesn't matter how healthy a formula is for a horse if they don't eat it.

So we have to consider ingredients that are palatable, that smell reasonably good, that combine well, that a horse will eat, that the owner doesn't open the bag and go, "Ugh, God, that smells terrible." Pellet-ability, this is obviously more of a concern with pelleted feed.

A lot of ingredients just simply don't stick together well.

And if you produce a pelleted feed, you want it to have all 50 pounds of that bag to be in full pellets.

Curious, we don't need to do a show of hands, but maybe think about this on your own, if you feed a ration balancer, how many times have you gotten to the bottom of that bag and had it be, you know, several pounds of dust or fines?

It's aggravating, right?

Because of how expensive it is, and, you know, you end up wasting that because oftentimes, your horse won't eat it.

An example of this is salt.

Most feeding manufacturers don't include enough salt to meet horse requirements.

That's because one, if you added enough salt, it will detrimentally impact palatability, and also, salt, as you may remember from grade school science class, salt is a sharp, square, hard crystal.

If you have enough salt in that formula, that will impact the pellet's ability to stick together.

If it's got too many hard pieces, they are weak points and they crumble, right?

And so one example, one consideration of why an ingredient may be included at higher levels or lower levels in a formula.

Lastly, in terms of textured versus pelleted, that also makes a difference.

When you're producing textured feed, it's harder to add lots of smaller ingredients and make sure it's dispersed really well, and so we want to include ingredients that...

You know, that's why we would make a pellet containing a bunch of micronutrients, and mix the pellet into a textured feed, versus just putting five pounds of a pre-mix into 2,000 pounds of a textured feed and hoping that every scoop contains an equal amount of that five pounds.

Another kind of random consideration for that is how bulky textured feed ends up.

You need it to be fairly compact to fit into a 50 pound bag.

So for example, if you've got a textured feed that's got beet pulp, oats, and a premix pellet, the more beet pulp that's in it, the bulkier or fluffier that pound of feed is, and so you wouldn't actually be able to fit 50 pounds of that feed necessarily into a bag.

And so because people are conditioned to buy 50 pound bags of feed, hence the dilemma.

So these are all considerations, they're not necessarily something for you to think about constantly, but I hope it adds some context for why feed mills and feed manufacturers make the decisions that they do.

So another hot topic, specific ingredients versus collective terms.

So AAFCO allows for groupings of ingredients to be listed, i.e. grain products, plant protein products, forage, or roughage products.

This does allow formulas to be changed without needing to change the tag.

I think that that concept has been blown out of proportion.

For the most part, a feed mill is not going to be changing their formulas drastically on a whim, every single time they make a batch of feed.

It's just not efficient, it's not going to help anything, they're going to have to reconfigure their settings for how to produce feed.

So even if a company has collective terms, it's probably just a holdover from the old ways of doing things.

And again, we are seeing less and less of this within the equine horse world.

I personally prefer to see specific ingredients on a tag that I'm buying for my own horse.

However, if the company's overall reputable, again, they have maybe even some of those extra safety certifications, I'm not going to run away from that product just because it uses collective terms.

Again, for some context, grain products, so this bucket of oats in the picture, that's grain products.

It's still a good product, it's just a different, more vague term for it.

Plant protein products sounds maybe a little sketchy, that's soybean meal.

So it just sounds scary to us maybe because it's a little more foreign.

It's just a different way of naming things.

Are there bad ingredients?

I am of the philosophy that there's no such thing as a bad ingredient generally.

I don't think there's any blanket statement that I would say, "Oh, that's bad." The nuance there is, is it appropriate for my horse?

Or this class of horse?

Are oats bad inherently?

No, they are a really helpful, useful grain, they provide protein, starch, and fiber, and micronutrients to horses, but maybe they're not the most suitable for an overweight horse that doesn't need the extra calories.

For a show jumping horse though, you can bet your bottom dollar that oats are going to help that horse jump and do the work asked of them.

So there's no such thing as bad ingredients, it's just if it's appropriate and suitable for your own horse.

Byproducts.

This is another one of my favorite stumps.

Byproducts do not mean trash or less than, these are more than just floor sweepings.

Byproduct means it's a plant component leftover after processing.

This usually means leftover after processing for human food.

So it gets kind...

Byproducts, I think we should make a petition to rename this term, because it sounds maybe like, "Oh, a byproduct, that's...

I don't wanna feed my horse byproduct.

They should get the best." These products often contain really desirable amounts of specific nutrients.

For example, rice bran is a byproduct of the rice industry.

It's high in fat, it's an excellent fat source for horses.

Beet pulp, high in fiber, beet pulp is a byproduct of the sugar beet industry.

One common myth with this, is people hear beet pulp, they know sugar beets, they go, "Oh my god, beet pulp is really high in sugar." The sugar beet industry is invested in extracting as much sugar as possible from that plant, that is in their economic best interest to be viable as a business, to pull as much sugar as possible out.

So they have this leftover pulp, it's really high in fiber, it actually has some good amounts of protein, calcium, other nutrients, and this would otherwise just get wasted and thrown away, and we need to be really cognizant of all of that for our Earth right now.

And so beet pulp happens to be an excellent source of soluble fiber for horses.

I'd like to get a shirt that says, "Beet pulp is my passion," 'cause we can maybe spend a whole other webinar on it.

Lastly, wheat bran is high in protein as well as several other nutrients, byproduct of the wheat industry.

Wheat bran compared to wheat, is going to be higher in protein and lower in NSC and sugars and starches, and it also happens to pellet very well.

And so in a pelleted feed, you can help it pellet, it's palatable, it provides nutrients, it kind of is a trifecta of what we need to produce horse feed.

Another scary word, fillers.

So fillers get a really bad rap.

Fillers have really come down from the human food industry.

From the human perspective, fillers are ingredients that provide bulk without nutrition.

The most commonly used example of this is dietary fiber.

Now, you may be wondering why do I have a rice crispy bar as a photo?

I intentionally did not put the Kellogg's label 'cause I didn't wanna get sued, but one of the random memories that fills this brain cavity up here, that I learned from childhood, was that, oh my gosh, rice crispy bars are full of wood pulp and wood chips, and it's there for fillers so that they save money.

And as a child, I had no idea what fiber or anything else was, but I was like, "Oh. Gross. It has wood in there?

That's gross.

That's a shame 'cause I actually think this tastes really good." Obviously false, we're not putting wood chips into our food.

What we do often add to granola bars, and I don't know if they're actually in Rice Krispies or not, but what we find with granola bars and a number of other food things, is that manufacturers will add cellulose which is a source of dietary fiber, which is derived...

One way to derive it is from wood products, not the only way, and yes, dietary fiber technically provides bulk for humans 'cause we don't digest it, but why do food producers add it?

It's because the increased fiber increases satiety or that feeling of being full from a granola bar, so it's added for your benefit.

If we break this down to horses, right?

Let's talk about fiber because again, I think the same statement often gets transferred, which is, "Oh, a filler is a bulk without nutrition," so let's talk about fiber as a filler, as bulk, etc.

One, horses need bulk for gut motility.

They need gut fill to keep their system functioning properly.

Fiber does that, hay does that.

In addition to that, horses...

Well, technically, they're microbes, horses can digest fiber.

So in a way that we maybe need fiber and vegetables and salad and things like that, to add a little bulk to our diets and to our stool, horses actually use the fiber for, you know, potentially 85-100% of their caloric needs.

So right off the bat we can say, "All right, bulk is not...

Bulk as a filler does not really apply here." So is there such a thing as a filler?

I consider two questions.

One, does it offer nutrition to the horse?

And again, going back to my previous statement, does it offer nutrition to the horse this product is intended for?

Again, oats, so oats in a performance feed are there specifically, intentionally, to increase the starch levels of that feed so that that hardworking horse, that performance horse, can do the work asked of it.

Now, oats in a ration balancer may or may not be there to take up a portion of that formula.

They do add protein, they do add nutrients, but it's maybe not the ingredient that I would utilize in a ration balancer formula, because it's not really adding anything to a horse that needs to be on a balancer.

In contrast, alfalfa, we know alfalfa as a hay source to be higher in calories compared to grass hay.

And so again, for an easy keeper, do they need alfalfa? No.

However, if we had a ration balancer formula and we're using soybean meal, soybean meal is fairly expensive, alfalfa's going to be less expensive, if we made 90% of that formula soybean meal, that's going to be a very expensive product for both the mill to produce, and ultimately for you to buy.

So if we can essentially like, cut it with something like alfalfa, it's still providing good nutrition that's a little more cost effective.

Not only that, we think about alfalfa as a good calcium source.

If I can bump up the calcium in a ration balancer formula using alfalfa, that reduces the amount of specific minerals like what we call dicalcium phosphate, which is basically a rock.

So going back to pellet-ability, if I can get calcium from an ingredient that pellets well versus calcium from an ingredient that is going to destroy my pellet and leave you with a bunch of fines, I'm gonna lean towards that.

So filler or nutrition? Kind of consider that.

Second question, if it does not offer nutrition, is there another reason for inclusion?

Accuracy and safety, again, those premixes will generally contain all of your vitamins and minerals.

Again, it's hard to evenly distribute two to three pounds throughout 2,000 pounds evenly, so using a carrier allows that to be distributed, which means that every pound of feed in that 2,000 pound batch will contain exactly the same amount of each nutrient.

Ease of use helps us with rounding so that it's easy to make a one pound scoop be nice and level.

There might be non-nutritive components for shelf life or flavor.

Again, feed is expensive these days, I don't want it going bad after a week.

And again, palatability and pellet-ability.

So I think I'm probably talking too much and not going fast enough, so I might speed things up.

But to kind of wrap up, I wanted to talk about selecting the right feed.

So basics, horses need 1.5-2% of body weight in feed, daily.

Yes, your horse might eat more than 2%, but when it comes down to overall digestive tract health, minimum 1.5%.

As much as possible of this should come from forage.

If you've got an easy keeping overweight horse, steer towards that 1.5% side, look for grass hay that is more mature, lower quality, it will be lower in calories.

Teff is an increasingly popular type of grass that is low in calories relative to other types of grass or alfalfa.

If you've got a hardworking or thin horse, you might need to go above 2%, but look for a higher quality hay.

So before reaching to grain, I might look for an alfalfa grass mix and start there.

Always provide salt, free choice access to water.

I guess, a quick comment on salt blocks versus loose salt.

If your horse consumes salt from a salt block, feed it.

It is the easiest, most efficient, cheapest way to provide salt.

My horse, Teo, you see his spotty little chin, eats salt from salt blocks.

How do I know this?

I put out a block and after the right amount of time, it's gone.

I can see that he's chewing and licking off of it, so he is consuming salt from that.

If your horse does not get enough salt from a compressed block, that's when you need to look into loose salt or other forms.

Just say no to designer salts, you don't need to be paying a premium, just look for plain white salt.

So then lastly, and while we're all here, forage is inherently lacking in nutrients, and specifically compared to fresh pasture, vitamins are lost in the haymaking process.

So no matter whether your horse is an easy keeper and holds weight on hay, or they're a harder keeper and they don't, no matter what, you need to add some sort of fortified product to fill in those gaps.

Selecting a feed.

You need to understand how much grain by weight your horse needs beyond forage.

So whether this is one pound, two pounds, 10 pounds, understand what they need by weight, to hold onto their...

To maintain their own condition.

With that information, feeds have minimum amounts to be fed listed in the directions.

This is based on nutrient density for each of these products.

So I had actually originally had, "Read the feeding directions twice," because what this comes down to is read the dang feeding directions.

Look at the minimum amounts to be fed for that particular product, and if you do not need to feed that minimum amount to have your horse hold their weight, then you need to transition down to a more nutritionally dense product.

Some common types of feed, we've got a ration balancer, performance, senior or complete, a growth feed, adult or maintenance, and then lesser known, but kind of more and more popular are light formulas.

So if your horse maintains weight on hay or forage alone, these are ration balancer, these are nutritionally dense.

Most major companies have one, I should say all major companies have one.

This is gonna be fed at around a pound a day for a typical 1,100 pound quarter horse.

Quickly, people get scared off of 30% protein, it's all relative because you're only feeding one pound.

You actually end up feeding less protein in a pound of a balancer, than you would in five pounds of a 12% protein other feed.

When to use a performance formula?

Really when calorie needs dictate higher intake.

Hardworking horses, stallions.

I will select a performance feed over a senior feed when the horse either can accommodate more starch and I want it, all the way up to they actually need more starch and sugars to do the work.

If your horse is working hard, they need sugars and starches to work.

Same with us, right?

I typically look for a 12-14% protein product as well as one that's 8-10% fat.

When to use a senior or a complete formula?

I think I saw a question about that in the chat at the start of this.

The first question is, can your horse chew or digest hay?

If they cannot, you need to be feeding a senior or a complete formula.

These contain enough forage or roughage to fulfill your horse's fiber needs.

So look at the tag, it should...

One, check the directions and ensure it says it can be fed without hay.

Two, look at the guaranteed analysis and make sure that it's at least 18% or higher max crude fiber.

You also wanna look at the ingredient list and make sure that there's specific forage products, so grass or alfalfa included in the formula, compared to just roughage sources of soy halls, wheat mids, things like that.

Another kind of increasingly common use for senior feeds is that again, generally, and again, read the tag, generally, senior feeds will be lower in NSC, so if you want or need a low NSC product but need to feed more than a balancer, these senior feeds are a great fit.

Your horse does not need to be a senior, they just need to be eating a minimum of four to five pounds, or whatever the minimum is on that specific product.

When to use a growth formula?

This is really a little more specific, right?

So this is for broodmares and growing horses.

The caveat, if either of these horses, so either a pregnant broodmare or I've got 22 year olds outside in the pens right now that are growing, they are all thriving on ration balancer.

So the caveat here, is if your horse is in these two classes and if their calorie needs dictate, then use a growth formula.

If they're easy keepers, use a ration balancer at a slightly higher feeding rate.

Growth formulas are going to be a little higher in protein compared to other products.

I don't believe you need to be feeding an 18% protein feed at 5-10 pounds.

So I look for 14-15% crude protein, I'm looking for higher amounts of other vitamins like vitamin A, higher amounts of calcium.

And here, this is a feed where I'd be looking for lysine and other amino acids to be called out on the tag.

I'm looking for lysine to be at least 1% to meet amino acid requirements.

When to use an adult formula?

This is the slide I struggled with, I didn't even have a picture for it.

Adult formulas are generally going to be more economical, they typically have higher feeding rates.

These feeds are maybe a little more outdated.

They do have their place, they usually contain more cereal grains, therefore they're going to have higher NSC values.

So a good example of when I might use an adult or maintenance formula is if I've got a horse with HYPP and who needs reduced potassium, but my hay happens to be high potassium and I can't find any other hay, I would probably feed more grain than I normally would, to overall reduce the potassium intake.

And lastly, light formulas.

So these are newer to the market, they're kind of an in-betweener feed.

When you consider that ration balancers are a fed at a pound per day, other formulas are five or more typically, light formulas are designed to be fed between two to four pounds.

So if you feed a scoop a day, AKA a three quart scoop, you're probably feeding about three to four pounds of feed a day, and so if that's what your horse needs to maintain weight and they're kind of that Goldilocks in between, look for a light formula, it'll kind of be the balance of everything you need.

In summary, in terms of selecting a product, start with forge, from there, understand your horse's caloric needs on top of that.

Use the tag information to select a product, make sure you're feeding at least the minimum amount, and read the feeding directions.

With that, my favorite illustration ever, I can't take credit for it, but I think we can all relate.

And I apologize for going longer than I was supposed to, but happy to answer questions.

- Thank you, that was great.

If you don't mind hanging around for a few minutes- - Absolutely, yeah.

- I feel like you answered a few of the questions as you went along.

You mentioned about senior feed and pelleted versus textured, so I'm gonna kind of pick and choose some questions here.

In the meantime, for everyone else listening, Bethany is on it.

We have an evaluation as I mentioned at the beginning, with just I think like four or five questions tops, so if you could fill that out while you listen into the questions, we would greatly appreciate that.

Again, if you want to learn of future educational opportunities from the Penn State team, please sign up for our email that we send out.

We do have another webinar on December 15th, about blanketing, you might know them, Devan, who our speaker is, all about blanketing.

- Oh, she's the best. Tune in for that.

- So it'll be another great webinar, so that's December 15th.

And we will have webinars, you know, moving forward.

So, all right, let me see, someone...

The questions that we have here. Let's see.

We have a question, if a horse eats two to three pounds of grain a day, is it still important to split that meal?

- So if that's a full size horse, typical 1,100 pound quarter horse, Arabian or larger, no.

Feed it at once.

You could split it up if you feel better doing so, but there's no nutritional or health need to split that up.

- So, let's see here.

If a person knows the NRC nutrient requirements based on the weight and general activity level of my horse, can I easily calculate whether feed is supple...

Can I easily calculate whether feed is applying an adequate, inadequate, or excessive amount for each vitamin, mineral, nutrient, etc?

- Well, I suppose, easily, it is dependent on your preference and comfort level with math, I think it's very easy.

The hiccup to living in the United States is that we don't use the metric system.

So ultimately, you just have to convert everything to grams and kilograms, and then beyond that, I think it's pretty easy.

And so I'll put my email in the chat, I like doing math, I'm happy walk you through the math at any time.

Yeah, it's just a matter of calculating how much is in the serving of the feed that you're providing, add that up to what's in your hay, and yes, then yeah, then you can compare it to NRC requirements.

- So a follow-up question is that if you are not comfortable with math, and, you know, there's quite a few agents to balance some things.

Someone asked, how do you find an equine nutritionist who isn't maybe necessarily affiliated with a brand?

So yes, Purina and other companies hire equine nutritionists, but there are others that are equine nutritionists not affiliated with those brands.

So, any advice?

- So, one...

I have a lot of stumps that I stand on around this topic.

Don't be afraid to work with PhDs at feed companies.

They're not there to make a dollar, they are there just like Danielle and I are, because we love horses, and so they are happy to help you out.

Most PhDs that I know, if there's not a product in their lineup that fits your horse, they will steer you towards something else.

But aside from that, contact your local extension agents for the equine specialists around the country.

Like I myself love nutrition, I'm happy to help you.

If your local extension specialist isn't quite as versed in nutrition, there are a handful of independent nutritionists.

I suppose Googling is probably your best friend.

Look, I would look for somebody who has a PhD in animal science.

I don't even think there are PhDs specifically in equine science, but look for somebody who has a PhD that has proven experience and expertise with equine nutrition.

I would...

I guess I don't wanna talk down.

Yeah, look for somebody who has equine experience, 'cause ruminant nutrition is literally a whole other beast, and so, yeah...

- I was gonna say, you know, you can talk to us, right?

You know, your extension people.

- This is what we're here for.

- Yeah, so I know for sure, Laura and I have routinely been asked for recommendations on equine nutritionists.

So if you're not sure where to start and you're like, "I'm afraid to Google 'cause all these questions come up," contact us.

You could contact your state extension, but honestly, a lot of equine nutritionists work from wherever they are in the country, 'cause the things that they need, you could provide them remotely, honestly.

They don't always have to go see your horse.

So if you struggle to find an equine nutritionist, please contact Devan, contact our team, we can point you in the right direction.

I'm trying to see here.

I know we're running short on time here, so maybe one more question and we'll call it a day.

And I apologize if we didn't get to everyone's questions.

- I have time to stick around for a little bit.

Up to you guys.

- All right.

So someone asked, or they say, I know there's been a push in the dog and cat food industry to start providing digestibility information to consumers.

Any knowledge if there's a direct push for that in the equine feed industry?

It would be helpful to know how much of those ingredients my horse is actually using.

- So that's kind of an interesting question. I like it.

In terms of overall digestibility, I haven't really heard any conversations about that.

When companies test feed, we're always going to be testing for digestible energy, AKA calories per pound, there's not a spot for that on the tag.

Again, AAFCO regulations built around other livestock species.

I would say there is a push to include that calorie information online, and the digestible energy equations are factored...

Digestibility of each nutrient or each ingredient is factored into that equation, and so if a feed is 1.2 mega calories per pound, you can kind of trust that they will get 1.2 mega calories per pound of usable energy from there.

And then I think in terms of like other digestibility of minerals and vitamins, that's a whole other...

Happy to talk about it, but that's a lot longer answer.

- We could go on and on about nutrition for many hours here.

- Very many hours, yes. This is why it's my career.

- Yes, yes.

So I am gonna cut us off just 'cause, you know, we're kind of at time.

I know Devan you could keep going, but cognizant of everyone's time.

So if you do, I see more questions filtering through, certainly you could contact Devan, she provided an email address.

You could contact us.

Again, please fill out the evaluation form.

We are always looking for topics, you know, we are thinking about programming for 2024 for the extension team, so if there are topics or things you'd like to know about, please let us know.

Again, we will have this recording up online, so if you were trying to frantically take notes while Devan was talking, you can go back and re-watch that.

Thank you again, for joining us everyone, and I hope you have a good rest of your day.

- Thanks, everybody.

All right.